April 4th, 2011 / 11:37 am
Massive People
Lily Hoang
Massive People
The American ____?
People love to make equivalencies. For instance, Stuart McLean is the Canadian Garrison Keillor, or The Agenda is the Canadian Charlie Rose.
Obviously, equivalencies are problematic. The Canadian anything seems to be paler version of the American thing. (Call me nationalistic.) That is, they aren’t really equivalent. And yet, there seems to be some value in these equivalencies, right? (Maybe I’m wrong.)
That being said: Is DFW the American Roberto Bolano?
Tags: DFW, Roberto Bolaño
Well, they are both male. I guess there’s that.
leaves are the canadian stars
this post is the equivalent of accidentally putting salt instead of sugar in your coffee.
Wow. Hmm.
I don’t think so. Biographically and stylistically, they are too different.
Bolano was a poet who started writing fiction later in his life. DFW was a mathematics/philosophy student who started writing fiction pretty young. They are similar in that they were arguably the best writers of their generation, but I don’t think they’re equivalents.
Still, I like the question!
i thought dfw was bam margera for more than a second.
what have you read by either of them Lily? I’ve only read Last Evenings on Earth by Bolano, but I don’t make any connection with Wallace, whom I’ve read a lot of. I do make connections with Bolano and Auster though.
That is, Paul Auster is the American Roberto Bolano.
auster-pic-w-colors.jpg lilys-bolano-pic-w-colors.jpg
I have a friend who’s a DFW scholar, and we were talking about big books (in general) and I asked if he’d read 2666, and he said he hadn’t heard of Bolano, but then he looked him up on the Internet and said he sounded like the Chilean DFW.
For the record: I don’t think they’re equivalent at all. For one, I’m much more familiar with one than the other. I much prefer one to the other. They are stylistically much different, etc. Still, it was a question on my mind.
I’ve read a lot of Bolano. I’ve read IJ and a few other things by DFW. I’ll be starting the new one this week though.
Maybe best not to answer your own question in the comments. It kills the momentum. Breathe little question, breathe!
2666 is probably my favorite book, after Pynchon’s V. It’s crazy that your friend had never heard of Bolano!
I think about 2666 more than any other book. I can’t wait to reread it, but I’m not sure if I can make it through The Part About the Crimes again.
Do you really think knowing a poster’s opinion changes things? Also: the way I framed the question kind of implies that I agree, and I don’t. I just think it’s a provocative question.
love 2666
I think Jonathan Lethem was the first to make this connection (at least the first person I read that made that connection), and while he wasn’t making a truly lateral comparison, the similarities help those who are into DFW relate to Bolano in a more intimate way, and vice versa. The context was that he was reviewing 2666 and was trying to cast the book into a context that would have made DFW-philes rush out and grab the book. I think a fair connection would be that DFW is to Updike and Pynchon as Bolano is to Borges and Marquez (skipping to a summation that identity politics work more along the lines of Latin and South American literature rather than specific nationalities). Or if not Borges, maybe Cortazar.
tl;dr Yeah, kinda, I think.
this is water!
really, can we let sth to stay unamerican:) Really what is the big problem with finding equivalences, nothing is equal to eachother, maybe it is better to ask or question what resembles what and see how we remember and/or remind ourselves of what is water! and that is more than asking for equivalences.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
by the way, nothing should and can resemble 2666 for me. it is not because i am big fan of bolano but more or less, I think the way he writes is really unique:) or maybe I am a fan who knows
Murakami is the Japanese Bolano, maybe. I don’t really see the DFW connection at all.
Lethem also erroneously claimed that Bolano was a heroin addict…
Lincoln Michel: taking it to a whole new landmass of equivalencies.
raise your hand if you’re writing a paper on water. woot woot.
Do you think if you keep asking questions then you’ll never have to actually answer anything? Yeah, me neither?
I think they have a lot in common, though a lot not in common. They are both men, both died in their prime, both wrote huge books of fiction and tons of stories, but they had completely different backgrounds, one took his own life, and the other died of liver failure (no surprise that the ivy league bougie white guy killed himself and the lower class latin american guy wrote himself to death [though bolano probably drank like a champion and did heroin, other drugs for a long time]). I think their work can be compared (maybe, I haven’t read any long dfw, but read every long bolano, lots of stories, and several short novels) but the people are completely different. Maybe one could say that dfw is a typical white upper middle class american and bolano is a typical lower middle class latin american.
actually I am not writing on water:) but, I liked the analogy in this speech about water and the fish..etc.
I’m confused. I answered a question (which caused Mwalkerlee to chide me). Then, I posed a second question, which I thought was kinda rhetorical. Probably, I’m not smart enough to understand your comment.
I’m confused. I answered a question (which caused Mwalkerlee to chide me). Then, I posed a second question, which I thought was kinda rhetorical. Probably, I’m not smart enough to understand your comment.
Jack London is the American Farley Mowat.
they’re both tattooed on my body
Bolano was comfortably middle class in Spain at the end of his life, and he was not a heroin addict.
Pictures?
which one are you more familiar with & which one do you prefer?
i ask because i am basically curious to know if i am the only htmlgiant contributor who has read more bolano (2 books) than DFW (0 books)
i did not scroll down far enough before i posted this
equally, i see no comparison between bolano & murakami?
what are we talking about?
people hate it when you shit talk dfw
by the END of his life. But he was really sick the last 5 years of it and maybe had ten years of success after 40 years of rejection by every country he was a part of. He even lived in Castilian Spain: not even living in his own language. I didn’t say he was an addict either. I say he did it. Something damaged his liver. Coulda just been the booze.
I’ve got the last page of The Savage Detectives tattooed on my wrist.
I’ve got the last page of The Savage Detectives tattooed on my wrist.
No, not at all. Bolaño was a genius. Wallace was annoying and pretentious, he specialized in making pious arguments in favor of the obvious, and stole almost everything of value in his style from Lydia Davis.
I agree with the Auster comparison. What similarities do you see between Wallace and Bolano, exactly? That they both wrote a really long novel?
I wanted to say that dfw also started a horrible trend of beards + long hair but thought I would be murdered and dropped in a swimming pool at the country club.
Sure, superficially, they’re both male, they both wrote big books, they were both unhealthy in a stereotypically writer kind of way. But more than that, I think they’re comparable in terms of the impact they’ve had on writing and reading. Arguably, they both made literary fiction “popular.” They’re both writer icons. They both wrote works that challenge tradition, complex novels that require reader effort, and despite that, they’re both popular.
And this is my superficial bias (again): I am generally impressed with people who have either on their bookshelf.
But, I don’t think they are equivalent at all. This post riding the DFW hype coattail.
nice.
really? I’ve only read Varieties of Disturbance by Davis, but at least based on that I see nothing being directly stolen in any way. What have you read by Wallace?
i dunno how to upload pictures on here. i have ‘2666’ in big arm ink, and the glyph on the 1st page of IJ under my belly / appendix scar, near my crotch.
I’ve only come to Davis after having read IJ and Brief Interviews. I’m in the midst of her Collected right now, in the section written in the 80s. “Break it Down,” for instance, you see almost everything Wallace will ever do in his short work, minus the $1,000 words. Other stories in her first two books (I don’t have titles at hand, sorry), are remarkably similar in tone and content to Wallace–or, more properly, the other way around. Wallace does have a sort of mild critique of consumer society in IJ that Davis doesn’t really get into (that I’ve seen), but as I mentioned before, I see that as bland, pretty meaningless liberalism. I’d highly recommned her Collected Stories, and not just to make a point agaisnt Wallace.
i know this has little to do with anything here, yet i still find it important to note: dfw sounds a lot like lrh.
love the 2666 on the arm idea… may steal it…
Man, so much black air. Lily, no chiding, just thought you might encourage a more vigorous discussion if you backed your way out of it quietly. Nobody ain’t called you dumb and I suspect you find yourself plenty smart, like everybody else here. Everybody’s good enough. Everybody’s good enough. Everybody’s you know.
DFW’s postmodern bag of winks and nudges only exonerates the status quo while Bolano succeeded at finding something more strange and visceral about humanity. There is not much comparison between the two.
the asian roberto bolano
damn @ “DFW scholar”
Ms. Hoang,
You really opened up a can of worms with this one. Hard to believe there are so many people out there who hate DFW.
Similarities? Hmmm… well, they’re both dead. They both enjoyed being under the influence; a touch of the creature, as it were. I’ve read IJ and 2666, and I enjoyed them both immensely, but for entirely different reasons. Other than that, not really similar at all, in my opinion. They were both talented artists, and we are lucky to have the artifacts they left behind.
For all the David Foster Wallace haters out there, a slap in the face and a jubilant celebration of the imminent release of The Pale King:
http://www.polaroidmind.blogspot.com
inb4 godwin
what have you read by him? I genuinely want to know.
Bolano’s world is open and mysterious. DFW’s world is claustrophobic and confusing. They are not alike.
have you read girl with curious hair or oblivion? I think what’s being done is way different than (each other and) what he does in brief interviews. Also, brief interviews has what? 30 stories? Whereas oblivion and gwch have less than 10 both, or somewhere around that number. I’ve been meaning to check out more of Davis’ work, especially the longer stuff, and now I’ll definitely have to.
language is the new nucleic acid
a language is the new genome
literature is the new chromosome
a writer is the new gene
a book is the new protein molecule
reading a book is the new enzymatic catalysis
(intelligibility of similarities remains intuition of physical law)
therefore:
Portobello Bobby whelps like an American Michael Chiklis, American Michael Chiklis skates like tomorrow is the day.
wallace and bolano are the tinkers to evers to chance of balinese gamelan
murakami is their !xhosan zulawski fanchild
denial is futial
futial is needing some grout, there, looks like
elbow grease is American for higher math
murakami swept
futial is needing some grout, there, looks like
elbow grease is American for higher math
murakami swept
opening a book to its exact center page(s) is pulling each side outward is the new anaphase
opening a book to its exact center page(s) is pulling each side outward is the new anaphase
I’m thinking about it and having a hard time seeing what Wallace stole from Lydia Davis. They sometimes share a circular or lateral interiority, but that’s also true of Beckett, Sebald, Bernhard and Javier Marias, among others. Davis borrowed Wallace’s form of the interview with the question omitted. Other than that, I don’t see much of a link between them.
spotting phases of mitosis in sexual reproduction is camp
whet the guial fial
whial time’s on trile
and pial up a mial of
staisle
What connections do you make between Bolano and Auster? I see no resemblance, myself.
This made me angry enough to post on the internet for the first time in my life
meiosis is where the real sexy begins
Yes, they are the same in the way audiences have romanticized them posthumously through hyperbolic reviews and essays championing them as literary gods. And so the Herman Melville tradition continues and above all, what these authors (Melville included) needed, was a better editor.
do it up, then
it’s posts like this one that make me think http://www.htmlgiant.com is the american http://www.boohbah.tv/zone.html
VIc Mackey will gouge your eyes out, beeyatch
you’d be hurled off the high dive after screaming about how scared you were to jump and not realizing the irony
i have to say that i was underwhelmed by the part about the crimes. i mean, i GOT IT, they were brutal crimes, described “well” (don’t mean to sound ghoulish) and all, journalistically, but they just sort of bled (sorry!) together. i mean yes some were more outrageous than others and some were nearer/closer to the maquiladores…but i grew weary at that part of the book. felt like one super long description of a “law and order” section
The Canadian Bolano is still a gleam in someone’s eye.
Chris Farley is the American John Candy.
If the Canadian anything is “a paler version of the American thing” then why do we routinely kick your ass at hockey?
*discussion over
I’d definitely say Auster is closer to Bolaño than DFW is.
I’d actually maybe say Javier Marias is equivalent to DFW in certain ways, for the learned exuberance of their writing, eg. But DFW was in touch with something sadder than Marias is, and Marias is more of a snob than DFW was.
Tiger Williams > Tiger Woods.
Which would leave me illegally blind.
Which would leave me illegally blind.
C2K THAT JUST ISN’T TRUE.
Got carried away. Was high on maple syrup.
THIS IS A POINTLESS DISCUSSION BUT ZZZZZIPP’S FEELING IS THAT LILY IS LIKE THOSE SWISS NANNIES MENTIONED IN “THE GIFT” WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING, ONLY ASSOCIATE WITH EACH OTHER, AND NEVER LEARN RUSSIAN. AND WHEN RETIRED AND LIVING AGAIN IN SWITZERLAND ALL THEY CAN DO IS COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IS CHANGED AND TALK WISTFULLY OF THEIR LIVES IN RUSSIA.
LILY TORONTO IS ONE OF THE BEST PLACES TO LIVE RIGHT NOW EXCEPTING OUR CORPULENT MAYOR JUST COME TO TORONTO.
ALSO DOES ANYONE LIKE KEILLOR IN AMERICA?
THIS IS A POINTLESS DISCUSSION BUT ZZZZZIPP’S FEELING IS THAT LILY IS LIKE THOSE SWISS NANNIES MENTIONED IN “THE GIFT” WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING, ONLY ASSOCIATE WITH EACH OTHER, AND NEVER LEARN RUSSIAN. AND WHEN RETIRED AND LIVING AGAIN IN SWITZERLAND ALL THEY CAN DO IS COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IS CHANGED AND TALK WISTFULLY OF THEIR LIVES IN RUSSIA.
LILY TORONTO IS ONE OF THE BEST PLACES TO LIVE RIGHT NOW EXCEPTING OUR CORPULENT MAYOR JUST COME TO TORONTO.
ALSO DOES ANYONE LIKE KEILLOR IN AMERICA?
IT’S OKAY THEY ARE RELATED IN SOME WAY BECAUSE THEY ARE BOTH CLOSE TO ZZZZZIPP’S HEART.
IT’S OKAY THEY ARE RELATED IN SOME WAY BECAUSE THEY ARE BOTH CLOSE TO ZZZZZIPP’S HEART.
WHAT LILY SAID IS UNBELIEVABLE IN THE WAY A SPOILED CHILD IS UNBELIEVABLE. CAN’T REALLY RESPOND TO THAT.
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DFW was great… while living. In death there is something increasingly-appalling about him. I can imagine his ghost appearing somewhere near the midpoint of this appalling video, making a heartfelt appeal in language that isn’t fit to buff his fiction’s boots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uRIMUBnvw
Auster is an actor playing a writer writing the book of the only movie the actor has ever acted in.
[…] A las pocas horas leo otra pregunta. La formulan en la bitácora Html Giant: […]
http://joseangelgonzalez.net/dfw-y-bolano/
In Spanish, sorry =)
a joke, zzzzzip. i think canada is amazing. i love it here, except for the cold.
the examples i used were intentionally problematic, to highlight how problematic (and funny) any equivalencies are, including the one i asked about.
LILY ZZZZZIPPP IS SO EMBARRASSED. BUT HOW WAS ZZZZZIPP SUPPOSED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT “THE AGENDA” OR “CHARLIE ROSE”? ANY EQUIVALENCY IS PROBLEMATIC (AS YOU SAY), AND SO ARE GENERALIZATIONS, BUT Z ZZZZIPP MMISSED THE KKNOWING WWWINKW.
april wine addled
Hi ZZZZZIPPP: I think you’re fantastic.
My humour is sometimes so subtle I hardly recognize it.
I thought my “wink” was using the word “paler” which would be a nudge towards DFW’s new book: the Pale King. No one got it (or at least no one publicly) and everyone assumed I’m an asshole, which, well, maybe I just am.
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