Oh, thank you very kindly! One does one's humble best.

I do wish to note that, when I wrote the comment to which you reply, I hadn't yet read far enough into the thread to encounter the many people saying "Oh, you just have to power through the first {100,300,...} pages, and then it gets amazing!" Such claims for Infinite Jest are new to me, and it's an argument to which I'm not without sympathy; I'm forced to consider the possibility that I've judged the book too harshly, and that this may be a case where I'd be well served to suspend the usual criteria by which I decide that an author is wasting my time.

(And I have to say, that cruise review piece you linked is doing a good job winning me over, too. Thanks for that!)

i nearly posted an almost identical comment as you; then i thought, well this person is probably chair of the Contemporary Literature Dept at Amherst, etc. so one should expect insight like this

Not that I don't appreciate the thought, but given what I know of academia, I think I'm more horrified than flattered. The banal enormities one must no doubt both suffer and inflict, to achieve tenure in the humanities...no, thanks. If I'm to wind up in a hell of my own devising, I should at least like to hope I've the wit to make it a livelier one than that.

You do have a very, uh, 'Literature Department' way of communicating though, surely you're aware of that? I figured you were doing it to make a point...

But so anyways, by all means write exactly as you feel like writing. I'm a huge fan of DFW, for example, precisely because he is all fancy and colloquial at the same time, which happens to tickle my fancy quite a bunch. I just wanted to point it out.

Do you mean by that to say I write like a pretentious ass? Because if so, well spotted! I'm absolutely a pretentious ass. Like any such, I thrive best well away from others of my ilk, because we can't help striking sparks off one another; based on what I've seen of Eng lit academia, I tend therefore to think it is the wrong hothouse for me.

I still don't get how being a pretentious ass and wanting to distance yourself from your ilk is best achieved by emulating their style.

Either you don't give a shit about 'them' and write as pretentiously as you desire, or, like myself, you adjust your style to distance yourself from 'them' because you dislike the association.

As it is, it's rather confusing to me because I can't tell the difference between you and the 'Eng lit academia' you seem to wish to avoid.

All that said: I don't think you write like a pretentious ass and I feel anyone should communicate however they want as long as the message comes across. And personally I like your style. So rock on, I guess :). But it's essentially what DFW is doing too, I think.