Note: this is slightly redacted. In both dialogues, I sent several amusing gifs and HR reacted to some of them. I have eliminated all traces of this and stitched together the remaining fragments to make the dialogue seamless. There are also a couple of other redactions done to anonymise non-prominent persons.
1 March
TA
01/03/2016 15:54
what are your aesthetic views precisely
(other than, photography is lame)
TA
01/03/2016 16:02
last year, i was saying there are true judges and you were saying there are not
HR
01/03/2016 16:20
the view of mine that I was referring to is, I suppose, not really a strictly philosophical aesthetic problem
It's the view that: art is a terrible medium for direct communication and thus should be minimally 'about' ideas and maximally in pursuit of some other, mystical kind of thing which I haven't yet figured out
HR
01/03/2016 16:20
this isn't an issue that seems to interest you
TA
01/03/2016 16:20
oh yeah
the mystical thing
you lunatic
HR
01/03/2016 16:21
but I mean, you can reject the mystical bit
and accept that it makes very little sense to decide to communicate serious, complex ideas in art
TA
01/03/2016 16:21
i think art should be about what it's like to be a fucking human bean!
HR
01/03/2016 16:21
yeah, lol
TA
01/03/2016 16:21
and that wasn't a typo
Hector Ramage
01/03/2016 16:21
the classic thing is
(I got that)
DFW made pretty shit art, I feel, if that was his central criterion
TA
01/03/2016 16:22
yes yes yes
that's what everyone says
in the new yorker etc
HR
01/03/2016 16:22
and, anyway, he entertained two meaningfully opposed ideas about aesthetics throughout his media career
TA
01/03/2016 16:22
dt max, james wood etc
HR
01/03/2016 16:22
one was about being a human bean
the other was that making and reading literature represents the zenith of intellectual achievement
TA
01/03/2016 16:24
surely the best way of figuring out what you think a given genre of art SHOULD be like is thinking about the properties of the works in that genre of art that you do like
HR
01/03/2016 16:24
naturally
TA
01/03/2016 16:24
for example, i like mister squishy
so i think fiction sometimes should be highly experimental
and i like good old neon
so i think fiction should sometimes be weird first-person philosophical things
and i mostly liked the more non-fictiony bits of infinite jest
so i think fiction should sometimes be non-fictiony
and i like the road
HR
01/03/2016 16:26
I think that if I don't think too hard about it, I like M Squishy
but I think I'm intensity matching when I do that
TA
01/03/2016 16:26
so i think fiction should have nice spare sentences and emotional power
but then these don't all line up nicely
overlapping family resemblances
i think it's easier to say what i don't think fiction should be
come to think of it
HR
01/03/2016 16:27
yes
I don't think fiction should ever really be written when the author is proceeding essentially as if they were writing an essay
and I am fairly convinced that DFW did that all the time
and this is possibly unsurprising given that he spent a lot of time in creative writing programs founded on the fallacious view that art is about communicating ideas
the edifice of modern English literary academia is built on this fallacious foundation
TA
01/03/2016 16:29
quite
i agree with that, more or less
not entirely of course
communicating ideas
HR
01/03/2016 16:30
(dfw was almost right when he said that 'fiction exists to make you feel less lonely')
(but he formulated that thought incorrectly, and this is only part of fiction's 'job')
TA
01/03/2016 16:30
is really central to all literary fiction
but i guess the key is that the ideas should have extra power by virtue of being expressed in a literary form and NOT complicated philosophical ideas
eg heart of darkness
is good
imo
because it expresses some vague and nevertheless important ideas about mankind etc
in a way that is almost irreducible in its power
HR
01/03/2016 16:32
I kind of agree, I think
the irreducibility of the experience of consuming art is fairly central to my argument against the current orthodoxy
(lol)
but every act of exegesis, in literature, is a reduction
a really brutal reduction
TA
01/03/2016 16:33
yes
HR
01/03/2016 16:33
and because fiction is fiction, if you want to get at the ideas that an author putatively is trying to express, if you want to get to the artichoke heart, you must vivisect
TA
01/03/2016 16:33
what do you think
of farenheit 451
(to go through school texts)
too didactic?
HR
01/03/2016 16:33
(the only true way to express what HoD is expressing is to give someone a copy of HoD)
TA
01/03/2016 16:33
yes
HR
01/03/2016 16:33
pretty didactic
TA
01/03/2016 16:34
similar to HoD, i think dickens novels are probably a more irreducibly affecting way of polemicising class divisions than essays
however
i still find them a bit boring
HR
01/03/2016 16:35
same
TA
01/03/2016 16:35
stiglitz is easier to read
HR
01/03/2016 16:35
no doubt
honestly, now that you draw my attention to it, the most useful and laudable function of didactic art is probably the introduction of complex ideas to schoolchildren
TA
01/03/2016 16:37
yessiree
so art is childish
HR
01/03/2016 16:37
that art is childish
there is a reason that we treat allegory as a very distinct subset of literature
the art is robbed of something by the prominence and barefacèdness of the ideas
the giving famishes the craving
TA
01/03/2016 16:39
hmm
HR
01/03/2016 16:39
(Eliot quote deliberately wanky)
my above assertion about the way we treat allegory could be totally wrong
I just thought it up then
but it think it's plausible
the weird and unacknowledged truth is that the establishment treats all writing as if it were allegory
TA
01/03/2016 16:41
they have to to exist don't they
HR
01/03/2016 16:41
for a literature professor, writing exists so that ideas can be sleuthed out by tweedvested academics
what have to exist?
TA
01/03/2016 16:42
literature professors
HR
01/03/2016 16:42
well it is of course in their interest to promulgate their own warped view of art
so that they have jobs
TA
01/03/2016 16:42
and but so
and so but
now did they now did they
HR
01/03/2016 16:43
oh god, yes
TA
01/03/2016 16:43
definitely something to be said for the view that intellectualising art
HR
01/03/2016 16:43
are you referring to that Wallace 'story'
TA
01/03/2016 16:44
sort of bleaches it
kills it
wrings it dry
whatever
[insert metaphor here]
HR
01/03/2016 16:44
vivisection is my central metaphor for this process
go on
TA
01/03/2016 16:44
i mean, even philosophically, like we're doing
i don't mean what they do
i mean this
HR
01/03/2016 16:45
ah right
well, we're mostly intellectualising the intellectualisation of art
TA
01/03/2016 16:45
yes, true enough
HR
01/03/2016 16:45
we're doing meta-aesthetics
TA
01/03/2016 16:45
but my own personal journey
suggests that intellectualising art can make you stop caring about it
to some extent
well i mean
eg
if you like painting
and then you think, 'why do i like painting?'
you may conclude that you should be doing better things with your time
or that liking painting is fundamentally pretentious, and you should like movies or video games instaed
HR
01/03/2016 16:47
I see what you're saying
but my interest in literature has largely been kept aflame by my articulation of these views
TA
01/03/2016 16:48
hmm
yes
HR
01/03/2016 16:48
I feel as if I'm defending a sylvan grove from interlopers who only want its timber
they can't see the beauty of the unsullied, unhewed forest
unhewn, rather
TA
01/03/2016 16:49
yep
wel the strange thing about music
is that -- maybe because it has such a direct effect --
it seems impossible to not care about it
HR
01/03/2016 16:50
yes
for many people music is a pretty fundamental part of quotidian life
slightly more important than other kinds of entertainment
slightly more necessary
I think it probably is because of its emotional immediacy
music is minimally cerebral
TA
01/03/2016 16:52
but the thing is, fiction reqiures a much bigger investment than even shostakovich (or whatever)
not even literary fiction
HR
01/03/2016 16:52
yes
TA
01/03/2016 16:52
like john green
HR
01/03/2016 16:52
a bigger temporal and cerebral investment
TA
01/03/2016 16:53
and that
's why one is more inclined to reject it
because there are far more efficient thrills avaiable
and that's the central problem fiction has
how to justify the investment
HR
01/03/2016 16:53
yes
TA
01/03/2016 16:53
and that's why we're asking these questions
and that's why i'm typing
HR
01/03/2016 16:54
you have to make the reader want to work for it
--dfw, roughly
TA
01/03/2016 16:54
and that's why god is real
HR
01/03/2016 16:54
godel
TA
01/03/2016 16:54
godel is real
dfw, roughly is a strange name
sounds like a bostan nurlanov character name
HR
01/03/2016 16:54
it does
TA
01/03/2016 16:55
now
hmm
anyway, this greater investment is why you and i are agreed (is it not) that reading pulp fiction makes no sense whatsoever
i put that parenthetical interjection in a rather awkward place
it's hard to parse
and by pulp fiction i don't mean the book version of that annoying tarantino movie
i mean junk fiction
HR
01/03/2016 16:57
yes, I got that
TA
01/03/2016 16:57
i actually think it makes sense that the book industry should lose lots of people
with the emergence of other media
HR
01/03/2016 16:58
it makes sense that it should lose peeps, or that this happens
?
TA
01/03/2016 16:59
it makes sense that average people would flock away from books
why read some shitty romance book or fifty shades of grey or whatever
or even george rr martin books
when you could watch tv versions
maybe that's not right
there are probably some unique aspects of george rr martin books, for example
maybe he writes well??
sex scenes are longer?
HR
01/03/2016 17:00
moving images and actual sounds are certainly more emotionally immediate than fiction
and presumably the main reason to read pulp fiction is to experience various emotions
although that's a bit reductive
TA
01/03/2016 17:01
but anyway, i still think it makes sense that crappy books would die.
i don't think it 'makes sense' in the same way that excellent fiction would die
and i think that's where we wholly agree
in other words,
there is sufficient unique experiences to be reaped from certain complex fiction to warrant the continued popularity of fiction in the marketplace of entertainment
HR
01/03/2016 17:03
yes
well, this conversation has suggested to me that we agree more than I thought
TA
01/03/2016 17:03
but then again
hecfuck
i kind of just say things
HR
01/03/2016 17:04
I have sorted out the destructive parts of my thesis, but not the constructive parts
TA
01/03/2016 17:04
because they help me fit in
it's socially convenient for me to say that literary fiction ought to still be a fairly big business
but should it
HR
01/03/2016 17:04
I dunno
TA
01/03/2016 17:05
i haven't read any fiction for quite a while now
HR
01/03/2016 17:05
that issue actually doesn't really interest me
TA
01/03/2016 17:05
it does actuallly
by OUGHT, i mean according to your aesthetic pantheon
aesthetic cosmos
hierarchy
HR
01/03/2016 17:05
aesthetic chaos
TA
01/03/2016 17:06
in my time
i have started a fair few serious fiction books and not completed most of them
it was a struggle to complete catch 22 the first time
i never completed oliver twist in year 9
(half-way through approx)
i never completed great sexpectations
i never completed crime and punishment
i haven't completed bleak house
i never completed midnight's children
(approx half-way through)
samuel beckett's books seemed a bore, the little i read of them
HR
01/03/2016 17:08
(I feel you may have misunderstood some of my views if you think they have a huge amount of specific stuff to say about the market for serious fiction)
TA
01/03/2016 17:08
i never completed ulysses
HR
01/03/2016 17:08
I think, almost, that fiction should just be protracted poetry
TA
01/03/2016 17:09
well i was being too general perhaps
but anyway
ok
but you don't really adhere to that view completely
that's too monistic
monic
it's too reductive
HR
01/03/2016 17:09
character and plot should be subsumed and subordinated as techniques
that's true
I mean it very loosely
the point is that language should be the most important aspect of literature and the things we have to say about it
TA
01/03/2016 17:10
yes
Language
interesting use of language
is key
HR
01/03/2016 17:10
the way certain words were combined to portray or evoke or circumscribe some atom of real experience
TA
01/03/2016 17:10
i would agree with that
in fact, that's an excellent thesis
HR
01/03/2016 17:11
the task of the professor would be far more technicentric than it currently is
TA
01/03/2016 17:11
fiction should, above all, use language in an interesting way
i agree with that wholly
HR
01/03/2016 17:11
that ugly neologism means 'centred on technique'
TA
01/03/2016 17:11
it fits my views
except on ulysses
actually it probably still fits my views on ulysses
because what makes ulysses a wank
is not the interesting use of language per se
but how cryptic it is
i wouldn't mind lots of old english words and so on
if it was easier to follow and less frustrating
HR
01/03/2016 17:12
yes
but this problem is possibly because Joyce was an acolyte of the ideocentric view of literature, at least when he wrote U
TA
01/03/2016 17:14
(in case you didn't realise, this prescription still works with dfw)
(in my opinion)
HR
01/03/2016 17:14
perhaps
except that dfw is always trying to tell me some convoluted and almost certainly specious b. s. about modern life through his characters, plots, and atomic uses of language
TA
01/03/2016 17:16
well, actually
i think hector
HR
01/03/2016 17:16
(and, also, I don't really like dfw's style
the stories of his that I really like are ones in which he very consciously writes in a way that differs from his corpus)
TA
01/03/2016 17:16
you should rename your thesis or doctrine (or whatever you want to call it)
'techniemoticentrism' or 'technipathocentrism' or something
because, really, you're saying
well i don't need to explain what you're saying
HR
01/03/2016 17:18
(NB that I have not, in this convo, fully delineated my feelings on this issue. you are a lonely mariner on the bridge, looking out over the benighted sea of aesthetics, and you can only see the tip of my conceptual iceberg)
TA
01/03/2016 17:18
you genius
HR
01/03/2016 17:18
yes
TA
01/03/2016 17:18
you are a god
HR
01/03/2016 17:19
i thought using an iceberg as a metaphor for something only partially disclosed was really original
that reminds me
part of why conceptual visual art is so shit is because it's all about ideas and minimally about traditional technique and medium
I don't think a visual artist has ever had an idea worth sharing
TA
01/03/2016 17:21
but anyway, even if i can only see the tip of your iceberg (now it sounds gay)
is my suggestion not apt
a more accurate description of your views (in one word)
a more accurate description of your views (in one word)
HR
01/03/2016 17:22
no, yes, it is certainly apt
I just said that because I would have openly mentioned the primacy of emotion in my picture of art
but didn't get the chance to
the crucial thing is that the reader's emotional response is triggered not by what they read but by the way language is used to express the thing they read
TA
01/03/2016 17:24
yes
well, both, obviousy
HR
01/03/2016 17:24
it is mystical, to me. often it just feels insane.
yes
TA
01/03/2016 17:25
no you're right to think this
i think this should be uncontroversial, almost
HR
01/03/2016 17:25
mystical or insane?
TA
01/03/2016 17:25
because art is all about medium
to think your aesthetic view
HR
01/03/2016 17:25
yes
and the primacy of medium has been insidiously sidelined in English academia
TA
01/03/2016 17:26
art without medium-focus is like love without an object!
HR
01/03/2016 17:26
literary academia, rather
TA
01/03/2016 17:26
it's not quite true to say that it has been insidiously sidelined
well
i mean
because
how do you analyse the techniques themselves without talking about their effect?
in english, you analyse techniques to work out what the author is trying to say by those techniques
HR
01/03/2016 17:27
yes
this latter approach is orthodoxy
TA
01/03/2016 17:28
but you are partly saying, possibly, that we should dispense with analysis
HR
01/03/2016 17:28
you cannot analyse a technique intrinsically, divorced from its denotations
TA
01/03/2016 17:29
hence you shouldn't analyse techniques?
HR
01/03/2016 17:29
no
I think there is room for analysis in my theory
but it must be closer to critical, rather than theoretical/academic writing
more New Yorker, less English department
the analyser should say, maybe, how something made them feel, and how the marriage of subject matter and language aroused these feelings
this is all very dodgy-sounding
I have not thought it through yet
also, you need not continue this convo if it is boring you
I don't have too much more to say that I wouldn't rather say in person
TA
01/03/2016 17:32
no
it is not boring
to send gifs
i think that's not too dodgy
but i also think that you're probably preaching the demise of the school subject
HR
01/03/2016 17:33
yes, at least in its current incarnation
I am not silencing the colloquy forever
there is stuff to be said about art
but I think the current topics of conversation are the wrong ones
it's like admiring the Mona Lisa for its frame, or something
we're missing the good stuff
It was very heartening to read some interviews with William Gass where he articulates similar views about literature
'Rilke's ideas are total shit, but it's not about the ideas'
to paraphrase him
he does say "total shit", though
1 June
TA
01/06/2016 16:32
[Pasted status of someone I was not friends with at the time, names acronysed just now]
"AM
3 hrs ·
What's the point of fiction writing
Share
55
Comments
PW
PW Only tool against other mind scepticism.
· 3 · 3 hrs"
don't know who AM is
HR
01/06/2016 17:25
lol
TA
01/06/2016 17:25
yeah
HR
01/06/2016 17:26
lol at both
TA
01/06/2016 17:26
we did recently answer this question ourselves
what was the conclusion?
HR
01/06/2016 17:26
we didn't exactly ask this question
aesthetic experience is mystical and difficult to talk sensibly aobut
W's answer is laughably stupid
TA
01/06/2016 17:28
it is
true
HR
01/06/2016 17:28
he's just being DFW, of course
TA
01/06/2016 17:28
yes
my thought
HR
01/06/2016 17:28
I have no doubt that that's a deliberate Wallace echo
TA
01/06/2016 17:28
if he used the word "solipsism" he would have been caught out directly
naked
HR
01/06/2016 17:28
yep
we need Ramon Glazov on the scene
TA
01/06/2016 17:28
yeah
i think when you're talking about value, you can't just be mystical
because that's, in a sense, circular
HR
01/06/2016 17:29
I'm not saying art's valuable cos it's mystical
TA
01/06/2016 17:29
but our conclusion was that there are several unique aspects to the literary genre
that make it intrinsically valuable
as compared with other genres
i think that was something we agreed on
HR
01/06/2016 17:30
that's no doubt true
we agreed on the primacy of technique
as a topic of aesthetic discussion
TA
01/06/2016 17:30
he should have said that
yes
HR
01/06/2016 17:30
technical achievement is one aspect of art that you can talk about quite confidently
and it is clearly integral to good art
TA
01/06/2016 17:32
quite
we were both also in agreement that there is no point to pulp, trash or pop fiction
and if AM is going to write that
HR
01/06/2016 17:32
yep
TA
01/06/2016 17:32
then i would advise him to stop
TA
01/06/2016 17:35
[Pasted another comment from the thread]
"HB: Fiction is important!! It's a legitimate method to creatively explore complicated ideas, as well as summarising them in a way that can be understood outside of academia. Yes there are bourgeois forms of the novel, like there are bourgeois forms of every medium, but nah fiction writing is huuuuge
this i think is a legitimate point. you raised this idea about three years ago and it was a mild revelation for me"
HR
01/06/2016 17:35
all of these answers are shite
TA
01/06/2016 17:35
no
just the idea that allegory
HR
01/06/2016 17:35
B's answer is almost sensible
TA
01/06/2016 17:36
can be a good means of transmitting an idea with greater punch and emotional force
HR
01/06/2016 17:36
you can make ideas moving, somehow
TA
01/06/2016 17:36
an idea or set of ideas
satire
HR
01/06/2016 17:36
and there are /some/ ideas which can be 'summarised' in art
TA
01/06/2016 17:36
gulliver's travels
HR
01/06/2016 17:36
yep
but satire is down the non-fictional end of the fiction spectrum
TA
01/06/2016 17:36
and also books like catch 22 and infinite jest and crime and punishment and c and c and c
to use the dfw formalism
HR
01/06/2016 17:37
nah
I don't know
TA
01/06/2016 17:38
no dude, this is an obvious point
most books have ideas to express
HR
01/06/2016 17:38
the idea on which literary scholarship is predicated -- that fiction is as valid a /communicative/ medium as plain prose -- is just total BS
TA
01/06/2016 17:38
and very often the form can lend greater power to such ideas
HR
01/06/2016 17:38
that's true
that's true
but this "It's a legitimate method to creatively explore complicated ideas" is just really false
TA
01/06/2016 17:39
this is a truism
very false
if you really mean complicated
HR
01/06/2016 17:39
this is the view I rail against
that you can achieve with fiction the conceptual complexity attainable in plain prose
TA
01/06/2016 17:39
yeah no shit
HR
01/06/2016 17:39
and it does sound insane, but heaps of people seem to believe it
TA
01/06/2016 17:39
you cunt
no one serious believes that
HR
01/06/2016 17:40
that is the foundational belief of contemporary English scholarship
you get a text, you treat it as if it were an essay, you explicate the ideas that author was using the text to convey
TA
01/06/2016 17:40
yes it makes no sense, we're agreed
it's like dissecting a toad when all you need is a sample of skin
(toad skin)
HR
01/06/2016 17:41
vivisection etc
B's a commie
TA
01/06/2016 17:43
anyway, 'idea' is an overly vague word
HR
01/06/2016 17:43
proposition about reality
TA
01/06/2016 17:43
what we are talking about (in fiction) is precisely not propositions
we're talking about 'themes' that can be translated into propositions
or maybe are expressed as propositions in the more heavy-handed moments, through a character's words or thoughts
HR
01/06/2016 17:44
precisely
but the job of literary scholars, apparently, is to extract propositions
TA
01/06/2016 17:44
yes
HR
01/06/2016 17:44
to impute them to the author or to the novel
and provide 'evidence' for the claim that the author thinks P
TA
01/06/2016 17:46
well, i mean, i think basically all of contemporary literary scholarship (at least what we saw) is just, you know, continental philosophy
it's like the books are just conduits for awful philosophy
HR
01/06/2016 17:46
yes
they are very similar disciplines
TA
01/06/2016 17:46
self-referential philosophy about texts
(often)
HR
01/06/2016 17:47
yeah
TA
01/06/2016 17:47
so, i mean, it's just a way of spending your life discussing and producing 'deepities'
to use dennett's coinage
HR
01/06/2016 17:47
yep
as I have said, to try to 'analyse' a text is to reduce it
and emergent qualities are lost in the process of reduction
TA
01/06/2016 17:48
we also agreed on this
HR
01/06/2016 17:48
aesthetic experience, at best, is irreducible and /untranslatable/, even
because the experience /is/ the words used
as in an excellent stanza in a poem, say
TA
01/06/2016 17:49
i know what you mean yes
trying to convey verbally the effect of a poetic couplet is like trying to paint an explanation of the effect of a great painting
why would you do it?
HR
01/06/2016 17:50
yes
and this extends to the 'meaning' of the text
why bother saying: 'Stevens is talking here about death. He thinks that death x and y, and we see this here and here'
TA
01/06/2016 17:51
yes
HR
01/06/2016 17:52
as I said last time we talked about this, the only way to explain HoD to someone, truly, is to just make them read the book
TA
01/06/2016 17:52
well, see, this ties in with what i was saying about english scholars' secret identity as cont. philosophers
they just use authors' names and quotes from various authors' books
throw in various literary terms
to 'analyse' these
but the service of their analysis is always some terrible sophistic thesis about
you know
HR
01/06/2016 17:53
something entirely confected
TA
01/06/2016 17:53
society, reality, constructions of things, the interactions of texts and reality etc
HR
01/06/2016 17:53
with vague peripheral connections to the themes of the work of art
yeah
well, yeah, current scholarship is obsessed with the nature of texts themselves
very reflexive
immensely boring
but, you know, DFW was totally into conty stuff like Derrida
and, as we have mentioned, he seems to have had a really lame idea of what literature is for
he really does seem to treat fictitious texts as essays
TA
01/06/2016 17:56
does that give you seizures? [in reference to a rapidly flashing gif I had sent imprinted with the DFW quote: "Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out."]
HR
01/06/2016 17:56
the quote gives me seizures
TA
01/06/2016 17:57
every part of it gives me autism and cancer, to use the locutions of young teenage boys on the internet
but clearly he treated fictitious texts as essays because he worshipped his intellect ay
i mean,
like,
HR
01/06/2016 17:58
he definitely did
I recently ranted in my head about DFW while waiting for my toast to pop
TA
01/06/2016 17:58
i personally basically get why one would write the stuff that wallace wrote
HR
01/06/2016 17:58
it seems pretty clear that he was obsessed with being seen as clever
TA
01/06/2016 17:58
like, if it's just what came most naturally to you
obviously it didn't come entirely naturally
HR
01/06/2016 17:58
and in fact was not nearly as clever as many people have been duped into thinking he was
TA
01/06/2016 17:59
but if he wasn't a natural nabokov or joyce or woolf or delillo or gauss
or whatever
then you know
HR
01/06/2016 17:59
yeagh
TA
01/06/2016 17:59
like, it might just be that the kind of fiction he wrote really was the kind of fiction that he most naturally fell into
and he's just lucky that people liked it -- but you can't necessarily hate him for that
HR
01/06/2016 18:00
that's true
but we have evidence that he really cared about being seen as smart
so it isn't impossible that that impulse infected his writing
(I'm thinking of how he lied about getting full marks on his SATs and some other examples which I have forgotten)
TA
01/06/2016 18:01
yes, true enough
the fact that he didn't want to take a maths course
because it would lower his WAM
HR
01/06/2016 18:01
yeah
TA
01/06/2016 18:02
but, as i've said to you before
i -- and, perforce, many other people -- enjoy the bits in infinite jest where he just goes off on some tangent with lots of fancy words and information about this or that, and i enjoyed (at the time) mister squishy and stories like it
you're being somewhat of a purist or idealist when it comes to your criteria for good art
this has created blindspots
HR
01/06/2016 18:05
maybe
I get Wallace, I still like some of his stuff
I just don't think it's /smart/
or care about smartness
TA
01/06/2016 18:05
provocative
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