Here is a video of David Foster Wallace talking about Infinite Jest.

I very much like DFW. I could finish all of Pynchon's hard novels, couldn't finish Infinite Jest. :lol:

But his short fiction and especially his non-fiction are second to none. I've still to read that article, but I recall some aspects of Wallace's comments on pomo literature.

I guess I have to agree with Wallace's biographer D.T. Max, when he says that he doesn't really understand the idea of an "ironic turn on irony", or words to that effect. I think Wallace was trying to explain sincerity in a meaningful way and focused too much on how the mainstream commodified cynicism. Sure, that happens.

But you still get rebels, frequently. Look at Assange or Snowden. Look at the George Floyd protests and etc. If I don't remember incorrectly, Wallace predicted things like Skype and Zoom. But he thought people would end up wearing masks for fear that the other person looking at you would think you were being insincere if you looked away while talking.

I think he took these ideas too far, even if the way he expresses this is unique.

And now we have people analyzing all the phenomena Wallace could not have predicted: smart phones, talking about Q, etc.

So yes, I think at times of Wallace's articles. I think they're spectacular. But he risks excess in the claims he makes, even if they're largely correct.

It's cool/interesting to me you found the M*A*S*H* section of Infinite Jest particularly moving/sympathetic. I did too. It's not a section that almost ever comes up in discussions of the work, or author.

My DFW background:

I did a report on 'postmodernism' in high school (because it seemed mysterious and exotic) and through that found Infinite Jest. To say it blew my teenage mind would be an understatement - I went into DFW hard between 17 and 25 (read & watched almost everything, with the significant exception of Broom of the System.) (also @Manuel got pynchon-pilled at the same time, though I never went quite as deep into him.)

Perhaps predictably, I then eventually reacted dramatically against DFW and more or less avoided him and his stylistic followers for a while. Now I'm sort of in the middle.

I haven't read E Unibus Pluram since I was an undergrad (about a decade ago.) I was struck by it then, and I still think the argument largely holds up. At the same time I've become more skeptical of DFW's sweeping, prophetic diagnoses - it's less clear to me now whether Wallace is diagnosing an illness of the culture-at-large, and whether he's describing the degree to which particularly self-conscious, self-doubting people (like me, and it seems most DFW fans) find especial difficulty in that culture.

The last story in the collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, entitled 'Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XXIV)' captures in a nutshell what I think is the driving concern of Wallace's work (and life) - it's a dark parable for the psychological experience of having a mean, mocking, imaginary idea of yourself uncharitably caricaturizing you constantly - running in parallel to whatever you're doing. I imagine this sort of thing exists on a spectrum, and everyone experiences it to some degree, but DFW is so far on one end of the spectrum (as I was, and often am still) that it profoundly colors everything he does - at times becoming claustrophobic. One critic of Infinite Jest (can't remember who, or where) described the reading experience as being trapped in a flourescently-lit room with a brilliant neurotic ceaselessly verbalizing his demons. I liked IJ, but I can't say that critic is totally wrong.

Back to the quote in the OP - on the face of it, I think he's absolutely right. But there was always something a little phony in how 'New Sincerity' played out. It kept the self-consciousness (quietly, implicitly) and self-consciously performed sincerity. I think Brief Interviews, among other things, is a nervous breakdown about how even if you're attracted to sincerity, and trying to enact the idea of it - you can find yourself, against your will, using that idea to take advantage of others.

I think Wallace was right in his instincts in IJ - he imagines Gately refusing anaesthetic and accepting suffering. But I don't think he (or most of the sincerists) could really give up the anaesthetic of having an arch, distanced place to return to for safety. So I guess : I think the general idea of the passage in the OP is right - but I think its still mostly about ideas and persuasion. It has Wallace's powerful rhetorical energy in service of an idea. But I think what is really needed is practical techniques for people who suffer from the psychological thing parabalized in ''Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XXIV).' DFW knew that it was about facing suffering, and avoiding ironic distance - but he so often left it in the realm of ideas (balanced with photoreal observation) - what he never really seemed to explore was methods from getting from the pomo thing to sincerity. And I think that's why 'the new sincerists' often feel too calculating.

I don't know that you give him enough credit. Infinite Jest is a great read if you're willing to do the work for it. There's so much to it. It's been ages since I've read it, though.

I think that the idea of an "ironic turn on irony" could be akin to dramatic irony. I've brought this up before, but consider the Situationist International. They began attempting to liberate the world from the ruling order of the art world and became as a living caricature of a clandestine spy ring. Wallace, I think, offers an antidote to such cult pathology and self-fulfilling prophecy by playing off the ironic excess of Postmodern self-reference so as to reinject a certain poignancy and care to cope with the Postmodern condition. It's a way of situating people within the world that they actually live in and letting them emotionally respond to it.

This is kind of a strange aside, but I remember getting kind of stoned at an old friend's house, the kind of old friend you'd see in a film like Good Will Hunting, and feeling as if I had been grounded in the world, quite emphatically, while watching this video by SALEM. I realized that what I was watching was not some form of tactless juxtaposition, but, rather, that it was symptomatic of the Postmodern condition that it takes art such as this to remind people of things like that we are, to this day, engaged in a War in Afghanistan. It was very heavy and almost cathartic in a way.

SALEM's art isn't incendiary or shocking; it's just subversive. They lay it on pretty thick that it's as if the world is ending in Western Asia and it's as if the West has witnessed this as a perverse form of entertainment. The trouble with subversion, though, is that it's only ever functional under specific circumstances. It's like what someone once said to me about the ripped Iron City t-shirt that I used to wear as a form of détournement. "Get it? You just want to put it in the right context."

I think that William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops is a better example of art that brings people into a relationship with the event in such a manner that lets them adequately cope with it. What people fail to understand of the attacks on the Eleventh of September in 2001 is that they had their desired effect. The Western arrogance which led to the creation of such monoliths has lost its symbolic power. In the ensuing chaos of the so-called "War on Terror", the United States was nearly torn apart. The event was, of course, tragic. It was through Basinski, however, and not the relentless media sensation to follow the attacks that I came to grieve and cope with loss, both of life and what I had been taught to understand of the world.

I have used, perhaps, a highly charged example, but I think it get at the idea behind The New Sincerity. We should think and feel well enough about the world that we live in to care for it. It's quite simple, in a way, which is rather ironic. That's what I think that he meant.

I haven't gotten nearly into Wallace as you have, but very much so appreciate your comment.

I also wonder if his commentary doesn't exclusively apply to the quote unquote hipsters that I tend to surround myself with.

I think Brief Interviews, among other things, is a nervous breakdown about how even if you're attracted to sincerity, and trying to enact the idea of it - you can find yourself, against your will, using that idea to take advantage of others. — csalisbury

I think that this, among other statements you have captures well why it fell out of favor. I discovered The New Sincerity through Cold War Kids, who are now on Capitol Records.

DFW knew that it was about facing suffering, and avoiding ironic distance - but he so often left it in the realm of ideas (balanced with photoreal observation) - what he never really seemed to explore was methods from getting from the pomo thing to sincerity. — csalisbury

Wallace, himself, I think must have had some sort of complex to where he had wanted to establish genuine human connections, but couldn't quite escape his own intellectual fortress. I could put this better, but my keys are sticking too much to type as of right now.

That's an interesting take on Wallace. Again, going back to D.T Max, he was asked at one point, I think it was in an interview, about one scene in Wallace's article on the cruise ship. Wallace was looking at the ocean and he was saying that the ocean was vast, dark and empty. Don't quote me strictly on that. But I believe he said something to that effect.

Max asks, was that Wallace simply describing what the ocean felt like to him or was that his depression talking? I don't know. What you say about Wallace constantly tormenting himself reminds me of that.

And I think this is true. It's hard to explain Wallace better than he explains himself, but I think one can say that his acute and amazing powers of observation and detail must have applied to everything, not only his short stories or his books, but to himself too. It's the price he had to pay for the gift he had.

Nevertheless, I still think sincerity is sincerity and that can be used in a perverse manner too. But by now, given how much literature has expanded, it's just extremely hard to come up with something new to say something tried and true in an original manner. So it's said "naively" as it were, and can come off as cliched. Too bad, but, then again, this is person-dependant. What I find to be just cheesy sentimentalism, others find profound. And what I find deep others find verbose or obscurantist. Oh well.



I got to page 450 of Infinite Jest and just lost interest. It did not grip me like his other stuff. And I do believe Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon by Pynchon to be quite harder to read than IJ. It's just a matter of taste. I loved his other stuff, not his novel. The endnotes did it for me, it made reading way too slow.

On the other hand, these very same techniques in his essays and short stories are a true pleasure. And some will like all of it some parts of it and some don't like Wallace. Just like some hate Pynchon. It's all fair.

What I do think is that Wallace was unique in being able to express himself with such precision that is almost unmatched. He could easily form sentences and paragraphs around ideas that would take other writers entire books to try and elucidate.

I think his critique of pomo in literature is completely legitimate. And a serious problem for writers thinking about creating a "new style" or genre. But in real life you can get stuck in the images and the "narratives" while setting aside power structures. In a way, it's like wrestling with authority on authority's terms. So you can take the Iraq war and just treat it like a TV spectacle and you analyze that. But then you don't mention the millions of civilians which were killed. And that's a problem, if this is overlooked.

Not saying it to you specifically, just speaking in general terms.

Having said this, he could very much describe the "water", which we take for granted, such as being in a luxury cruise and being amazed at how comfortable he was in his room, with all the luxuries given but then describing how in like a day or two, he was upset his waiter brought his room service 10 minutes late. Or him pointing out that we take a sunny day as any other, don't even bother to think about it. But if we knew it was our last day on Earth, how much we would appreciate every little detail.

In the end, it really is about being aware. Which is easy to say and so hard to do all the time.

It's fun, y'know? You just have to keep two bookmarks.

So you can take the Iraq war and just treat it like a TV spectacle and you analyze that. But then you don't mention the millions of civilians which were killed. And that's a problem, if this is overlooked. — Manuel

Bangarang!

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's symptomatic of the Postmodern condition for SALEM to situate our experience within fourth-generation warfare. Because it exists as popular spectacle, which is to say a form of entertainment, we don't take into account the human cost of the war. This is an odd kind of middle ground that I like. It's what you should make with a tenuous relationship with the British Broadcasting Company. You see that the Taliban are not fighting because of their so-called "religious fanaticism". They believe that their existential status has been called into question. It's their very way of life that they believe to be at stake. If anyone is serious about bringing an end to the war, they will have to take that into consideration. We need Kanye West to bring us there, though. That's what I'm saying about the Postmodern condition.

It's fun, y'know? You just have to keep two bookmarks. — thewonder

Maybe I'll try again some other time. I've changed my tastes a bit. So it could click this time around.

They believe that their existential status has been called into question. It's their very way of life that they believe to be at stake. If anyone is serious about bringing an end to the war, they will have to take that into consideration. We need Kanye West to bring us there, though. That's what I'm saying about the Postmodern condition. — thewonder

And if the US war machine is coming after you with fury, it makes sense to think that. But now they're still in power, so the war just meant mass death with nothing positive happening. Like almost all wars.

Maybe a very select few would - somehow - react to Kayne in such a way that they rethink US foreign policy. Maybe his lyrics help soldiers or something.

But beyond these very tenuous connections, I don't see how this helps us understand the Afghan war. Unless one is only focusing on the media spectacle side.

Maybe you can expand on this last point a bit, see If I can make more sense of it.

They seem to be working now.

Okay, so, David Gordon Green wrongfully been accused of bringing an end to The New Sincerity. As the male equivalent of Kelly Reichardt, I will say that this is unfair and that George Washington is just a great film. Being said, there is certain degree of histronics to All the Real Girls. I do believe that it's histronics, though. It's like Glen Hansard's "Say It to Me Now", but you're just not quite as charmed.

Speaking of Zooey Deschanel, has She & Him ever not been a good band? I feel like it's this sort of hipster pastiche to where things just aren't cool because they're popular. It's like the Sonic Youth albums, Sister and Daydream Nation.

They're not working.

Anyways, I feel like the ideal of the New Sincerity shouldn't be let go of. I do want to be brought within a genuine relationship with the wherein I feel as I naturally should because of what anyone calls to light of it. To be honest, it's my lack of genuine emotional state that I rebel against more than anything else. I care more to be let to feel as I should about the world than anything else. Everything, it seems, stands in my way. Thus. the reason for Wallace's many absurdities. That's all just speculative, though.

The Adam Curtis video that I shared features a song by Kanye West. What I'm suggesting is symptomatic of the Postmodern condition is that "Runaway" is somehow requisite to mediate the dispute in Afghanistan. I was just highlighting what was absurd about it. I like that documentary, though.

Yes, Curtis is thought provoking at the very least, whatever else anyone thinks about him.

I, personally, am a great fan. Curtis embodies the Postmodern condition to a point of deconstructing it well. He's a showman and I want for his show to go on for as long as it takes to have its desired effect.

Maybe you can expand on this last point a bit, see If I can make more sense of it. — Manuel

Within a society mediated by images, I have this to bring forth. It's ekstasis, y'know?

I don't know. I have a lot of things to say about the War on Terror, most of them tenuous. What I am suggesting of the Taliban is that if we fail to take their basic existential claim into account, their right to exist as such, and such can mean all sorts of things, we can not establish a meaningful peace.

What I'm also getting at is that we haven't considered any hard truths. From the Arab Revolt to the 1953 Iranian coup d'état to any number of clandestine operations in the region, we have laid the rudiments for global terror to exist. The spectacle of the mass media is a way of ignoring such truths. As much of a problem as it is for almost any parties there to be fanatically anti-Western, such sentiment is merely to the point. We destroyed not only their democratic project, but also their way of life. If anyone wants to do any good, they are going to have to be willing to admit that.

That's all besides the point, though. I was trying to talk about Postmodernity. It doesn't let you feel the true weight of the world. It doesn't let you feel anything at all. There are art forms and mediums out there, but most others don't teach you to care about anything. I've been giving Postmodern analysis as an ironic way to caring about things. Perhaps, that's self-defeating. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't think that I have explained my ideas on the Postmodern condition, though. Consider this. Those heroin users were really running heroin by producing cult propaganda with that video. It's totally righteous. Why? We have become subject to such botched forms of social control and are so totally lacking of any form of established order that we take the semblance of cult, which is still cult itself, for veritable forms of free expression. What I am saying is that this form of aesthetic extremism is symptomatic of the Postmodern condition. We desire authenticity to the point of psychological terror. Anything that lets us feel again is somehow good. I've just been invoking extreme examples to point this out.

The idea, however, behind the New Sincerity, I think, is that we ought to just simply be able to point to what is poignant of the contemporary human experience so as to evoke what we ought to have sentiments towards. Everything is dead set against this, though. Think about The Waking Life, for instance. People consider for it to be the worst form of pseudo-intellectual trite. It was a good film, y'know? What I'm suggesting is that this idea that we should care for and consider the world as it actually is should not have been a passing trend. I've merely highlighted the absurdity of its return to point out what is tragic of the Postmodern condition.

@thewonder

To be honest, it's my lack of genuine emotional state that I rebel against more than anything else. I care more to be let to feel as I should about the world than anything else. Everything, it seems, stands in my way.

right, yes, absolutely. Bracketing all the hip references (which, i feel you) - its just - idk a possibility of something real that can sustain. thats a species of faith.

That's what it's about, though. The cover of Daydream Nation features an actual painting by Gerhard Richter and is a better album than "Sister", whose only good song is the one I have shared a link to. You and I should have enough faith in the world to believe that this should become accepted as incontrovertible fact. What will the world come to if we don't believe in veritable forms of free expression?

I don't know. What's "hip" is just what mafia sycophants and burgeoning mentalists are let to believe. It is up to the rest of us who are with it to prove otherwise. That's the game, y'know? I hate it, but excel nonetheless.

It's also just kind of personal, though. It's about not being let to establish the relationship with the world that I should so desire, when I should so desire to care. I harbor a somewhat cruel disregard for people who vitiate the human experience. I ought not to be cruel, but I can offer them nothing but disregard.

There's so much to the world. Why let your relationship to it be destroyed by what anyone says or posts on the internet? There's so much to it. I don't know. I guess that I feel like it's kind of terrible that there's so much out there to prevent everyone from ever being able to care. In a way, I think that they, and they just simply are the infamous "them", which is to say everyone whom I disagree with, fear it more than everything else. I mean, what could happen? Good art and greater world peace. God forbid, y'know?

We desire authenticity to the point of psychological terror. Anything that lets us feel again is somehow good. I've just been invoking extreme examples to point this out. — thewonder

Sure. Maybe I'm stretching the idea too far, but I think part of this has to do with neo-liberal indoctrination. Philip Mirowski has done very good work on this. We strive to stand out by being unique and selling ourselves in every conceivable aspect of our lives through social media for example.

We rate every experience we have on Google, and so forth. I think this is more extreme market thinking than pomo, even if pomo also plays its part by sidelining people with spectacle.

hink about The Waking Life, for instance. People consider for it to be the worst form of pseudo-intellectual trite. It was a good film, y'know? What I'm suggesting is that this idea that we should care for and consider the world as it actually is should not have been a passing trend. — thewonder

I don't think this has passed. It is true that there is more cynicism employed by several companies. For instance, it is true that now it quite common to see a product in a store or a supermarket and such products say "a portion of the profits go to well-established charities", as if that takes care of social responsibility alone.

But the environmental movement, I think is quite strong world-wide, and with good reason too. Global warming is extremely worrisome.

The idea in Capitalist Realism is that there is no Capitalist ideology. It's already cynicism. I think that the danger is of a more generalized cynicism than any form of indoctrination. People, like Milton Friedman, have ideas that hazard a certain plight, and, particularly when you consider how they have been applied in places like Central and South America, it becomes easy to believe that there is as a Capitalist ideology. I think that our foreign actions there, however, were born moreso out of cynical attitudes towards democracy.

The excess of consumer involvement in goods and services is a new phenomenon. In a way, I don't think that it'll be completely negative. When I still had Netflix, I would intentionally add films to my queue that I didn't actually plan on watching just to input them within the aggregate so as to be shown a set of films that I was moreso inclined to watch. User participation within the production of goods and services does offer a certain degree of choice. It's, of course, considerably more troubling when you think about companies collecting massive amounts of data to build profiles of people to know what to market them. The experience is very strange, almost akin to schizophrenia. It seems like the ads are speaking to you directly because they kind of are.

I think that Post-Rock is the litmus of the popularity of The New Sincerity. It doesn't seem to be the case to me that anyone listens to Post-Rock anymore.

There are, of course, a lot of people out there who do do good work and have their priorities in order. I wasn't saying that there isn't any form of veritable activism, though I do kind of feel that way; I was just saying that it's as if you're not let to feel as you should about the human experience. There's no boundless joy, whimsical caprice, emotional depth, righteous indignation, or catharsis. There seems, to me, to be a somewhat deliberate attempt to disrupt how we naturally feel about things. That's what I'm saying bothers me the most.

I was only so with it upon writing that. What I'm saying of The New Sincerity is that it seems to have fallen out of favor because of this idea of "alt-bros". All that so-called "alt-bros" were were likable hipsters. They're certainly preferable to the set of people who took the Enfield Tennis Academy in Infinite Jest as sanction for informal racketeering as a kind of casual sport.

The world is as it is now and what is in the past is in the past, I guess. I'm just saying that there was something to The New Sincerity that people shouldn't have let go of.

The idea in Capitalist Realism is that there is no Capitalist ideology. It's already cynicism. I think that the danger is of a more generalized cynicism than any form of indoctrination. — thewonder

I think Mirowski does a much better job than Fischer, because it is more oriented towards a specific strand of market ideology that is currently pervasive and encompasses a lot of aspects of society all over the world, which is neoliberalism. It is now showing some signs of waning in the US, not so much in the EU. But it has been proclaimed "dead" many times before, so one need be careful here.

Friedman is a part of that group, but far from the most important or sophisticated member in terms of ideas, that would fall to the likes of Hayek, Ropke, Mises, Schumpeter and so on.

I do think that it is easy to engulf oneself in negativity and hopelessness, it is a real meaning-problem. But if we let it consume us, we get completely stuck. Not only in our actions, but in our capacity to use analytic reason.

User participation within the production of goods and services does offer a certain degree of choice. It's, of course, considerably more troubling when you think about companies collecting massive amounts of data to build profiles of people to know what to market them. The experience is very strange, almost akin to schizophrenia. It seems like the ads are speaking to you directly because they kind of are. — thewonder

Sure. Systems are way too complex and large to say, point blank: there's nothing good at all about them. Sometimes people manage to use aspects of this system, say Facebook or Twitter to organize against other powerful entities, as was seen on Occupy, for instance. So "choice" in itself is not bad in certain areas, in other areas the idea of "choice" obscures real alternatives, such as the case of healthcare in the US, versus a state-system, because markets wouldn't stand to make money.

I was just saying that it's as if you're not let to feel as you should about the human experience. There's no boundless joy, whimsical caprice, emotional depth, righteous indignation, or catharsis. There seems, to me, to be a somewhat deliberate attempt to disrupt how we naturally feel about things. That's what I'm saying bothers me the most. — thewonder

Yes, I think this is a problem too. Wallace was good about pointing this out. I mean, I think it still happens, but it can get co-opted quite easily. But I take your point.

I've never read Philip Mirowski, but may decide to look into him someday.

What I mean of Friedman is that, because his ideas were as a justification for doing so, he came to be associated with any number of covert actions and a rather spurious set of foreign policy initiatives in Central and South America. If you consider what his ideas actually are, it'd seem that were they to actually have been into place, the situation there, though still with certain predicaments, would be preferable to what exists now. United States collaboration with right-wing authoritarian regimes was born out of a cynical anti-democratic anti-Communism and not some form of genuine Neo-Liberalism.

I guess that I see the primary plight of the Liberal democratic project being that it hasn't been sincerely engaged in rather than of lais·sez-faire ideas in regards to the economy. There are all kinds of problems with Neo-Liberalism, but I don't think that it is really what to cite as what has made the Liberal democratic project, to me, at least, insufficient.

Yes, I think this is a problem too. Wallace was good about pointing this out. I mean, I think it still happens, but it can get co-opted quite easily. But I take your point. — Manuel

A person's way of life and relationship to the world can be very easily utilized in order to manipulate them. You should only really care about your way of life and relationship to the world, however. It's just something that you can't ever let go of.

If you consider what his ideas actually are, it'd seem that were they to actually have been into place, the situation there, though still with certain predicaments, would be preferable to what exists now. United States collaboration with right-wing authoritarian regimes was born out of a cynical anti-democratic anti-Communism and not some form of genuine Neo-Liberalism. — thewonder

The neoliberal project can never fully be realized, as with any other school of thought be it Marxism, Capitalism, Austrianism, Socialism or anything else. These doctrines can only be pushed so far. They can't get every single thing they want, but they can get a lot.

Friedman's ideas on markets are somewhat similar to Mises'. If freedom is taken to imply whatever you can purchase and nothing else, then sure, these figures are very much freedom oriented. But based on what you're saying, I don't think you or I are convinced that freedom is restricted to transactions.

There are all kinds of problems with Neo-Liberalism, but I don't think that it is really what to cite as what has made the Liberal democratic project, to me, at least, insufficient. — thewonder

Clearly not. It's extremely hard to point out all the malaise we see in society. I only choose neoliberalism because I think it captures a lot, but very far from all, aspects of society.

Take say pomo, supposedly it is very left wing. Maybe some aspects of it are. Other aspects of it seems to me to obscure reality rather than shed light on it. I have in mind pomo philosophy, not literature. I really like pomo lit, but not philosophy. The latter is often used as a critical lens which aims to elucidate almost everything.

But instead of doing that, I think it gets stuck in ever smaller units of power measurement, rendering its adherents to fight with each other on things that many people could not care less about. What reading of Marx is best? How many pronouns should we have? Should science become horizontal?

It has its uses in places to be fair. I think Foucault is interesting in part. But to be fair, a neoliberal analysis may also fall prey to this. If everything is reduced to creating a habitat for markets and creating a competitive consumer society, then it will miss aspects of society which are explicitly rejecting such an ideology.

And many other problems. A-one-size-fits-all approach just won't work, it will create ideologues, I think, more often than not.

A person's way of life and relationship to the world can be very easily utilized in order to manipulate them. You should only really care about your way of life and relationship to the world, however. It's just something that you can't ever let go of. — thewonder

You can only control yourself, and even that's hard. But trying to help others is self beneficial too. ;)

The world is as it is now and what is in the past is in the past, I guess. I'm just saying that there was something to The New Sincerity that people shouldn't have let go of. — thewonder

I very much agree. My feeling/stance (which is reductionary, as all relations to past movements inescapably are) is that New Sincerity, as a reaction to ironic saturation, often (perhaps inevitably) defined itself against that ironic saturation - and that led many (though not all) spiritual members of the movement to trade too heavily in ideas and performative rhetoric/style. Many, but not all. And even for the many, they weren't only doing this. I agree with you that there is a lot that's good there.

So: I think that sincerity (being-in-a-spiritual-and-emotional-place of sincerity) is something that happens at the level of being, rather than belief. Believing in sincerity is a good re-orientation, but getting to that state is arduous - and requires concrete practices (say: meditation, artistic mastery, community participation, so forth).

Again using my admittedly overly-broad brush, I think new sincerity could find new life by (gradually, patiently) incarnating its marquee ideas, if that makes sense.

(aside: your posts on this thread brimming with lived specificity (as with the salem example) are wonderful & lovely to read. There's a lot I'd like to better respond to, but I have limited bandwidth this week. Quickly, I find it serendipitous that you mention post-rock as a litmus test; I had a bit of an argument with a friend over Godspeed You! Black Emperor a few days ago- i was defending that style.)

I think that when anyone creates a general critique, it's bound to be somewhat limited. Even Foucault only points to so much of what there is of our general plight. It's always someone's take, to their limited experience, and limited by that account.

There's a difference between Postmodernism and Postmodernity. Postmodernism is kind of this vague empty-signifier to refer to contemporary theory. Postmodernity, depending upon which historian you ask, is either cited as having begun sometime in the 1920s or 1930s or following the Second World War. It just refers to our contemporary era.


I like your analysis and postulation of a concept of sincerity itself. Ideally, any good ethos ought to somehow manifest. I'm almost unsure as to what the reification of sincerity would actually be like, though must also assume that it happens all of the time. Perhaps, it's silly of me to think that there still needs to be some sort of artistic movement? I'd imagine that it'll be strange at first, a kind of speculative Pop philosophy, but could later develop into something that will much more nuanced, organic, and complex.

I am glad that you appreciate my anecdotes. I try to situate my theories to my own experience, perhaps to a point of excess. Thanks, though!

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a great act and one of the rare examples of the transmutation of Fascist symbolism within the music industry. The last album of theirs that I think that I listened to, though, was Luciferian Towers. The only qualm that I have with them is that they kind of inadvertently repopularized Black Metal, which would be fine were it to have only been a cult phenomenon, but did probably actually contribute to a certain degree of Fascist inclinations, particularly within the Anarchist community. You can't hold that against GSY!BE, though.


For almost everyone, in order to really be able to do anyone any good, you, yourself, have to be able to live well. You can't give someone a ride to the airport or a place to crash if you don't have a house or a car. You can't host events if you're not in good enough standing with members of the community who have the spaces to. Cultivating a good way of life does necessarily involve a community, but people too often believe that they can become the Schopenhauerian ascetics, your Mahatma Gandhis and political prisoners on hunger strike, rather than establishing themselves well enough to live well enough to be able to make a substantial difference in the world.

I don't know how well that explains that, and, so, will make another attempt.

In some sets of society, there's a problem of a generalized indifference and an unwillingness to participate within projects that can make a substantial difference in the world. People care about being thought of a cultivated and their social standing at art events more than they do with kind of a lot of more pertinent concerns that they could have. I think that anyone ought to be able to live their life, but there is a certain critique to make of people of class being relatively indifferent to what is going on in the world.

There is the inverse problem in others, however.

Within the anti-war, anti-work, and environmentalist anarchist movements, for instance, there came to be this idea of referring to someone who was homeless as if they were "homefree". What was good about this is that it helped to change the image that people had of the homeless. It also, however, created a very serious predicament of that people would just kind of throw their lives away in pursuit of an ostensive global squatter's insurrection. There would come a time in a person's life, where, were you to do them any good, you'd have to be kind of like, "Hey man, while I do understand that consider for this critique of the Sierra Club to be extraordinarily important, what you really kind of need to start thinking about right now is as to what you're going to when you get evicted from this squat." As you may note the intellectual effort put into retaining some of their ideas, you also might want to suggest that they eventually go to college. Things like tend to only really go over so well, though.

I don't know. While you shouldn't be selfish, I will say that failing to take care of yourself will leave you without the substantial means with which to make a difference, aside from that everyone really ought to be let to live well, anyways.

Yeah, that all makes sense. If you can't stand yourself in terms of being unable to cope with life, that should probably become a priority. If you are then are more-or-less well, then you can help or try to help other people. That's not controversial, I don't think.

As for the left you describe, yeah. It has many problems and is more fragmented than the right. It isn't entirely obvious when one should step in and help or leave others be. People's intuition differ on these topics - because they're complex.

As for postmodernism, that's one way to describe it, saying that it's the name for our era. Not intending to sound too much theoretical, but I don't think modernity ever finished, despite what is said about "the failure of the enlightenment" and so forth. It was a tremendous success, prior to that "The West" was in a state of near-total religious mania.

I don't think pointing to the World Wars or fascism is a fault of modernity, though the technological innovation used in missles and tanks may be counted as a consequence. As far as I can see, at least in WWII, the fascists were reverting to tribalism, not rationality. The enlightenment in this sense, never really finished and probably never will, if honest, open inquiry is to remain one of its goals.

But I know this last point is endlessly disputable.

I think that the historical debate on Postmodernity is mistaken in two regards. If you really wanted to be pessimistic, you should cite the outset of Postmodernity as having begun in 1883, a year to the day after Charles Darwin died, when Sir Francis Galton coined the term, "eugenics". You'd get the whole Industrial Revolution and subsequent genocides that way.

If you really wanted to be optimistic, you should cite it on the Tenth of December in 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified.

There are some who claim that Postmodernity didn't begin until sometime in the mid to late 1970s, probably either during the economic reforms of the People's Republic of China or with the creation of the internet. It all has to do with what this or that historian wants to say and why. They all kind of make sense in ways, and, at the same time, none of them do.

Japanese Imperialism, to my understanding, was, in part, a kind of "reactionary Modernism", as well as that Fascism itself had its roots within the "actual idealism" of Giovanni Gentile, and, so, I would think that it'd take a lot of your part to back up the claim that Modernity didn't culminate in the humanitarian catastrophe of the Second World War.

I don't think that the Age of Enlightenment per se can really be held responsible for the failure of the Modern historical project, though. For me, it was moreso born out of an incapacity to cope with a lack of divine order in the universe, of which the so-called "Age of Reason" had only so sufficiently addressed.

True, eugenics led to a horror show. But during the enlightenment, we already had phrenology, which was used to try and justify slavery. And before that, class was used as weapon for the nobility. So in this respect we've always had plenty of quite ugly things to point to.

It is correct that the UDHR was an important moment in history. We now simply have to live to its words. But this applies practically to all documents, notably to constitutions the world over. I know that Rorty mentioned that pomo was probably born sometime in the late 19th century.

I think the pomo that is most prevalent is the one that arose from France, with Lyotard. And then we also have Jameson, who simply declared we live in a pomo society. I think I find more continuities with the French pomo school than a larger historical one.

Nevertheless, Wallace had this newer tradition in mind when he spoke of pomo, I think. I take it to mean a total confusion in regards to our epistemic situation and a regarding of different stories as mutually legitimate. That's fine. But it can be taken too far, and then we get into stuff like "there is no objectivity", "truth is dead", etc.

That's too much. Heck Plato was dealing with people who played with words over 2000 years ago with the sophists. But the French pomo puts this on steroids, it seems to me.

Eh, I like a lot of French theory. To each to their own, though, I guess.

That's an interesting take on Wallace. Again, going back to D.T Max, he was asked at one point, I think it was in an interview, about one scene in Wallace's article on the cruise ship. Wallace was looking at the ocean and he was saying that the ocean was vast, dark and empty. Don't quote me strictly on that. But I believe he said something to that effect.

Max asks, was that Wallace simply describing what the ocean felt like to him or was that his depression talking? I don't know. What you say about Wallace constantly tormenting himself reminds me of that.

And I think this is true. It's hard to explain Wallace better than he explains himself, but I think one can say that his acute and amazing powers of observation and detail must have applied to everything, not only his short stories or his books, but to himself too. It's the price he had to pay for the gift he had.

Nevertheless, I still think sincerity is sincerity and that can be used in a perverse manner too. But by now, given how much literature has expanded, it's just extremely hard to come up with something new to say something tried and true in an original manner. So it's said "naively" as it were, and can come off as cliched. Too bad, but, then again, this is person-dependant. What I find to be just cheesy sentimentalism, others find profound. And what I find deep others find verbose or obscurantist. Oh well. — Manuel

I think the importance of 'vibe' is underestimated when it comes to literature (vibe is close to 'style', but its not quite style). Everything's been said, it's said, and maybe that's true - but still when you're chilling with friends (or having real talks with friends) its both an example of a thing thats happened a million times, and also incredibly much a never-happened-before flow. Good lit writers channel that unique flow using their hard-won technical skill and create a book. (some that come quickly to mind: Dubliners & Portrait of the Artist & Ulysses, To The Lighthouse, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Sutree, Remembrance of Things Past, Chekhov's short stories.)

coming-up with something new is hard/impossible because 'coming-up-with' is willing-the-new & you can't will flow. Good literature is flow married to technique. Novelty's a side-effect, like happiness. If you target happiness or novelty, you'll crash. Pursuing other stuff makes the rest come naturally, flow out organically.

(this is actually my criticism of later-pynchon. I think V is far and away his best book - the language is alive and vibrant, and the intellectual obsessions are a backbone instead of a smothering atmosphere. . Crying and Gravity's Rainbow are very good, but not quite as good (debatable, even to myself)- everything after (in my opinion) is just automated will, style & erudition (and I think this is why automation/control as evil plays a theme so much in Pynchon's work - projective). Mason & Dixon's period-specific riffs seem legit until you read him riffing on youth-culture in the same way in Bleeding Edge. It's a weird eye-opening moment when he begins to riff in his encyclopedic, knowing way on something you actually know. You realize the superficiality viscerally & then its hard to trust him on other periods. Since it's always night in the library's reading-room, the reclusive genius has to simulate the light.)

Yes. The idea is to say the same thing, in a profoundly different way. And style and vibe are very important.

As for Pynchon, I'd definitely agree that V. is his most fun work. Gravity's Rainbow obviously the most difficult, but perhaps his most wide ranging and profound. But I remember having to force myself to read 240 pages before I found a page that I could entirely follow. Granted, once he hits you with his incredible style, the book lifts off, pun intended.

I've heard Pynchon described as a "one-trick pony". This is perhaps not unfair. It's just that his trick is exceptional. Where I perhaps disagree with you a bit, is on Mason & Dixon. I think that even if he's riffing or not, there's evidence it took him over 20 years to write that book. The language displayed in that book is extraordinary and parts of that book are also magical.

One author, who is not well known at all, but who in my opinion writes like a mixture of Wallace and Pynchon + his own style is Jim Gauer, author of Novel Explosives. I think there's an argument for him being better than Pynchon and Wallace in some aspects, in that although his work is difficult, it is also very philosophical, it covers many topics and is probably the most fun book I've read, easily beating both mentioned authors in terms of fun factor alone while not sacrificing any depth.

The writing itself is subjective of course, some will prefer Wallace or Pynchon. It's a bit of a toss up for me in terms of style between the three.

It's crazy to think such a style of book could be exciting, profound and so so erudite. Yes I do propaganda for that novel. :razz: