If posting spoilers about specific plot lines of various works make sure to be courteous of others. That being said, be aware spoilers will be floating around.

Will add an essay list soon.

Works:

• The Broom of the System (novel) 1987
• Girl with Curious Hair (short stories) 1989
• Infinite Jest (novel) 1996
• A Suposidly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (non-fiction) 1997
• Brief interviews with Hideous Men (short stories) 1999
• Oblivion (short stories) 2004
• Consider the Lobster (non-fiction) 2005
• The Pale King (unfinished posthumous novel) 2011
• Both Flesh and Not (non-fiction posthumous) 2012
• String Theory (non-fiction deluxe release posthumous) 2016

Reading The Pale King atm anyone read?

Gonna get into dude soon. Ive always loved his interviews and his talks but never read his work. Very interesting guy

Is there anything i should read first?

Oblivion and his essays are perfect to start with. I started with Infinite Jest because I decided to just dive in but I know it’s probably not the best to warm people up to Wallace.

Consider the lobster is a good starting point

The essay “a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again” is a great compressed version of the themes he covers in his work and a really entertaining read

Infinite jest’s difficulty is overstated. It’s just really long. It’s one of my favorite books.

^ also the essays really help with understanding his writing voice.

The longness of IJ never really affected me the way its been portrayed for me I guess. But I understand why for most it would be. I genuinely thought the prose was so well written that I didn’t havnt that hard of time following along. What I do find frustrating what was the type-set of the words on the pages that was the only reason I’d get hung up and if I had to go back and re-read a page it was essentially like reading 2 full pages . IJ is definitely in my favorite books list. Will re-read again later this year. Have you read pale king?

Good looks guys gonna read some of his stuff after im done with the first part of 2666

Another door stopper. Is it pretty good?

OP left Foster out of David Foster Wallace can’t have s*** on KTT

i like avn 99 essay and the one he wrote about his time on a cruise

Yeah its pretty great but it took a minute for me to fw it. Its one of those dream-like novels. Its pretty unexplainable and cant compare to anything else ive read. Its extremely mysterious (in the truest sense of the word) and sad as f***.

Edited. Forgive me

My day Is saved thank u woopdeyscoop

This dude was f***ing hilarious

Are reading DFW?

Like his essays and the movie about him. Hearing mixed things about Infinite Jest, though.

yeah i was reading consider the lobster essays. big red son had me crying

Just finished big red son. First time reading DFW. I’m not sure if he did it on purpose but I kinda love how he’s projecting his exhaustion with the CES and AVN into the reader with all of these minuscule details. Looking forward to reading the rest of CTL

I wanted to read signifying rappers for a min even tho I remember seeing a very lukewarm review of it. found it randomly yesterday and picked up along with Gucci Mane autobio lmao

I bought Infinite Jest literally 5 years ago and hadnt opened it ever since I got it

Been making my way through Oblivion, so f***ing good. The extreme self pity in good old neon was so alien but so damn relatable.

btw this is funniest f***ing QnA ever

it's definitely a bit outdated since it was written in the late 80s.. their favorite example is Schooly D lol. but on the other hand them taking rap so serious this early is what makes it an interesting read tbh. would even go to say it was panned bc critics back then weren't ready for it yet

DFW was real af for accurately saying so early that rap is some of the most exciting poetry around, some solid 20 years ahead of the rest of literary academia w that tbh

2 years later still aint read that

Whats the deal