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David Foster Wallace Quotes
Rock was and is
all about busting loose, exceeding limits, and limits are usually set
by parents, ancestors, older authorities.
David Foster Wallace
Take a look at
some of the critical-theory Ph.D. dissertations being written now.
They're like de Man and Foucault in the mouth of a dull child.
David Foster Wallace
The great thing
about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we
can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
David Foster Wallace
The interesting
thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.
David Foster Wallace
The other half is
to dramatize the fact that we still "are" human beings, now. Or can be.
David Foster Wallace
The problem is
that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant
realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what
do we do?
David Foster Wallace
The reader becomes
God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll
hush.
David Foster Wallace
The stuff in
"Broom" that's informed by that sense of play ended up pretty
forgettable, I think. And it doesn't sustain the enterprise for very
long.
David Foster Wallace
There's some great
essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the
prisoner who's come to love his cage.
David Foster Wallace
This diagnosis can
be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody.
David Foster Wallace
This is
nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside.
David Foster Wallace
This is so
American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then
worship it, or else kill it.
David Foster Wallace
This might be one
way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern
writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.
David Foster Wallace
To be willing to
sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared
about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.
David Foster Wallace
TV-type art's
biggest hook is that it's figured out ways to "reward" passive
spectation.
David Foster Wallace
TV's "real" agenda
is to be "liked," because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay
tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison.
David Foster Wallace
Very few people I
talk to understand what "generation gap" 's implications really were.
Kids loved rock partly because their parents didn't, and obversely.
David Foster Wallace
We still think in
terms of a story "changing" the reader's emotions, cerebrations, maybe
even her life.
David Foster Wallace
We're kind of
wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about
the fact that we wish they'd come back - I mean, what's wrong with us?
David Foster Wallace
We're not keen on
the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the
reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story.
David Foster Wallace
Well, it's too
simple to just wring your hands and claim TV's ruined readers. Because
the U.S.'s television culture didn't come out of a vacuum.
David Foster Wallace
What TV is
extremely good at - and realize that this is "all it does" - is
discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying
it.
David Foster Wallace
With descriptions
that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products.
David Foster Wallace
Wittgenstein
argues that for language even to be possible, it must always be a
function of relationships between persons.
David Foster Wallace
You can defend
"Psycho" as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social
problems, but it's no more than that.
David Foster Wallace
You could argue
that it affects only "her reaction to the story" or "her take on the
story." But these things "are" the story.
David Foster Wallace
Yuppies, I guess,
and younger intellectuals, whatever. These are the people pretty much
all the younger writers I admire are writing for, I think.
David Foster Wallace
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