Um, no, the length of Infinite Jest was part of its style. Didn't you read it?Originally Posted by tonywalt
Um, no, the length of Infinite Jest was part of its style. Didn't you read it?
Last edited by Anton Hermes; 09-17-2012 at 10:40 PM.
Yea, I've read it a couple of times. His style is found from early days in Broom in the system and later Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Also, his well respected and as essays go - some of the funniest-"Shipping out" and "Ticket to the Fair".
DFW's style runs through all of his writing.
Well now, of course you have.
Anyway. It was necessary for the essentialism of the Classical era to give way to the fluid, contextual, self-referential artistic values of the Modernist and Postmodernist eras. The concept of Being had to recognize the reality of Becoming. However, as impossible as it may be to remain in an aesthetic of irony and anxiety, it's just as impossible to transcend it by returning to a nostalgic sense of certainty and stability.
To be fair literary history is not on your side when you make that statement. I think of neo-classism, with it's strong sense of artifice and condemnation of any human passion which was not satiric or Ironic. In fact all the great neo-classical poetry we have is mostly satirical in vein. A man at the end of neo-classism would have been fully justified in thinking the cat is out of the box and won't ever go back in. Thought, society and man has become so advanced that poetry can only serve to satirize. Then, boom, Romanticism. It sprouted, with the coming of the Napolionic wars it bloomed in such colors as baffle the mind, and by the time Victoria had grown fat, it stagnated, fell into cliche and academic rigidity, dead as a tree in winter, and just as ubiquitous. Then, suddenly these strange words came from Italy and Paris "Futurists" who spoke of the previous generation of crazy writers in paris who were called Symbolists, and suddenly and slowly; Modernism.
Then I suppose it's just my own wishful thinking, that literature can learn the lessons of Modernism and Postmodernism and move forward. But maybe I'm underestimating the power of these fads and fashions. Sure, writers can just ignore a hundred years of daring, original artistic achievements and revert back to Romanticism like nothing ever happened.
But should they?
You are contrasting a caricature and arguing against that. How is that productive? Of course Modernism and post-modernism won't be forgotten, no one has come close to insinuating such a thing, you pulled that one out of thin air. To make a few relevant examples, Neo-classisim was extremely influential on romanticism, despite the latter being a rejection of the former the mere fact of constructing a movement based on rejecting a prior one by default means that the two will be heavily intermingled.
The same for modernism. Who would deny that the Victorians had a huge influence on the majority of modernists. By creating modernism as a rejection of Victorianism, Victorianism naturally becomes the starting point, the imaginative core of modernism.
No one is saying the anyone will ignore Modernism and it's step-child post-modernism. What he was expressing (in my opinion) will be a purposeful rejection of many of the core qualities of modernism, like Romanticism was a rejection of many core qualities of neo-classims, and modernism was a rejection of many core qualities of Romanticism/Victorianism. To reject something is by default to admit that it is an influence. You cannot reject what you don't know (well yes you can, but we are talking about intelligent cultured people not the hoi polloi ) Regardless of the fact weather it be positive or negative, influence is still influence.
Last edited by Alexander III; 09-18-2012 at 10:52 AM.
Well, Wallace did the same thing in the quote in the OP, concocting a literary bogeyman made up of cold, hyper-ironic hipster no-talents who resent anything that smacks of emotion or sentiment. I certainly don't see anything academic or unemotional in the best modern & postmodern literature I've read. The best example I can think of is Beckett: his work may be eccentric and unheroic, but there's humor, humanity, and pathos aplenty.
Who would deny that swift or pope lacked humanity? There is emotion is post-modernism, but it lacks sentiment and sincerity. Besides the "hyper-ironic hipster no-talents who resent anything that smacks of emotion or sentiment" is quite real and existent. Albeit more in the visual art world than the literary one, but it is a creature which is hardly fictive.
That's a preposterous overstatement. So there's no work of Romantic art that was sopping wet with insincere sentiment?
I at least cited Beckett as an example of an eminent modernist/postmodernist author whose work doesn't lack emotion or sincerity. I could name plenty of other prominent examples like Vonnegut, Delillo, Barth, and Coover. Since you haven't named any writers who supposedly personify the cold, cerebral, flippant attitude you associate with modernism and postmodernism, I'll assume you're more comfortable making generalizations.
You are getting too detail orientated, of course I am making generalizations, the mere fact that I am talking about "romanticism" or "modernism" implies generalization. But one the whole, would you seriously describe post-modernism as valuing sentimentality, would sentimentality be a core value? When I say it lacks sentimentality, I mean sentimentality is not a core principle it is viewed negatively - much like in romanticism sentimentality was in may ways a core principle.
And and of course plenty of crappy romantic poets did sentimentality badly, much like plenty of crappy post-modernists did irony badly. That is inheritanlty assumed.
Fair enough. I just get a little weary when these discussions end up being generalization tug-o-wars, when people should cite actual books, poems, or authors to bolster their case. So if you're going to keep arguing over vague terms like sentimentality instead of talking about literary works or writers, I'm done.
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