authors under the influence

[Will Layman]

I agree that DFW's prose seems more "tossed-off", but I think that is  
the very essence of his illusion. He is always starting sentences  
with dense, spoken-out-loud sytaxes ("OK but well what I'm wondering  
is just this --"), but I think that's the charm of reading him --  
it's the tangled poetry of low expression, you might say.

I've always assumed that the anti-DFW sentiment on the P-List was  
born of a misplaced sense that Pynchon is somehow "high" (Joycean,  
scientific, historical, etc) while Wallace was just low hi-jinks  
brought by a pretender.

Personally, I find Wallace just as "high" in his concerns and  
"classical"ness -- and in many ways a writer less involved in pure  
play (less goofiness, less punning, less schema -- at least in IJ)  
and more interested in telling a story. And I just could not disagree  
more with David assertion: "no nutritional content.  Nothing to think  
about, no change in your weather, let alone your life.  It's empty."   
I well understand people getting frustrated with the details, the  
length, the endnotes, but JEST is just packed with "real" concerns --  
addiction, family dysfunction, sibling rivalry.  When you push past  
all the hi-jinks it is a much more conventional, character-driven  
novel than, say, GR.  And, in fact, that was Wallace's intent.  If  
you read his essay about television and literature in the first essay  
collection, it's clear that he wanted to write something that would  
kind of transcend the cleverer-than-thou po-mo, Look How Self- 
Conscious-I-Am "Lost in the Funhouse" type thing he had been writing  
up to that point.  JEST is an attempt, I think, to write the post- 
modern classic that destroy post-modernism by, you know, actually  
CARING.

I think Hal's story is actually pretty heart-breaking.

But I'd never begrudge anybody disliking the book -- it's nothing if  
not a matter of taste and tolerance for excess.

Does anyone know if Tom LeClair (who wrote the lit-crit book THE ART  
OF EXCESS -- which held out GR as pretty much the greatest book of  
our era, along with JR, some Richard Powers, Joseph McElroy, a Heller  
book, some Ursula LeGuin) has ever weighed in on IJ?

-- Will

On Oct 16, 2006, at 7:38 PM, Daniel Julius wrote:

>
> I think the Pynchon connection is apt, you know, only to a point,  
> but I
> still can't understand the animosity I feel that Pynchonites seem  
> to have
> towards DFW.  I used to think it was b/c he was written up as some  
> young
> gun, an inheritor to the P-throne, but recent posts on this list have
> changed my mind.  Someone (help me out) brought up the poetry in  
> Pynch, and
> I think that that is an incredibly good observation that doesn't get
> mentioned enough, and DFW really does have a more kind of tossed-of,
> improvised feel in comparison to Pynch's incredible layered density  
> and
> careful description.
>
>
>
> OK, this is too long.  Is DFW really hated?
>
>
>
> --
>
> Dan