David Foster Wallace On Why Your Novel Should Be Complex

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ม.ค. 2025

ความคิดเห็น • 59

  • @jakfan09
    @jakfan09 หลายเดือนก่อน +33

    Take a shot every time Ian rants about logic bros.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  หลายเดือนก่อน +19

      They are who we are facing on the battlefield. Not woke publishers, social media companies taking people away from reading, or anything else. If every logic bros stopped deconstructing and destroying and starting building and uplifting we wouldn't need to convert or convince one new person to join the literary renissance. It would happen overnight and change the world.

    • @jakfan09
      @jakfan09 หลายเดือนก่อน +12

      @@WriteConsciousI get what you’re saying I just find it funny that’s all.

    • @nonya5392
      @nonya5392 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Attempted murder on us!

  • @DavidFlores-q2z
    @DavidFlores-q2z หลายเดือนก่อน +14

    You are keeping Sanderson publication pace here 😅

  • @LiamHunt
    @LiamHunt หลายเดือนก่อน

    Thank you for your channel. I've been looking for exactly this for so long, but could never find it. You're a beaut, my guy!

  • @misfitmaniac3084
    @misfitmaniac3084 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    That DFW quote is so fire. Long live the king of postmodernist literary fiction!!

  • @misfitmaniac3084
    @misfitmaniac3084 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    Yes more DFW!! Keep it coming!!

  • @momo_genX
    @momo_genX หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    My novel is complex, but not like Wallace. I write in a minimalistic style, but that's because it's my natural author voice. I guess that means that it has to be some of the best minimalistic fiction or it won't do anything, just like you say. But it's great so I don't have to worry all that much.

  • @loup-garou7
    @loup-garou7 24 วันที่ผ่านมา +1

    I feel like there's got to be some sort of middle way. Infinite Jest is the most unfinished novel of all time. Shouldnt it also be accessible? Or should you have to break out the dictionary every other word?

  • @LiterateTexan
    @LiterateTexan หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    What is a "logicbro"?

  • @paulchironi7902
    @paulchironi7902 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    My favorite DFw work is A Supposedly fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

    • @geordiejones5618
      @geordiejones5618 หลายเดือนก่อน

      I much prefer his short fiction to his novels. Oblivion and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men are two of the best collections of short fiction I've ever read.

  • @Whirlwind990
    @Whirlwind990 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Bro thats Just James in the video thumbnail! Interestingly that guy used to say he wanted to write a book, not sure if he ever did though

  • @DirkHelnerus
    @DirkHelnerus หลายเดือนก่อน

    Congratulations, Mate! 🎉

  • @Snarflelocker
    @Snarflelocker หลายเดือนก่อน

    your place looks amazing btw
    Thanks for believing in us

  • @mcspankey4810
    @mcspankey4810 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Could you make a video on Dune? or Frank Herbert ? Would be interesting to hear your take.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  29 วันที่ผ่านมา

      I have three or four already

  • @OpponentOfStupidity
    @OpponentOfStupidity หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    It would be cool if you did some sort of video on Henry James

  • @sheriffliberty9302
    @sheriffliberty9302 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Are transition sentences that important for literature?

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      More than you can possibly imagine. If you don't have an editor, and have the ego to think you can write literary fiction, you need more transition sentences and beacons of alignment for readers than you expect. This is coming from someone who had a big ego with my fiction and had to consciously start adding them in even if it felt dumb.

    • @WriteConscious
      @WriteConscious  หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      I had a whole video where David Foster Walalce talks about this

    • @sheriffliberty9302
      @sheriffliberty9302 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@WriteConscious I'll check it out, gotta get my mediocre writing better

  • @christopherlevy6369
    @christopherlevy6369 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Hey I'm dumb. Can someone explain this sentence from blood meredian to me? Is it just written in a weird way? I'd he just saying that he only put up the rifle to clean it? The but what us throwing my brain off
    The sergeant never put the rifle up but what
    he wiped and greased the bore

  • @slave_to_cinema
    @slave_to_cinema หลายเดือนก่อน

    This reminds me of Aristotle's teachings on being virtuous 👍

  • @EndingSimple
    @EndingSimple หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    What are the names of your cats? I've heard that cat people tend to be people who go against the grain and dog people tend to be people who go with the grain.

  • @shawnlinnehan7349
    @shawnlinnehan7349 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    Why are you dissing on science fiction and fantasy? Have you never read Gene Wolfe? Malazan? That stuff is infinitely better than something like DeLillo’s Underworld. I tried to read that 3 times. It’s garbage. I have read all the books. I know how to read. Was even an English major a long, long time ago. White Noise was great, that was not and there’s tons of science fiction that has more to say than some of these authors.

    • @osoisko1933
      @osoisko1933 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      He’s shouted out Malazan, Dune, LoTR, and Sandman.

    • @stephennootens916
      @stephennootens916 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      I am more Conan or Edgar Rice Burroughs kind of guy.

  • @paulchironi7902
    @paulchironi7902 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Kindness is the key. Vonnegut Jr. helps. Breakfast of Champions

  • @Xaglacionn
    @Xaglacionn หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Write like you're sharpening a spear that will pierce the reader's heart and remind them they've got one.

    • @geordiejones5618
      @geordiejones5618 หลายเดือนก่อน

      When I finished Blood Meridian I felt like McCarthy nailed every word to the page and let them all bleed into that masterpiece. It's definitely not my style of writing, but McCarthy's use of verbs is something all writers could benefit from reading and studying.

  • @riccardopoleggi1812
    @riccardopoleggi1812 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

    I like your videos and I've been following you for a year, but I think that for someone who claims to be a spiritual person (and maybe because of that) you think like a boomer. Fantasy and some video games have been more transformative for me than other books I've read. The Lord of the Rings and Dark Souls are worth more than a thousand pages of Wallace's delirium. One that didn't end well. Wake up Ian

    • @kiethveseyofficial
      @kiethveseyofficial หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Thing is what David Foster Wallace says is…
      “The most dangerous thing about entertainment is its ability to mask emptiness with the illusion of meaning.”
      The thing about Video games that you’ve mentioned are more Entertainment not much transcendental.
      But yeah, dark souls could be transcendent sure…but how much lives have been saved by reading Infinite Jest?
      thousands of men got their families back together, being relieved from drugs and any other types of substance abuse and got themselves out of suicide.
      How much of that has been transformed over a Xbox game over like 12 years ago ?
      Where lobbies just immaturely screaming the N-word and cause more headaches.

  • @paulchironi7902
    @paulchironi7902 หลายเดือนก่อน

    My wife studied Wittgenstein in college

  • @zombiewarking
    @zombiewarking หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    WHY are you disrespecting science fiction and fantasy ?? they are objectively speaking the hardest things to write.

    • @Musicienne-DAB1995
      @Musicienne-DAB1995 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      He doesn't seem to be a fan of romance fiction, either. I just roll with it.

    • @RandoCommando24
      @RandoCommando24 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I think his problem is more with the state of those genres in the modern day. I have to agree, pretty much every genre is flooded with awful writers churning out boring and soulless content, not art.

  • @Harem__King
    @Harem__King หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    Make some Isaac Asimov content

    • @randomango2789
      @randomango2789 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      I’d like to see him talk about Sci Fi content

  • @Harem__King
    @Harem__King หลายเดือนก่อน

    Have you read red sky in morning

  • @paulchironi7902
    @paulchironi7902 หลายเดือนก่อน

    DFW defended Lynch against Ballazar - Getty on Lost Highway

  • @JamesClarke-zi1tm
    @JamesClarke-zi1tm หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    what’s with the Just James thumbnail aha

  • @paulchironi7902
    @paulchironi7902 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Truth and Beauty read Longinus

  • @Kayakingoff
    @Kayakingoff หลายเดือนก่อน

  • @cicerogsuphoesdown7723
    @cicerogsuphoesdown7723 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I feel like you should focus more on being like an interesting well rounded person with stake in the world.
    Kind of being like a perennial commenter on other people’s work/ worshipping at the alter of ‘art’ is a good path to becoming a critic but not a good one to becoming an actual artist. I feel like.
    Deifying writers or actors or philosophers is kind of an expressway to being lame lowkey

  • @brys.3131
    @brys.3131 19 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Writers are suppose to not give an eff.

  • @ShawnMorey-sx7wm
    @ShawnMorey-sx7wm หลายเดือนก่อน

    Full of complex idioms, to me, some have pretense and others hopeful rambunctious gesturing. It leaves me, at best, confused and, at worst, uneventful.

  • @michaelmayo
    @michaelmayo หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Considering he killed himself, I don't give a shit what Wallace thinks. If art doesn't sustain you, what's the point of it?

    • @jamez1237
      @jamez1237 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

      Uplift others

    • @iwaslikenope1070
      @iwaslikenope1070 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Well if you can't save yourself, there's the belief that at least your art will save other people and hoping that they will do better in life if you can't. Not that hard to see.

    • @Musicienne-DAB1995
      @Musicienne-DAB1995 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Yet you still came to a video explicitly promoting the opinion of David Foster Wallace.

    • @lordbunbury
      @lordbunbury หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      It’s ok if you don’t get literary fiction. Just pick up a self help book for tips on how to live life.

    • @michaelmayo
      @michaelmayo หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@Musicienne-DAB1995I came because I'm intregued by the paradox of writers and their art. Wallace was commercially and artistically successful, yet his life was (apparently) so empty of meaning and hope he killed himself. To me, this negates his work. If his work and (presumably) future work wasn't worth fighting for, why am I supposed to think this is going to be something meaningful in mine?