authors under the influence

[David Casseres]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Infinite Jest, take piece
by piece, is a blast.  It's original, clever, funny, occasionally
moving, and above all, it's stuffed like a Christmas turkey with
marvelous gags that I would give anything to be able to write myself.

It's just that at the end of 75,000 pages or whatever it is, there's
no nutritional content.  Nothing to think about, no change in your
weather, let alone your life.  It's empty.  That's why it's really not
like Pynchon.

On 10/16/06, Joseph T <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> I don't love everything DFW publishes, but I think those of you who don't
> like his work are just missing the boat.  Many of the charges leveled at
> Wallace -- of long, mazey sentences, of purposeful opaqueness, of mechanical
> characters and pointlessly long and wordy novels -- are bulls-eye
> Pynchonian.
>
> I am a latecomer to DFW and was going to read Infinite Jest, but to get a
> taste I bought a copy of Oblivion (short stories) and read most of it before
> I lost interest. I can't relate to the trapped in your own skull predicament
> of his characters. It's as though this is a world where people think instead
> of breathing. There is no air , no exchange of fluids. Maybe that was the
> intent, but I don't think this is the character of the oblivion that faces
> us.  Maybe I'm  off base and this book was a narrow exercise. Anyone else
> read it?