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Contemporary Literature 16 David Foster Wallace 92 Views


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Description:

David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest , had a fondness for footnotes. 1

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English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in contemporary literature david foster wallace

00:09

ala shmoop who is david foster wallace David foster wallace

00:15

is a member of generation acts which is the generation

00:18

that came of age in the nineteen nineties and is

00:21

very famously cynical They don't like consumerism they don't like

00:26

it when you try to sell them things or tell

00:27

them to do things David foster wallace is definitely skeptical

00:32

of popular culture he has a famous essay on television

00:37

that talks about basically how it makes us feel less

00:42

generous and sympathetic and it makes us all very like

00:44

detached and they're cool He is well known for his

00:49

novels most famously infinite jest which was published in the

00:54

mid nineteen nineties and is the only word i have

00:57

Bird is it's like an encyclopedia its huge novel full

01:02

of footnotes Actually they're almost almost as much space is

01:06

devoted to the footnotes is the text in some parts

01:09

and more in other parts Andi it's an expansive story

01:13

about a child tennis star and a lot of other

01:17

viewable it's about depression It's about money it's about american

01:22

life it's just a really intense novel he wrote a

01:27

couple of other novels The broom of the system and

01:29

the pale king which was published after his death He

01:32

is also really well known for his essays with tend

01:36

to take pretty ordinary things about the united states and

01:41

he makes really thoughtful and deep meditations on what it

01:47

means to be human Basically so this is a genius

01:52

who was very sad but he's also incredibly warm hearted

01:58

and you especially see in his later essays on a

02:02

very famous graduation speech who once gave that he really

02:06

believes in the goodness of people and he believes that

02:11

we can have good lives He predicted in the mid

02:15

nineties that there would be a turn in american fiction

02:19

and that people would start writing fiction that was less

02:22

self consciously cool and mohr invested in everyday life and

02:28

things that were normal and ordinary and nice Uh and

02:33

he inspired a lot of writers to go down that

02:35

path So recent novelists like jonathan safran foer or even

02:42

jonathan franzen have all been really influenced By david foster

02:46

wallace What is generation x and how does david foster

02:52

wallace relate to it What is unusual about infinite jest

02:57

What are some characteristics of david foster Wallace is writing

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