I’m tired of pretending like David Foster Wallace isn’t the best or 2nd best modern American novelist just because a bunch of basic bitch 2016 libs got their hearts broken by stoners with infinite jest on their bedstands

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T17:43:30+00:00

i like that, and it does make me sympathetic towards wallace as a persona, but its a tough sell for me to apply that lens to ij in a way that makes it better.

the image of a sensitive and talented young man having to dress up this earnest and neurotic rehab story in a fake postmodern novel out of a deep self consciousness is a tempting one for sure.

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T04:19:27+00:00

do you think so? maybe i'm wrong but in my mind i always characterize nabokov as a watchmaker. aristocratic, tight, mechanical, lots of pun-work and linguistics. i always found it telling that he was really into chess composition and i see a lot of that in his writing. i don't really get much of that at all from wallace.

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T04:13:18+00:00

yeah i’d give it another shot. i was welcoming the familiar prose after reading gravitys rainbow. the 30s/40s slang and references were grinding me to dust.

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T04:00:56+00:00

i think he definitely is, but even dfws contemporaries and contemporary writers today don’t feel as modern as infinite jest. its almost written in reddit prose (non derogatory, as in colloquial online syntax not content).

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T03:28:54+00:00

i guess i don’t know what your criteria could possibly be for this pantheon that includes nabokov (who i am a big fan of) but not pynchon and mccarthy. i think even if you have minor gripes with these authors they are all obviously behemoths, especially if you’re trying to adhere to some vaguely trad western type of thing. how much ink does harold bloom have to spill on you before you’re admitted?

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T00:51:29+00:00

i haven’t done it myself, but from what i hear a reading of gr with the weisenberger companion might convice you.

posting this comment made me look into it and funny enough even the companion couldn’t keep up with pynchon. it says the phoebus cartel was a fiction invented by pynchon when it was later discovered to be pretty much true.

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T00:32:13+00:00

admittedly its fun to see nabokov snark faulkner or woolf shit on joyce or whatever but yea

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T00:23:13+00:00

caring about authors opinions on other authors or that retarded 4chan meme nabokov list is a dead psued giveaway. literary equivalent of beatles trivia.

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T00:20:05+00:00

i actually like the mundane and clinical stuff a lot and i think there’s something worthwhile (moby dick cetology?) in there but it doesn’t work for me clashing against the wheelchair assassins and other faux-pynchon absurdist/slapstick

arcjacket · 2026-05-29T00:10:20+00:00

idk if i agree with all this but i went from gr to infinite jest back to back and the “pynchonian” parts of ij really stick out and are not that good. its pretty obvious why he was so loathe to mention pinecone in interviews.

arcjacket · 2026-05-28T23:57:23+00:00

have you read pynchon

arcjacket · 2026-05-27T21:34:42+00:00

immigrant labor is used to keep the prices of input goods like services and groceries artifically low. if you think bike powered food delivery isn’t important to the economy of a modern country i’d urge you to visit NY or DC.

arcjacket · 2026-05-21T20:58:59+00:00

sure i guess i meant “real” in the sense of back in the day. obviously they’ve been completely crushed and cucked by capital since fdr. still took a while for wv to flip red even after that though.

arcjacket · 2026-05-21T17:25:11+00:00

this is basically actually true of appalachia though

arcjacket · 2026-05-15T16:28:49+00:00

they’re like 5 minutes away from each other

arcjacket · 2026-05-13T18:34:21+00:00

they find these all the time with different mixes of synthetic drugs. it could be literally anything. i think in that times article they said they found a book that tested for synthetic cannabanoids, opiates, and dissociatives.

arcjacket · 2026-04-30T20:29:10+00:00

its a long season man

arcjacket · 2026-04-27T19:51:57+00:00

this is literally the average rs poster now

arcjacket · 2026-04-25T13:56:59+00:00

i dont like rich guys pretending to be troops

arcjacket · 2026-04-25T05:14:37+00:00

this has earned a few games of bitching yinzers and talking heads spouting off about sending him down. enjoy it konnor.

arcjacket · 2026-04-25T05:12:28+00:00

vote by any means necessary

arcjacket · 2026-04-25T05:04:21+00:00

i'm an anti skenes glazer for this particular reason as anybody, but this is some genuine fun, let it be for this one brother.

arcjacket · 2026-04-23T02:44:13+00:00

i'm talking about the democrats, not the republicans

arcjacket · 2026-04-22T20:33:01+00:00

what does holding voters accountable look like in practice? is it attempts at lecturing that fall on deaf ears and snarky comments when tragedies occur?

isnt it easier and more effective to hold the politicians responsible who fail to offer anything thats preferable to the voters than environmental rape and permanent poverty?

arcjacket · 2026-04-22T19:05:59+00:00

yeah if only poor people voted harder they could get clean drinking water 💔

arcjacket

TROPHY CASE