{"id":10857,"date":"2016-04-29T06:25:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T11:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hilbertthm90.wordpress.com\/?p=4118"},"modified":"2022-06-21T12:30:11","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:30:11","slug":"examining-pros-prose-part-9-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/2016\/04\/examining-pros-prose-part-9-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Examining David Foster Wallace’s Prose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Although David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite writers of all time, I’ve put off examining his prose until late in this series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did this on purpose, because the writers we have looked at “follow the rules.” They use clean, minimalist prose. It’s easy to see and articulate why it is good. It’s what we should all learn to do before developing our own styles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know this is a bit of controversial advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many people say to develop your own style from the start and not waste time trying to emulate famous writers. It’s not so much that I think one should be able to emulate it, but that one should understand what makes simple prose effective before layering in complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve read about how DFW taught writing and believe he took this same approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can’t build a house without a foundation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think that if anyone tries to write in the way of DFW without first understanding the basics, it will come off as a complete mess. So consider yourself warned, but do whatever you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To borrow a term from Greg Carlisle, DFW’s prose has an elegant complexity<\/em><\/strong> to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of this post is to try to get at what this could mean (though Carlisle was referring to the overall structure of Infinite Jest<\/em> with that term). <\/p>\n\n\n\n David Foster Wallace’s prose still has the elegance of the previous writers from this series but with a layered complexity built on top of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDavid Foster Wallace Prose Style<\/h2>\n\n\n\n