#david-foster-wallace — Public Fediverse posts

https://tankar.pivic.com/nagra-ord-om-bodil/

Apropå Petter Lindgrens nya bok om Bodil Malmsten har jag skrivit litet om henne.

#BodilMalmsten #författare #DavidFosterWallace #SarahBakewell

For those of you don't know. This is water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7xzavzEKY

#davidfosterwallace #wisdom

Die Betonung liegt auf „vorgenommen“.

https://finest.day/posts/eine-unbeabsichtigte-hommage-an-der-bleiche-konig

#blog #blogging #buecher #PikaBlog #journal #DavidFosterWallace #bookstodon

3000 people on a Floating Island of Pleasure 🤪 OR: A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again #DavidFosterWallace 🤡

https://youtu.be/8juL7cdGj40

Here's a daily dose of common sense and humanity to offset the absurd spectacle around us.

#DavidFosterWallace #Philosophy #Ethics

https://telegra.ph/Hablemos-de-langostas-06-18. David Foster Wallace, 1996

De: Hablemos de langostas, Editorial Mondadori, 2001

Traducción: Javier Calvo

Ph/ Joseph Frank. #poetikablog #poetikagaur pantallazo Edit #davidfosterwallace

True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care--with no one there to see or cheer.
-- David Foster Wallace

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #DavidFosterWallace #Heros

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Dinosaur #Tracks #Colorado

𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒔 - 𝑾𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑩𝒂𝒄𝒌: 𝑮𝒖𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒕𝒔 & 𝑩𝑻𝑺

Is that blank page paralyzing your activism?

William James and David Foster Wallace interrogate the "sneer trap" of modern irony. And from Marvin Gaye’s protests to BTS’s solidarity, let's consider how "New Sincerity" and "Guerilla Texts" can unsettle the status quo and physically alter the world.

https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords_podcast/guerilla-texts-bts-gaye/

#podcast #books #bts #springday #marvingaye #davidfosterwallace #newsincerity

Nova Sinceridade: O projeto literário e filosófico de DFW — a tentativa de escrever ficção que se levasse a sério emocionalmente, depois de décadas em que a ironia se tinha tornado o modo dominante da escrita culta. paulopinto.place/wiki/literat... #david-foster-wallace #novasinceridade

a-nova-sinceridade - Ignoranti...

"It’s a massive and impossible assignment to turn around the cruise ship that is David Foster Wallace’s legacy. Amy could simply recede, as many family members of famous artists do after a tragic and untimely end." —Lindsey Adler for The Small Bow https://www.thesmallbow.com/p/consider-the-sister-2b94?src=longreads #dfw #davidfosterwallace #infinitejest #books #writers #family #grief #longreads

Reminder to watch this #DavidFosterWallace video: https://youtu.be/8juL7cdGj40

#InfiniteJest: A Postmodern Saga of Damnation and Salvation (1996) #DavidFosterWallace

via @wallabag

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/02/the-alchemists-retort/376533/

“What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit—to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. And if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time.”

#DavidFosterWallace

Voting

Do I vote in political elections? No, I don’t vote in political elections. Are you serious? Voting? I traditionally spend election day – and evening – at home alternating between eating pizza and summer sausage with peanut butter and American cheese sandwiches and dunking Oreo cookies in chocolate milk until the sun sets when I switch to a 2 liter bottle of Coke and peanut M&Ms. And instead of watching the news and getting bored watching everyone talking about everything, I’m happy flipping between reruns of Housewives of Wherever and the Maury Povich Show. The only voting I do is picking who is and who is not the father. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking and it doesn’t have anything to do with the summer sausage and peanut butter with American cheese sandwich and you’re right: I do then spend the next 2-4 years bitching about the elections and all the things that are wrong with the country, and how it can be, they can be, you can be better. But so what? There’s no law says we have to vote and whose business is my complaining but my own? And really, it’s not like my vote would make a difference anyway, ‘ya know, and if people can’t get it right then I have the God-given right to complain about it.

“Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.” – Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota

Yes, I vote. I vote in every political election and this is a numbskull question. And I’m guessing I may have disparaged and belittled the character of people who don’t vote and for that I’m… thinking about it.

“By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.” – David Foster Wallace

The one bad thing about voting for me is the feeling of having one chance to get it right or else. And not getting the candidates right, but the ballot right. We have paper ballots here and what if my hand shakes and I color outside the little oval a little bit? Or what if I don’t follow the line of text correctly and I color in the wrong hole? I know mistakes happen and the poll workers are there to help with that kind of thing, but then something like that happens and now I get on a list like, Goofy Voter Guy or something, and when I go back to vote in the next election and I give them my name, the room gets kind of quiet and all the poll workers glance over in my direction. Not obviously or anything like that, because poll workers are trained to be discrete, but it doesn’t take much on my part to see all the poll workers busy at their jobs and talking to other, more responsible, voters with steady hands and the ability to color in a circle and follow a line correctly, shifting their eyes to me. And then when I step up to that little table thing to vote and my back is to the room, there’ll be the inevitable hushed whispers of the poll workers and it’ll be impossible to avoid the words.

“Hey, that’s the guy.”
“Really? That’s him?”
“Yup.”
“Goofy Voter Guy?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“He’s better looking than I thought.”
“Don’t let that fool you. It’s what’s upstairs that counts.”
“You mean like—”
“Mmm hmm, the light’s on, but no one’s home.”
“Poor guy. How hard is it to color in a little circle, anyway?”
“I know, right?”
“Shh, he’s looking over here. Look busy.”

Yeah, all that. Or worse.

And worse.

And then by the time I’m finally done voting I’m so on edge that my hands shake when I reach out to accept the “I VOTED” sticker the poll worker near the door hands me and I drop in on the floor. Now I have to bend over and pray that I don’t rip my pants and as I bend to pick up the sticker it’s easy to hear the muffled laughs and the words.

“Goofy Voter Guy? Goofy Butterfingers Guy, is more like it!”
“I know, right?”
“At least he didn’t rip his pants when he bent over.”
“That would have been something!”

We have problems on the north, south, east and west. New York City, Saint Louis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago. Everybody has problems and personally, I don’t care” – Alice Cooper, Elected

The title of the song here, don’t do it. Don’t vote for me. I’m not running for anything, it’s just a good Chicago song. And in case you’re wondering what’s real and what’s not in this upside down world, I have never had a summer sausage with peanut butter and American cheese sandwich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skfbo8oQuBE&list=RDskfbo8oQuBE&start_radio=1

This 👏 book 👏 is 👏 trashed 👏.

Front and back covers completely severed; stains from god know how many muddy university coffees; and lots of chicken-scratch hand writing, a good portion of which I can't even decipher anymore. Also many rogue question marks 😅.

I did think about giving this to the local library, but it's likely a biohazard at this point. Curious if anyone else has a more egregiously blown out copy than mine! #infinitejest #davidfosterwallace #literature #reading #entertainment

Een onuitputtende lijst van dingen die me opvielen tussen pagina 94 en 250.

Wrote a passion piece about 2 of my favourite books.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, Wallace: the "o's, d's and p's" in Infinite Jest

"the [typographic encoding] becomes the smoking gun in the case against Avril Incandenza when you appreciate Wallace's intellectual debt to Douglas Hofstadter and Gödel, Escher, Bach – a debt the essay documents in detail below."

https://www.chiply.dev/post-reperspectivizing-orin

#infinitejest #davidfosterwallace #typography #geb #literature

Considerar a la langosta: reflexiones éticas sobre el sufrimiento animal al hervirlas vivas

📰 Título original: Hablemos de langostas

🤖 IA: No es clickbait ✅
👥 Usuarios: No es clickbait ✅

Ver resumen IA completo: https://killbait.com/es/considerar-a-la-langosta-reflexiones-eticas-sobre-el-sufrimiento-animal-al-hervirlas-vivas/?redirpost=802b12d8-184a-4fb6-9c20-68ecc191d836

#filosofía #éticaanimal #sufrimientolangosta #davidfosterwallace

I never could finish Infinite Jest, but this is gold. David Foster Wallace, compellingly stating the obvious with dry poesy.

https://youtu.be/DCbGM4mqEVw?si=HFDVm9FNZ7de3bc9

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

#davidfosterwallace #compassion #mindfulness #speech

The Turbulent Genius of #DavidFosterWallace

https://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/16/turbulent-genius-david-foster-wallace-297688.html

@aselrod.bsky.social

we're going to have to love and trust the people we don't like or understand. that's how you build a better economy and civics.

#DavidFosterWallace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_sincerity

RE: https://janvandenberg.blog/eindeloos-vertieren-i-de-bibliotheek-en-vol-gas/

Geen tijd of zin om Eindeloos Vertier zelf te lezen, dan mag je ook meelezen met mij.

#eindeloosvertier #infinitejest #davidfosterwallace

Eindeloos Vertieren deel 1. Notities tijdens het lezen. Wat spreekt me aan? Hoe ziet ETA eruit volgens AI? Ik heb het gevraagd.

Michael Silverblatt van het programma Bookworm is de beste literaire interviewer die ooit heb gehoord.

Today we're celebrating the birthdays of #DavidFosterWallace and #ChuckPalahniuk. 📚

Highlights ✨

Sip, Splash & Murder by #LynnJoseph ( #MermaidBayWineMystery Series)
A Bitter End by #PoppyBridgeman ( #TheEBEatsDinerMysteries Series)
Plants and Playtime by #HazelRockwood ( #SteamyTowers Series)

🔗 Link in comments #newbooks #newbookreleases #bookstodon

David Foster Wallace zou vandaag 64 jaar zijn geworden. Ware het niet dat hij in 2008 overleed op 46-jarige leeftijd. Zelfde cijfers, andere volgorde.

Maar dit wist je mogelijk al. Ten minste, als je deze site af en toe bezoekt. Ik schrijf hier al een aantal jaar veel en vaak over DFW.

En de laatste tijd extra vaak.

Want, overmorgen komt de Nederlandse vertaling uit van Infinite Jest: […]

Ich glaub, ich bin ein bisschen verknallt in diesen Vorschlag von David Vinchar für den #Genre-Begriff #Necromodernismus für Romane von z.B. #MarkZDanielewski, #AlanMoore und #DavidFosterWallace.

»Literatur als Entropiemaschine, als eine Nekropole der Signifikanten … gebrochen, provisorisch, gespenstisch heimgesucht … Dies ist ein Schreiben, das im Leichnam des Romans west, ihn mit geisterartigen Signalen weiterhin am Leben erhält«, wie der Perlentaucher exzerpziert.

https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/necromodernist-architectures-in-contemporary-writing/

Olvida que sencillamente uno no puede creerse todo lo que ve, escucha y lee en la prensa. Dados los axiomas de la tertulia radiofónica conservadora y la agudeza del señor Z. como crítico de los medios de comunicación, resulta rarísimo olvidar algo así…” Hablemos de langostas
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Traducción de Javier Calvo #davidfosterwallace

Never mind the lit-bros: Infinite Jest is a true classic at 30 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/07/never-mind-the-lit-bros-infinite-jest-is-a-true-classic-at-30 #DavidFosterWallace #Books #Fiction #Culture

Deluded

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

~ David Foster Wallace

slip:4a804.

As usual, therein lies a collection of thoughts nicely arranged into a constellation. I sometimes repeat the phrase, “assume positive intent,” to myself and to others as a caution against defaulting without thinking. It seems a base part of our nature—although the ancient benefits seem obvious it’s still only anecdotal evidence—that I default to defense. “Dead last” seems aptly named from the historical perspective, and “first” feels like we’re missing a catchy adjective. (“first fatality” maybe?) What might be called “herd middle” simply feels like the right choice most often. But that’s still defensive; Don’t stand out means blend in means wait and see means be cautious means they’re out to get me.

Boundaries? Yes, please. Rights and safety? Yes, and yes. But if the vast majority of us are really just like me… how great would it be if we assumed positive intent? …or, well, maybe we could do that at least half the time?

ɕ

A one-man pandemic book club

The past six months have given me exponentially more time at home than I would have thought possible before this pandemic-afflicted year. Normal people would have occupied those hours by catching up on deferred household maintenance or learning a new language, but instead I’ve whiled away many of them by reading two of the denser novels written in English: James Joyce’s Ulysses and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

That was not a quick process. Both doorstop-thick tomes feature their authors free-styling their way through prose as they get lost in the inner worlds of a complex set of characters without any strict reference to time or place, which is a longwinded way of saying they can be intimidating to read.

I tackled Ulysses first, since I’ve had a vintage hardcover copy silently taunting me from a bookshelf for the past 20 years or so. There are deeply poetic moments in Joyce’s Dublin-steeped novel–“history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” resonates too well this year–and parts that suggest the author’s profound conviction that he would get paid by the word for every word. Also, I’m impressed that the censors of the 1920s made it all the way through to the really naughty bits towards the end.

After I tweeted out my victory over Joyce’s title and asked “What famously dense novel should I read next?”, one of the first replies suggested Infinite Jest. I finally accepted that logic and put myself on the Arlington library’s waiting list for an e-book copy, but before I could claim that I saw a paperback copy available for all of $2 at a library used-book sale. Buying in print instead of borrowing in pixels meant I’d have all the time I’d need to digest Wallace’s 1,079 words of prose, endnotes, and footnotes to said endnotes.

(Seriously: Wallace’s endnotes eat up almost 100 pages, and a couple count as chapter-length in their own right. I realized early on I’d need to keep two bookmarks in my copy, one to mark my progress in the text itself and the other to preserve my place in the bits at the end–then saw that this book may be best read with three bookmarks. This may be the most hypertext thing I’ve ever read in print.)

Infinite Jest is even more of an atom-smasher of plotlines than Ulysses–it touches on growing up, tennis, drugs, Boston, digital media, addiction, people’s capacity for needless cruelty, crime, more drugs, pop culture, cinematography, Québeçois separatism, and even a smidgen of tech and media policy. And it does so without the standard narrative scaffolding of chapters. I kept having to flip forward to see when the next break in the story might happen, solely to know how late I’d have to stay up before putting the book down at a point that would not leave me too confused the next morning.

I could not help reading Wallace’s tales of Boston types battling depression and inner demons of various kinds without considering how Wallace himself succumbed to his own, because depression lies. Which made me think also of my late, literary-minded friend Mike Musgrove, who I’m sure read this book a long time ago and would have offered some smart or at least smart-aleck commentary about it.

Finding meaning in the mundane

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in.

~ David Foster Wallace

slip:4a799.

It occurs to me that I’ve no idea who gave the commencement address at my graduation. After a bit of digging…

Robert W. Galvin, chairman of Motorola, delivered the main address yesterday to the 1,150 graduates at the 125th commencement of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

Mr. Galvin received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree.

~ from the May 31st NYT archives listing several school’s commencement addresses.

ɕ

The mundane

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in.

~ David Foster Wallace

slip:4a799.