Sẵn Sàng Cho Mọi Việc (Tái Bản) tải xuống LIT miễn phí

Dillon Beagley _illon_eagley — Enjoyed it even though proper historical backgroud is needed to understand it

Dmitry Pilnik pilnik — Usually when some undergraduate English major brings up DFW to me at a keg party I tend auto-file them under "douchebag." Because, let's be honest people - Infinite Jest was profoundly not good. But everything that's irritating about Wallace's thoroughly self-aware postmodern writing style is somehow much more stomachable in smaller bites. Brief Interviews has its highs and lows - the quality is extremely variant between the pieces - but when it's on, it is ON. In fact, Brief Interviews holds moments where Wallace is actually transcendant. If you're looking to buy or borrow this book, take my advice : do not read the whole thing. First, read the interviews. They're the clear highlights, with the last one being, in my opinion, one of the best pieces of short fiction written in the last couple of decades. If you're feeling it at that point, then dive in to the other ones - Octet is a particularly strong, as is Suicide as a Sort of Present. A good percentage of the stories use painfully self aware "tricks" to "challenge" the modern concepts of narration, character, structure, etc -- "tricks" that are now being replicated unendingly in sophomore fiction writing seminars across the world, I'm sure. It's not particularly clever and for the most part detracts from the writing. But in the Interviews, Wallace manages the dialectic narration style more or less beautifully, somehow capturing both the worst and best traits of his characters. These men are hideous; even worse, they are hideously realistic, and I often found my pity or empathy overwelming my initial stomach-churning disgust. These portraits are intimate and familiar; it's like listening in on a conversation of an ex-boyfriend. The last interview is off-the-charts good, mostly because it manages to be both grotesque and quite funny. This is the DFW that people obsess over - tossing around references, satirizing modern society, soaking dialogue in irony. That story alone is worth the price of the book. If you end up loving this book - more power to you. DFW has definitely done things to earn his widespread critical acclaim. Just don't name-drop him to pick up girls at parties, because that makes you an asshole.

Shivani Goel shivi1 — Well, gee - I finished all but the last 35 pages (WHY does a writer of history need to write 40 pages about WHY history is written?) - and the only thing I can say is, there's 6 months of my life I'll never get back. Now, that may be due partly to the fact that I just don't know that much about the Napoleonic era, or Russian history or social structure pre-revolution, so it wasn't quite as compelling as my usual 15-16th century European (English & French) fare. It might be due to the fact that there were far too many characters that went nowhere, added virtually nothing to the story, and thus made it much longer than necessary. But mostly, I think it's due to the fact that, aside from about 30-40 pages in the middle somewhere, I could care less about ANY of those people. 3 pages in, and I was sound asleep - thus the inordinate amount of time spent trying to plow through it. Not too sure why this is considered a "classic" or the "ultimate" - it was flat and meandering and seemed to be asking the entire time, "Why am I bothering to do any of this?" That's a good question. If I am going to read a book, it has to grab me at some point - like a Rutherfurd or M. George tome; this did not grab me, and I literally gave it EVERY opportunity. The only reason I finished it (and even though I didn't bother with the last 35 pages, I DO consider this a finish) is because I refused to let this book beat me - and I thought, maybe, it would eventually turn out to be Amazing; I was disappointed. I KNEW I should have picked up Anna Karenina instead...

Ludi Licious _udi_icious — A page-turner to the end!