Is the writing style parodic or just obnoxious?
In reading Infinite Jest so far, things like some major motifs and possible themes have emerged, (the references to insects being an example of the former, people being somehow out of sync with other people's reality being an example of the latter,) but none of this is as interesting (immediately) to me as the writing style. In a sense, the writing style is atrocious. He uses sentence fragments, ends questions with periods instead of question marks, and frequently changes his tense, narrative tone, and even person.
I would say that this is inexcusable, but in writing, anything is excusable; it just requires a good enough excuse. That is to say, I'll appreciate the way he is writing only once I grasp whether or not he has a valid artistic reason. It is possible that he is using these intentional errors to satirize contemporary speech and/or writing, or it is possible that he is merely cultivating an odd style to lend his writing a more distinctive flavor. Hopefully it is the former, because I don't want to endure the nauseous effects of questions ended with periods for much longer if there isn't some good artistic reasoning behind it.
The writing is certainly creating interesting effects. He varies it from complete colloquialism (not to mention the pure-slang section starting on page 37,) to very formal tones of voice, which gives the whole book an interesting sense of discontinuity, enhancing the sense that none of these chapters have much to do with one another, although hopefully we can look forward to some coalescence later. The sections are also internally disjointed in this way, because he combines some of the more colloquial turns of phrase, e.g. ASAP, etc, with some very erudite and scientific vocabulary. My theory, or at least my hope, is that the varying styles are meant to characterize the focal characters of their chapters, and that the disjointedness, disunity, and combination of opposites is all meant to say something about humanity. Otherwise, I will be irritated.
I would say that this is inexcusable, but in writing, anything is excusable; it just requires a good enough excuse. That is to say, I'll appreciate the way he is writing only once I grasp whether or not he has a valid artistic reason. It is possible that he is using these intentional errors to satirize contemporary speech and/or writing, or it is possible that he is merely cultivating an odd style to lend his writing a more distinctive flavor. Hopefully it is the former, because I don't want to endure the nauseous effects of questions ended with periods for much longer if there isn't some good artistic reasoning behind it.
The writing is certainly creating interesting effects. He varies it from complete colloquialism (not to mention the pure-slang section starting on page 37,) to very formal tones of voice, which gives the whole book an interesting sense of discontinuity, enhancing the sense that none of these chapters have much to do with one another, although hopefully we can look forward to some coalescence later. The sections are also internally disjointed in this way, because he combines some of the more colloquial turns of phrase, e.g. ASAP, etc, with some very erudite and scientific vocabulary. My theory, or at least my hope, is that the varying styles are meant to characterize the focal characters of their chapters, and that the disjointedness, disunity, and combination of opposites is all meant to say something about humanity. Otherwise, I will be irritated.
posted by Alexander Dove Lempke at 7:49 PM
2 Comments:
I found that short section written entirely in an affected pidgin to be particularly annoying. I couldn't read it at first and had to go back several times to grasp it. I didn't like the way the slang was constructed, and the random odd use of subjects was distracting to say the least.
parodic, obnoxious, or just really GREAT?
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