David Foster Wallace on Commercial literature and reading
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- Edited version of the ZDFmediatek interview with David Foster Wallace.
This version offers David Foster Wallace's ideas, without repetitions, long pauses, interviewer's comments. Although some cuts may appear rough, there is no attempt at editorial bias or content manipulation. Mr. Wallace's archives (books in his library, notes, and writings) have been recently acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin (google it)
A video of a man lamenting about the decrease in our attention spans and mental effort cut down to 4 minutes so it takes less effort to digest.
Here is the full version of this interview in higher resolution for the rest of us that can actually listen to this man for days never mind minutes
ua-cam.com/video/iGLzWdT7vGc/v-deo.html
We really do live in a society
That's what's funny to me; I probably wouldn't have clicked this video on my front page if it was >5min
Cut down to 4 minutes? No, you got it backwards. These points could have been made in half the time.
I feel like it's a really narcissistic and pedantic claim. If your book feels like stabbing nails into your urethra while reading it because it's boredom in literature shape, that's not on the reader and his "intellect" or "lack of attention span", that's on the writer and his lack of skill. Books must be either educational or entertaining, if you don't fill in either of those you've failed as a writer.
The part about the "dread of quiet" is really true and more relevant than ever.
Even within the music of today, and in some of the better stuff as well; there just aren't many musical rests anymore. It's just sort of, loud droning, continuous sound.
@@brainsareus that's an interesting observation to me. Idk if it's true, but it's interesting
brainsareus System of a Down has good
Stops
Mr Bungle was great at creating down times.
@@matthewseanmclachlan what're you even responding to?
I really like one thing from this interview: you can see how his brain
works way faster than his mouth. He's about to say something but he has
to stop and say something like "well, not always" or "that's not always
true"; and his eyes go somewhere and pick up other thoughts, other
interpretations of reality, other points of view. He argues himself and
his thought before he could even say it. And he really needs to struggle
to find the right word to be less wrong. And it is something you can
feel from his writings too. A beautiful mind, with huge awareness of
reality in its whole.
I noticed that too. I think I've experienced it. If I have, if it's the same kind of thing (for I am not nearly as intelligent or articulate as this man) then I know that it is terribly exhausting
Everyone's brain works far faster than their mouths.
I've definitely had this experience as well -- of casting my mind along a variety of tangents and getting ahead of myself in the process. Writing has actually helped quite a bit with this, because I'll get into a good flow-state and my thoughts seem to pace to the process and rhythm of letting the words out. It's something I deliberately worked on, actually. Instead of writing in fits and starts, logging a sentence and then planning out what I'm going to say next, I'll just let the words flow out and try to let a really smooth rhythm emerge. My best writing definitely comes when I'm in that smoothly flowing state -- no question. I do still have a residuum of those prior issues: maybe one can never quite eliminate them completely, but the main place I've been noticing it is that when I go back to read what I wrote, I'll catch these spots where a word I intended to write was completely omitted purely because my mind outpaced the writing. It's usually small words that are more structural though. The big and interesting words generally make it in.
check out the Elon Musk Joe Rogan interview. You can see the gears whirring inside Musk's skull if you watch his eyes.
"Infinite Digress"
"We don't want things to be quiet anymore", Aldous Huxley did a marvelous essay just about that.
May I Ask The name of this essay please?
the rest is silence
@@michaelwilson1683 thank you very much!
He was absolutely right about the lack of quiet, purposeful reading among many people in the U.S.
Who has the time when everyone is working 50+ hours for pennies just to stay afloat. Throw in social media and there’s no longer an attention span to sit down and read. We don’t want to actively think anymore, we want to escape our daily drudgery
Trevino Or throw it out, hehe! I ditched FB over a year ago, that great time suck. At least UA-cam offers documentaries, movies, concerts, interviews, and art gallery visits. But I don’t have to visit YT. And I don’t have to read. Big difference, however, is that culturally for me, reading was ingrained early on. Sitting in/walking in woods or a park without a cell phone and just a book isn’t some act of sacrifice or rebellion. I work full-time, and have for decades. Don’t make much but also don’t want much. Just enough for rent, food, medicine, gasoline, and utilities. Spare moments or down time -> reading. Choice. Actively think...when I stop doing that, it’s time to check out, hehe!
On average people work fewer hours per day now than at any time in history, so that’s not why. Reading is only a means of communication and in today’s world there are far more ways, easier ways, to ingest information. Less than 150 years ago all there was were books. Most people like the quicker and easier way to do things.
Is this good or bad? Maybe
@@flukislucas its only bad because those who control the easily digestible media are not interested in the well being of the human being.
Crow Hehe!
"When people stop talking, their brains start to work." -- Douglas Adams
Nice.
It scares me how much I agree with some of the things Wallace says, because it makes me feel so alone in a world where so many of the close friends/family I have would just consider thoughts like these to be overthinking and move on, while dilemmas like these bother me and linger in my mind for much longer. I just feel lonely for someone who can level with me sometimes, instead of just trying to get me to move on and stop thinking about a certain thing. I don’t know. I just feel real lonely sometimes, I guess.
You are not alone buddy
I feel the same.
You're definitely not alone. There's more of us than it seems.
We all feel lonely, frequently
Go to a good uni mate you’ll meet a lot of ppl the talk to
I was a live sound engineer professionally in my 20s and it would always bug me that people always wanted to put on recorded music between the live bands' sets - Sometimes after a particularly good set by a band I would "forget" to do this so people could dwell on what they just heard for a while and someone from whatever venue I was mixing would always run up to me within a couple of minutes without fail and insist I put the recorded music on as if I was simply incompetent and not doing my job.
What do you do for work now?
i bow to you
I love this and I love at the end he says "I dont know"
Some times I just want to make him breakfast and help him put on his bandana
That's so random it made me laugh.
ww wifi , he didn't't need any help with his bandana.
i'll get the shovel
@Cravat Stevens why are you so angry?
Apparently, so did a number of women when he was on book tours. (wink)
Boy, what he says back then (when was this--almost 20 years ago?) rings SO true today as people become more addicted to their cellphones and can't go 30 seconds without amusing/entertaining themselves. Sitting down and focussing on a challenging novel today. As they say in New York, for 99 percent of the people, fuggedaboutit. I wish I had had the pleasure of knowing this man.
I knew someone at Pomona College who used to smoke cigarettes with him. She said he was a very nice guy. That's as close as I ever got.
Being alone and it being quiet is the reason I love reading.
Amen!
2020 where my algorithm-riders at
Hand raises slowly**
Ayyy we have no control party time
Oy wey
💃🏾💃🏾💃🏾
I honestly think it sent me here because I was watching The Office clips and David Wallace is a character.
Wow, he has such an pleasant voice, I could listen for hours.
so true - just read on his wiki that he was in his college's glee club :D
Imagine if David had lived until today. He would probably have some very interesting thoughts on the phenomena of twitter, instagram, facebook, and vine. So it goes.
I was listening to one of his 1996 interviews the other day, and based on that, I think to observe those things would have been incredibly painful for him.
Minotauronabike , I think he lived long enough. He spoke of people's thumbs growing longer from playing with their smart fone so.
Probably? LoL
Ya, he _probably_ would have some things to say about culture. What an insightful comment.
His widow said he would cringe if he knew how much of a celebrity writer bro his death made him.
Actually in 2008 Facebook had already been up and public for ~2 years, twitter for ~2-3 years. For games WoW had been out for 4 years, CS for 8. Vine does not matter, instagram isn't that important either. Also, there were many other services resembling these two in 2000-2008. What changed were the hordes of annoying normies that began to enter the internet. Also maybe more thots than even before began to pimp themselves on it. Thus DFW probably already saw what the internet was about. So you are not that special just having used these shallow commercial services and they are not that different from the ones that existed before them.
the part about your brain yearning for silence when it's been fed a lot of stimuli rings very true with me. Maybe it was because I was looking at DFW's glasses but the analogy of the muscles in your eye was an immediate comparison. There's two muscles, one which makes your pupil wide and one which makes it small - when it's just the same muscle working the whole time the other one gets weak and you become shortsighted. Which also rings very true to me as a metaphor, you loose the ability to think further ahead, and you get headaches.
truely heartbreaking to have lost him. Just read a passage in Infinite Jest where he is describing depression, clearly his depression and his suffering was so profound, all the more profound because of his ability to articulate it.
He could articulate his suffering - and he could spell truly.
I was tempted to close my Internet window because this video was taking "too long" too load. I'm glad I stayed to watch the whole thing.
That's old school
I perfect example of fears of being along is solitary confinement... act up and we'll make you be with yourself. That's why it's so important to be with yourself as much as possible.
I think there are two types of audiences:
1) The ones who buy what is out and come back to it. The sophists and such who are driven by the latest and greatest -- who make waves.
2) The ones who sit inside a small niche making it seem like everything worth anything is unearthed.
3) Then you have the classical, romance, foreign, and other genrists (including the deceased writers club) who are well versed in everthing else.
I think the third group is the used book store enthusiasts who have a wealth of literature at their disposal that has already survived the test of time.
“There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said, meditatively. “But we build bandstand and factories on them. Deliberately-to put a stop to the quietness. We don’t like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupation in my head-round and round continually.” He made a circular motion with his hands. “And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What’s it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost it isn’t there. Ah, but it is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes-not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep-the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we’ve been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows -a crystal quiet, a growing expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying, yes, terrifying, as well as beautiful. For one’s alone in the crystal and there’s no support from outside, there’s nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or to stand up, superiorly, contemptuously, so that one can look down. There’s nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiastic about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressibly lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And oh, inexpressibly terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize and engulf you, you’d die; all the regular habitual, daily part of you would die. There would be and end of bandstands and whizzing factories, and one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously n some strange unheard-of manner. Nearer, nearer come the steps; but one can’t face the advancing thing. One daren’t. It’s too terrifying; it’s too painful to die. Quickly, before it is too late, start the factory wheels, bang the drum, blow up the saxophone. Think of the women you’d like to sleep with, the schemes for making money, the gossip about your friends, the last outrage of the politicians. Anything for a diversion. Break the silence, smash the crystal to pieces. There, it lies in bits; it is easily broken, hard to build up and easy to break. And the steps? Ah, those have taken themselves off, double quick. Double quick, they were gone at the flawing of the crystal. And by this time the lovely and terrifying thing is three infinities away, at least. And you lie tranquilly on your bed, thinking of what you’d do if you had ten thousand pounds and of all the fornications you’ll never commit.” ― Aldous Huxley
Could you please tell me where this quote is from?
From his novel Antic Hay@@jonoruealferez5250
beautiful, gifted man. I could listen to him for hours. It seems that in his final days, he had begun to feel that his literary style had become a gimmick and lost its vitality. I would only say that Infinite Jest is the most ambitious book I have ever read, and if the style became a gimmick in the end, it was worth it for this work alone.
The bit in Infinite Jest about videophony is so relevant now to the Teams/Zoom Invasiveness of the stay-at-home life.
Nice profile pic of a fine chap of a dog lol
wow, so insightful and spot-on. And the humble, depressingly-tinged "I dunno" at the end really sums it up best. Patience, thoughtfulness, the commitment to time--they're all being bullied and subverted in modern culture. It's so sad
What an incredible piece to think about and comment on. I am going to have to save this and write about it. I guess this is what literary and social criticism is about. RIP Mr. Foster.
One of the great minds of his generation. He will be missed.
Even when he talked he just said things so beautifully
So so so so true. And this is becoming more and more apparent and more of an issue today
he's right on. Greater rewards in life require work and focus
had to replay that video about ten times cause i kept being distracted
Ugh, that's horrible. 😑 My situation wasn't much better though. I watched this 4-minute video over a period of about 18 hours because I kept getting pulled away from it by external demands.
Rather ironic
Because it’s very boring
@@eddygci8 true,
Small Dolphin duh what?
A friend of mine read Infinite Jest last year, and he had to go back to various points in the novel many times to try and fully grasp his own interpretation on what David was trying to say. He's still on the fence about the book to be honest, and I haven't read it yet. I'm just amazed that David finished something like that (along with his later works) with so much darkness in him. I imagine that he had to struggle with many demons every time he sat down to put words to paper.
isn't that a good thing? If one needs a lot of time to decide it something is good or bad? Most Art today can be consumed, immediately judged and than discarded (forgotten). If he's on the fence about that book it might mean that he has to reevaluate his metric of what constitutes a good book.
In my opinion that is what defines great art: It forces us to evaluate our position relative to it. It presents us with a problem and in order to solve it, we sometimes have to change ourselves.
It could at least mean the understanding that things are not necessarily only in one of the two categories we call "good" and "bad".
Its about an infinite amount of jest
I read it during the pandemic and just finished. It was three months well spent.
I like his humility.
a moment of silence is still on my bucket list
I completely understand DFW's ideas on quiet....my wife and I were getting gas at a local Shell station last weekend and the pump we were on suddenly (very loudly) began giving us NFL updates as soon as we engaged the pump with an ATM card. The same news was being piped in (very loudly) to anyone else getting gas. A symphony of NFL news. I lamented to my wonderful wife that we can't even get gas without an amazing amount of noise. It bugs me.
I think partly what he's trying to conclude with the portion where he talks about inner complexities not being fed enough. We all have this sort of wiry inside of our minds, and clearing it and digging through it, and analyzing it takes time but provides a clearing of the entanglement within us. Many people I think are scared of what they will find, or that they will be incapable of doing it, and so they never start, and ignore the hardship that they may have to endure. So the corporations (such a cliche way to put it sorry) and things for profit create a fast paced environment, a sort of turnabout setup where we drive in and out, but always come full circle and never really get anywhere, we never dig deep enough.
I really enjoyed what he said about things that are hard and involving a certain amount of drudgery yielding satisfaction in the end.
If you watch the full interview, the cameraman gets all pissy at one point because David keeps "moving back and forth, in and out and frame." As a photographer it just pains me that he didn't think to maybe move the camera back for more space in the frame. It should be intuition. The guy was a real prick and made me feel bad for David. Like it's not the person who's being interviewed's job to worry about framing issues. Anyway, great interview.
skin09588
At the 9:23 mark of the uncut interview:
UA-cam.com/watch?v=iGLzWdT7vGc
@@connorsullivan9287 his response to the miserable prick is absolute perfection "i would trade places with you at any time" ~ which is ironically also true of most anyone watching this video, who'd kill to be that videographer.
Ugh yes I can't stand that part. It's like dude... his face is barely fitting into the frame half the time... zoom out or back up or something... sheeshhhhhh
Thank you so much for uploading these DFW interviews. These are so precious.
Way ahead of his time. Such a wise pov
Such an inteligent, sensitive human being!
Trying to be an author with a unique voice refusing to pander in this day and age, is perhaps the most difficult thing i have ever attempted in my life. Being a young, black male from the hood writing about science-fiction that has nothing to do with drugs, alcohol, basketball, or sex but instead astrophysics, alien life, politics and family while everyone rather watch videos on their phones depresses me beyond belief
He is so right about commercial literature. If it’s a book that’s sold in an airport newsstand, I don’t want it. It’s too quick; too easy. Reading should be work; it should be challenging, it should make you dig deep. A good book lives in the quiet.
What a load of crap.
He said what I'd been trying to describe to people but couldn't. This is true gold.
Agreed.
I have a friend who teaches high school in Long Beach and he has a pretty bitter and realistic picture of the education system. He just doesn’t expect his students to do the assigned reading anymore when you’re worried about feeding your family. I saw plenty of bright, bright people continue to fail in my SI and tutoring sessions simply because they were never given the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills. It’s a systemic sort of thing that I can’t think too much on because if I do well.... I get pretty depressed....
Those immortal words from John Taylor Gatto about the school system: don't try to reform it because it does exactly what it was designed to do.
Michael H man... it is a system
I remember when I've read Brothers Karamazov, that book literally changed me, in a way that I cannot explain....
I understand the feeling. Infinite Jest changed me.
"Twenty-three years passed. I am sitting one morning in my study, a white-haired old man, when there walks into the room a blooming young man, whom I should never have recognised, but he held up his finger and said, laughing, 'Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, and Gott der heilige Geist. I have just arrived and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts, for no one else ever bought me a pound of nuts; you are the only one that ever did. ' then I remembered my happy youth and the poor child in the yard, without boots on his feet, and my heart was touched and I said, 'You are a grateful young man, for you have remembered all your life the pound of nuts I bought you in your childhood. ' And I embraced him and blessed him. And I shed tears. He laughed, but he shed tears, too..."
The Brothers Karamazov
Fiodor M. Dostoyesvski
:(
That's god damn beautiful.
can't stop touching his nose bless him
I feel like I should be stealing second when I watch him
Thank you David. I didn't finish your book (about half)......but I love you.
Northrop Frye once said that books are the most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented, it's still oddly true even with the concerted effort in recent years to replace them with audiobooks and e-readers, in addition to just the internet in general which can create a lot of unhappiness in someone like me who is a reader but also an addictive personality.
How I wished he had lived for another 30 years, at least. Now we are left to lament the lost body of work he could have given this world.
I think certain computer games, because of the interactive nature have perhaps helped create a new, or recreate that ability in the consumer of art (in its broadest definition of creative media) to put work into gaining more satisfaction out of it. Plenty of games try to do little more than recreate an action movie, which is fine and they have their place, but for example the Harry potter books, films and games - I can go back and read/watch/play through them all and love it and I really enjoy the depth of knowledge and immersion I have about that universe. Or EVE Online which is such an open-ended game there are still new ... Careers/activities both within and outside the game mechanics being thought up. I remember my first time exploring low sec, null sec, wormhole space, first time of faction warfare, first PvP fight, first time in a stealth bomber, first time bombing some miners in wh space and stealing I think a few hundred mil isk of loot, and the depth of the universe, the depth of the fact that I had had to earn all the money I had to buy all the shit I had to do all the things I did.
Of course it's only natural if you go from stationary art (books, photographs) and introduce the magic of cinema and then TV and music and sound to accompany it, and make it so easily available and accessible, that the mass consumer will adapt but I think we are starting to see both counter-examples and examples of other better things. Every new medium introduces at first hype, euphoria, addiction and eventually adaptation and integration. When TV became mainstream people used to watch hours a day, now I think perhaps because of streaming there is so much choice that people have to be picky. And you could argue that just looking at reviews like Rotten Tomatoes to gauge if it's worth watching is a cheap shortcut to discovering that peice of art for yourself. But people have always done the same thing with books and films and TV shows.
You know, people have always been addictive and addicted. Around the turn of the century in Britain we had simultaneous gambling, alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, opium etc. Addictions on scales unseen since. It's not new, it's just different.
We are changing rapidly as a species --they way we choose to consume information, the value or lack of value we assign to it. The way we make decisions, the way we think about ourselves and other people. We're getting very good at some skills and completely losing others. It's accelerating at a quicker pace all the time. Scary. DFW saw this.
You don't have to be alone to read-not if you're with another person who is also reading.
Yeah, but that's the dream isn't it?
Wow, this is fascinating. Brilliant man.
The famine of the “small quiet voice"
Man, you can say that again.
@Adam Sloan you're starving for silence, the vibration of nature, but you've been irradiated in digital information, to the point where you can't sleep, take back your life before it's too late
Thank you for the specific advice, mr guru. I'll get on "taking back my life" ASAP.
He was too good, miss him.
I loved him so
One of the good ones. RIP
Will never forget my first reading of the metamorphosis (Kafka) and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was a very fulfilling experience. That level of genius must be super rare.
alex drieaz really? The metamorphosis made me feel uneasy from start to finish.
@@herrklamm1454 i'm totally serious...Foster Wallace talks about Kafka as a comic writer too! i didn't want the story to end...read it a second time and didn't have the same laughs the second time around...
The metamorphosis is so depressing, yet there’s a strange comedic flow to it. Kafka’s so good at mixing emotions and tones like that!
It's a really funny story, which was suprising
Gone but never forgotten
Could be just me, but when he suddenly smiles when he says "drudgery" @ 1:52 caught me so off guard, my heart damn near leapt out of my chest!
I totally agree with basically everything he's saying. Very well said.
What don't you agree with.
The Pale King, though unfinished, was about this very topic. How to sit, be quiet, focus, and dread and tedium and repetition. Good read, and again, though unfinished, I'd recommend to serious readers.
The irony in all of this is that the old cliche is true: that it takes a lot of hard working making something look so easy.
David Foster Wallace, perhaps his one genius, was that he decided that he could forgo the part of the process to make something readable and wrote from a place of freedom of expression. But even still, it doesn't make Infinite Jest any less broken as a narrative, or any more effective than say, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. And perhaps David had something important to say to the world, but he hid it in mountains of jargon and over-explanations.
Damn, 20 years later and I’m a 22 year old whose friends get mad at him for recommending books. Maybe it’s for the better he isn’t here to see how much worse it’s gotten.
I really wish I could have met this man.
I love DFW,though I can't always understand his work. I think he's right on about his literary criticism of postmodernism and post-postmodernism (which they still haven't come up with a good name for), namely that irony and satire used to be subversive and to stand for something, and now they're all about tearing people down for being passionate without actually saying anything...snark for snark's sake. I agree we need a "new earnestness" in literature. In this little soundbite I think he's trying to say both that the world has become hostile to reading--internet, cell phone, and television culture and how it's changing the brain--and that people no longer believe in the rewards of doing something difficult for pleasure (or as a past time), that all novels/books/movies/music etc. should be "entertaining" first and foremost and not require much thought. I think this has to do with a decline in critical thinking (and the value placed on it in public education) in general. It's hard, and fun things shouldn't be hard. We've come to expect from books what we expect from television--vegging out. Except now some television is just as hard (why people either loved or hated "The Wire"). Anyway, I think what he is lamenting is not the fact that people read Tom Clancy or Stephen King, but that they don't also read James Joyce and his successors (DFW being one of them). However, personally, I think experimental writing needs to be extremely good--poetic, brilliant, transcendent of its inherent limitations (accesible in a different way)--to hold my attention. I personally lament the modern-day dearth of clear, accessible writing and plotting that also expresses new and unique ideas and P'sOV. I'm not a fan of experimentalism for experimentalism's sake. However, I did use to be a reverse snob--I used to decry DFW without ever having read him. Later because of some curious dreams I changed my mind and read him, and I'm glad I did, mostly because of the poignancy of a few key set-pieces in his opus "Infinite Jest" and the urgency and immediacy of some of the stories in "Girl With the Curious Hair," though I also thought he rambled on a bit (as I am doing now) and got a little carried away and lost his audience at points with his own in-head tangents in "Infinite Jest." I also love his literary commentary, which tends to be much more succinct and clearly stated than his writing. Anyway, the best writers, like Shakespeare, knew how to please the rabble, royalty and literati simultaneously, insidiously informing his audience of universal truths in between bouts of blood-letting. Now that's talent.
Oh and I guess sometimes I think experimentalism can be window-dressing, serving to disguise lack of talent, which is why I am naturally suspicious of it. It is extremely hard to write well experimentally (Faulkner was great at it IMO), but also difficult for even the most literary of literary critics to distinguish good from bad experimental fiction (fiction that doesn't follow the rules of clarity, accessibility, and plot of the traditional novel form). However, really good writing demonstrating both clarity and ingenuity is also incredibly difficult, which leads many writers to try to disguise their lack of ability in this arena with "experimentalism" and "postmodernism," relying on the fact that most people will automatically give more lit cred to the experimental (moreso in poetry than in fiction, though it happens a lot there too, even in supposedly straightforward literary fiction, which at times abounds with mixed metaphors and way too many adjectives). That's all.
Your post intimidates me. I guess that has something to do with my inability to focus, or perhaps the block of lengthiness of your writing seems longwinded. Not sure, but I do appreciate your contribution.
@@michaelwilliamson2255 the real reason is that it lacks paragraphs, producing the infamous wall of text effect.
The dread of quiet is the root of so many bad choices
'Commercial' fiction can be very fun to read, but I've never heard someone say that a James Patterson or John Grisham book changed their life. However, a work of great literature can change how you see the world.
I have a simple philosophy: a good book is a good book. Whether it's a classic from 100 years ago or a contemporary fantasy novel, a good book is a good book.
+Alex Cross I would have to slightly disagree, because I strongly believe that any book has the power to change a life, as even commercial books, to some, can be powerful like DFW to others. For instance, I will greatly say that Stephen King's books have changed my life. It was his short non-fiction work On Writing which really helped me figure out the idea of pursuing a career in Education.
***** I totally understand; On Writing is said to be one of the best books on the craft of writing. I'm just speaking in generalities. I think it is safe to say that Dostoevsky and Steinbeck are more likely to be 'life changing' than Tom Clancy and John Grisham. But, as I said, a good book is a good book, regardless of popularity or genre.
+Alex Cross Right, I do agree that these monumental authors do have a greater impact than, say, James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks.
Harry Potter and Stephen King changed my life!
@thisisgrey "It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out." -DFW Superficiality, I suppose is a way out of this responsibility. His novel Infinite Jest illustrates this point. The Novel is "deep" but it's also FUN to read, so the answer, I imagine, is to try to reach a balance of both.
You cannot do it without both. We are all alive because we enjoy living even if it sometimes takes the better of us. But sometimes when we lose the balance and only want to ENJOY LIFE then our life becomes troubling to us and there seems no point. Most people solve problems like these subconsciously but some don't.
I get a sense of dread from reading books quiet often, usually if its something I dont like, I think its cause the words in a book are so solemn and lifeless and uniform, but when read they create another world.
I think it's easier than that. The written word, except when explicitly and purposefully conveying information, is art. This is the reason why, for example, painting lingers.
You can't nudge writing out of the way using HD screens for the same reason writing can't displace sculpting, or painting, or music or dancing -- art isn't subject to the number of pixels on your screen.
For me it's more boredom and being scared of quiet. I really enjoy reading and feel good about myself afterwards, but it is like going to the gym for me. It's work.
This man touches his face constantly
Wallace was so aware of social class differences, when so many aren't and don't even care. He cared.
He might be 100% right about this problem, which would not change the fact that his books did not pay off the investment of time and quiet.
this man was so thoughtful and observant. His death was tragic.
Really like these comments Wallace makes in these 4 minutes.
"I don't know..." is how I end all my thoughts too. Great insights, David :3
I just can't believe that there's an actually David Wallace. I have no idea why this came on my suggested videos
I hope Mr. Wallace is not overlooking the hard and strange and out-of-the-mainstream rock and rap music...things one can think hard about and engage deeply with just as with classical music or literature
Well, he's been dead for twelve years, so hopefully that answers your question.
In 1990 he wrote a book titled Signifying Rappers. David was 28 back then, it was one of his earlier works. So, fair to say, he was aware of the rap scene 🙂
I have lost the ability to sit down and read. Decades of stimulation from tv, internet and cell phone have fried my dopamine receptors.
It didn’t use to be like this for me 😢
Love this man.
Imagine if he were your waiter in fine restaurant and you had only asked him about his favorite authors and music, and he gave this entire answer until your entree was ready.
wish we could have seen him interact with eckhart tolle, or his take on 2020.
You know he is right. In any domain you can think of, it is the deeper works that reward putting time into it, like timeless music versus whatever is popular currently. But you know if you talked in this way in your social circles, you would get called a snob and "Who are you to tell me what is and isn't worth my time???"
Thanks for this upload!
It makes itself felt in the body.
If you liked this, you should watch the movie Slacker from 1991.
beautiful Minded man
Funny that in the preface to a later edition of the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth said society was becoming to fast, too interested in noise, gossip and the sensational at the expense of the contemplative and the stillness of reflection. And in Exactitude, Calvino describes what he calls a plague afflicting humanity in its most distinctive quality, speech, and that was written circa 1980 give or take a few years.
I've thought this for ten years. Everywhere plays music and I hate it. I the notion that I need music force fed to me while I shop or eat something.
Oh my god... Otacon is a real person
This is just like one of my Japanese animes
Soldiers used to read Les Miserables during the civil war.
@thisisgrey Thanks for commenting. Mr. Wallace bravely prospered as a writer, DESPITE a debilitating illness. He tragically succumbed to this illness, but I'm sure he never capitulated on any of his convictions.
What year is this from?
Wallace's work is self absorbed, learned helplessness. It's convoluted, it meanders and waffles around and if you get caught up in his eddies and whirlpools you'll go down.
He was smart, but happiness is a kind of wisdom, and he didn't have it.
We experience an information overload every time we unlock our phones. Snapchat stories, Instagram stories, and Facebook stories (notice a pattern?) deliver ephemeral, brief content - too long and it becomes suspiciously unorthodox and loses its appeal to a frantic audience. Stories also prevent a backlog of information.
Libraries aren't even quiet anymore. People are incapable of STFU.
I got really so pissed off at AT&T buying DIRECTV and changing it so drastically I quit & called Spectrum... who were rude. And insulting.
So I've had no TV for about a year now. I have thousands of CDs & thought I'd be playing music all the time, and I do listen to recorded music a lot, but really, I'd no idea the hunger I had for silence, and how much I love it and how often I just hear the quiet sounds of a city, during this pandemic. The birds really speak up these days and I'm especially hungry to hear what they have to say.
It's like aggressive sound was surrounding me constantly on every side for every waking (and often sleeping) moment that I was, in some way, shrinking away from it all, becoming smaller, and now?
Now, when I'm not bathing in silence I'm expanding into it, overflowing my natural boundaries to invite what little sound is still out there into my being, grateful to hear what there is to hear, since so little of it has to do with car horns and commercial exhaust fans these days.
I feel sure I'll cherish these days, before the droning machines start up again in their great numbers to obliterate the natural world once more.
It's probably less the fear of quietness that prevents us from reading books (especially non-popular literature) than the fact that it takes effort and a long attention span to read. People who sit for hours in front of their Twitter or Instagram feeds are quite comfortable with the silence. But those feeds are divided into little pieces of information which require only a very short attention span. Similar for the short videos here on UA-cam.
I think the attention spans didn't only start to diminish with the rise of the Internet but with the rise of television. Watching Game of Thrones is much less mental work than reading it. And of course there is no movie version of Infinite Jest. Nobody will read it when most aren't even willing to read light literature like Game of Thrones.
I deleted UA-cam and Twitter from my phone in order to spend less time with these attention suckers. I'm currently violating my UA-cam abstinence, so thanks David for reminding me about going offline (and not turning the TV on).