“I recommend checking out The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White…”
Folks at Yahoo Answers critique an anonymously submitted first page, not knowing that it is actually page one of Infinite Jest.
(via Kotkke)
“I recommend checking out The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White…”
Folks at Yahoo Answers critique an anonymously submitted first page, not knowing that it is actually page one of Infinite Jest.
(via Kotkke)
16 responses
Workshop can be a real bitch sometimes.
Nice to see Woody Allen likes it alright, though.
Love Rachel’s confidence about what “resolve” means.
I can see this being interpreted in one of two ways:
1. Look how idiotic these amateur message board critics are, thinking they know what’s good and what’s not.
2. Look how idiotic the American public is, only liking David Foster Wallace because he’s David Foster Wallace.
I lean towards interpretation #1. Makes me feel better about all the bad feedback I’ve ever received from clients, etc. Either way it sort of comes down to this: We all have to decide for ourselves what we think is good.
DFW makes my eyes bleed.
Those people seem to be reacting a lot more honestly than the readers who know DFW and his work by reputation.
Whatever. This is funny, but taking the first page of a book out of context predicts very little about the quality of the book, writer, or the writer’s other work. The ENTIRE BOOK is about the difficulty of communication, of translating thought, observations, and intentions into words. Hal, in this opening scene, does not move or speak for almost an entire interview, and the detailed and stilted descriptions reflect his reliance on words to protect him from the world around him. The language is incredibly weird, and it is supposed to be, because Hal has been stricken with something that makes it impossible to communicate with the people in the room, who only perceive him as flailing and bleating when he finally tries to speak.
I hate Radiohead too.
Mark W, I’m not convinced the readers are reacting honestly, I think they’re being egotistical. Criticism in general can be kinda crappy in this way, putting one in a position of false advantage over the author. In this case we have a few amateurs, influenced totally by the blinding effects of ego, pretending to be professionals: not only can they not react honestly, they can’t see the merits of the writing in front of them (the author of which–oops!– happens to be a very, very good once-in-a-generation type.)
@Jeremy: Sure, but would you pass that test? Would you recognize the apparently blinding genius of DFW after only one page if you had never read him and nobody told you ahead of time that it was written by a “once-in-a-generation type”?
Somebody asks a random group of strangers to critique his writing. Random group of strangers takes him at his word, offers sincere help, get mocked mercilessly by the indie-literati for doing something that all of us who write desperately want other people to do: read our writing and give us feedback.
I want to meet the people who read some random DFW work and loved it without having any idea it was written by David Motherfucking Foster Wallace. I bet there are damn few. The rest of us, we are followers and poseurs. We only recognize genius when it says “motherfucking genius” on the book jacket.
Ray, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I’m not certain if given a blind taste-test of David Foster Wallace’s writing I’d like it. In fact, I’d never read any Infinte Jest before this post, and when I did, I admit, I found it tough going.
But still, I think the reader-subjects of this trick were exercising their egos, which prevented them from evaluating the writing sample from a place of honesty. Example: Rachel–as I alluded to earlier–simply rejected Wallace’s use of the word “resolving” out of hand. She had in her mind a definition of that word and assumed (incorrectly) that Wallace was making a mistake in the way he used it. What would prevent her from opening a dictionary and seeing that “resolve” has an array of definitions, one of which fits Wallace’s description very well? Ego is the answer. She, bolstered by her position as critic, automatically assumed she had it all over the anonymous author of the 1 page sample.Â
Would I do the same thing? Maybe. But I’d still be wrong if I did. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
While it is certainly true that people’s perception of a work is colored by their perception of the author’s status, that is a two-way street. You could hand these same people a page of a crappy undergrad workshop submission and tell them it was a lost experiment by James Joyce and they may fawn over.
Anonymous message board commenters making snarky comments are not being “more honest” because they don’t know the author. There is no reason to believe that. They are likely judging the work MORE harshly because they assume it is some rube who asks for helps on Yahoo answers. This isn’t “neutral” feedback you are getting here.
“2. Look how idiotic the American public is, only liking David Foster Wallace because he’s David Foster Wallace.”
That doesn’t really apply to this situation, as Infinite Jest is what MADE DFW into DFW. Which is to say, this isn’t like Bob Dylan getting tons of praise on his 00s albums because his status was so legendary from his 60s work. DFW isn’t coasting on his reputation here, he is building it.
The real answer is more like 3. The exercise is amusing but dishonest, as you can’t judge a novel by one page and this page was specifically a page in which DFW is trying to write awkwardly because of the character’s situation.
However, I do think even reading that page shows the writer to be obviously in command and doing something interesting.
The fact that random people on the internet didn’t see it doesn’t mean much as, let’s be honest, the same would be true of almost any great or challenging art in any medium you did a blind test for. Or not even a blind test, as you can find 1 star reviews of the greatest works in literature on Amazon.com.
Yeah, looks like the problem here is the headline for the blog post (Internet vs. Infinite Jest) when it was only one page of the book, and the Yahoo! Answer prank itself, and not the people offering their own critique of what they thought was an original work.
*smirk* *nudge* *nudge*
Anybody can workshop anything to death, no matter how smart the reader and how good the writing. Yeah, she was off in her interpretation of “resolved”, but honestly, that’s the type of DFW-ism that turns me off to his work. Factually correct if you have a dictionary at hand (and everybody knows it’s against the law to read DFW without a dictionary at hand) but not really very much fun to actually read (for me, at least).
Certainly they were exercising their egos, but that’s inherent in the process of critique. Somebody comes to you and says “I wrote this, can you give me feedback?” You HAVE to try to temporarily put yourself in a mental position of being above or superior to the work, or you won’t be able to comment on it. If you can’t do that, because you’re too polite, or because you lack confidence, or because you don’t have the stones to tell somebody what you really think, then you can’t critique the work.
I’ve never read IJ. I read Oblivion, hated it. I clicked the Yahoo link fully expecting to hate what I read. Yeah, I have biases, I’ll admit, and I wasn’t disappointed. I probably would have given some stupid-ass comments myself because I can’t stand the guy’s writing. What do I know, I don’t have a degree in this shit.
What torques me just a little bit about this is, as Marc points out, the *nudge nudge*, “Hey, get a load of those retards who don’t GET DFW.” The air of superiority from those of us in the know, looking down at the riff-raff. (I wonder if I floated, say, a Jim Shepard story under my own byline to a hundred online lit mags, how many “not quite right for us” responses would I get from these experienced readers? 20? 50? 70?)
Just for fun, here’s a similar situation. It’s not real, it’s satire, but it’s still hilarious:
http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2011/02/triggerstreet-review-of-social-network.html
And the thing is, every one of those comments is “correct”. All of those criticisms are part of the standard craft of screenwriting, are things that anybody in a screenwriting workshop would say. And yet, The Social Network was a brilliant movie precisely because it didn’t follow any of those rules.
Ray, I think I understand what you’re saying, but I have a different position from some of the arguments you make. Foremost, I don’t agree that exercising one’s ego is inherent in the process of critique, though I do think it’s the reason a lot of criticism’s bad. In criticism, as in life, exercising ego is something that limits, not enhances, one’s understanding/ perception. This is why I called ego “blinding” earlier.
Also, I think it’s possible–and preferable–to be candid with someone else without thinking oneself superior to that other person. This applies to criticism too.
Again, I point to Rachel not choosing to look up in a dictionary the definition of “resolve.” It’s a small thing, I know, and I’m making too much of it, but the reason she didn’t pick up that dictionary is because she thought she was superior to the anonymous author whose work she was considering. If she judged him an equal she would have been more conscientious. Her stance of superiority, as invariably is the case, was an ego trip (as was her condescending remark for the author to read Strunk and White. And, of course, in this case, the joke is most assuredly on her: DFW was a connoisseur of grammar and style books.)        Â
I totally agree with you that it’s fatuous, and egotistical, to judge and look down on Rachel and the like from a more knowledgeable perch, one safe from the danger of this prank. My first comment in this thread was ironic and condescending and made at Rachel’s expense, and I was in the wrong for doing it. Since, I have tried to judge the matter without affecting an air of superiority. Let me point out again, I don’t know how I would have responded if I were in her shoes; I may well have responded like she did, using different words. But this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to understand where she went wrong, and where I might have too. Â
@Jeremy: I can see what you’re saying here and there’s a lot of truth to it.
One thing: Although I did think a lot of Rachel’s criticism was pretty weak, I thought the pointer to Strunk & White was sincere. If a person thinks, as she (mistakenly) did, that somebody is weak on basic style and usage, it’s the book to recommend, right? Unfortunately for her, DFW was operating at a level way over her head in that regard. Except for the “omit needless words” bit, but I’ve ragged on him enough for one day.
@Ray, fair enough, brother.
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