OT: David Foster Wallace Thread at HTML Giant
Here's an interesting comment thread on Brent E Ellis blasting David Foster Wallace: http://htmlgiant.com/behind-the-scenes/ellis-on-wallace/
I'm only posting this because I know that our fearless leader is a DFW fan and might want to have a look (Or even a go at some of the commentary or BEE himself).
Just read a story from "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" today (one of my books for the summer). Wallace continues to be one of my favorite writers, finding ways to integrate really technical information with heart-warming anecdotes to provide interesting non-fiction (or fiction as the case may be). I have never heard of Ellis, and can't speak to the quality of his writing. His critique however, comes off as being exceedingly bitchy. I have no problem with criticality, and in fact encourage negative criticism of all sorts of creative works in order to spur debate and deepen the inherent understanding of them. Ellis, however, blasts his writing as "pedestrian", "unreadable" and having "faux-midwestern sentimentality". These might actually be very legitimate arguments to make, but Ellis does not argue, he simply makes these comments in the most offhand, snarky way possible and leaves it at that. Anyone who begins his negative criticism with the words "is it too soon? it's too soon" is not going to say anything worth reading.
He's probably best known for writing American Psycho. Broke in as a really young guy with Less Than Zero in the mid eighties and became kind of an overnight celebrity in the literary Brat Pack along with guys like Jay McInerney.
Assuming the book version of American Psycho is even remotely similar to the movie, I'm somehow not surprised that he would bash Wallace for being "faux-sentimental". I'll have to look into him more, thanks for the info.
The book is shockingly violent next to the movie. It's also much funnier.
but he wasn't writing a literary critique, he was asked his opinion in a question and answer session during a live reading and he gave it. The context matters.
I may not agree with the opinion, but that catfight is more about pretentious commenters than the two principals. Sometimes people just don't care for other people's writing, it doesn't have to be an incident worth discussing.
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/news/general-updates/bret-easton-e…
Doesn't look like Wallace pulled any punches when discussing Ellis either.
Nice find on the quote. I know DFW hated giving interviews b/c he didn't feel he expressed himself as exactly as he wanted to (or at least up to his exacting standards), but I think that quote pretty much comes close to summarizing his "point/goal" of all of his writing. I think I remember reading somewhere that DFW, if forced to give himself a title, would label himself as "post-post-modern", meaning that he wanted to distinguish himself from the post-moderns (nothing means anything). He wanted his writing to Say Something, to Mean Something, to Address Real Emotions (all the while using many of the post-modernists literary tricks/gimmicks (to profound effect IMO)).