Dave Eggers returns

So also it feels like an American actor slipping in and out of a poor, say, Scottish accent.

I think it's an effective use of the parallel, it's a poetic image.
Other than that, yeah I agree with everything you said just about. Except for the pumping. And I think the "it" refers to the situation.

http://rakesprogress.typepad.com/

These words actually cause me more pain than anything else on the thread. (Not because of 'oh how the time has gone' nonsense but because the concept is annoying.)

xpost: Seriously? Infinite Jest is mind blowingly awesome and I will buy you a copy for you to read, if you will agree to try to read it.

It took me two times, too. The first time was when it first came out, I gave up after 25 pages. Then I tried it like 5 years later when I had very little else to do and it kicked my ass. I've been thinking about big books a lot lately, you have to put up with a LOT of bullshit (boring sections that would go on for a page at the most in a normal size book stretch on for 10 pages in big books) but in the end it is soooooo worth it. But if you don't want to put up with the footnotes and stuff I can see where it's offputting and annoying.

Seriously it's a really really awesome, hilarious (very very very funny) book.

Okay, I missed the nickname at first there. (Am I the only one to have read all the books in the Canopus in Argos series?)

xposts

The first 100 pages are rough(the Canadian spies bored me senseless). But now I can't stop reading it, to be honest.

waht

xpost- As for footnotes, the Filmography of James O. Incandenza is the best thing ever.

yeah jaymc, I hear you. Poor Nicholson Baker.

I was going to say. (The desk is right behind me to the left.)

I read somewhere that John Krasinski (Jim from The Office) is trying to put out a film version of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

In everyday conversation,I could say "She walked confidently down the street", "Confidently, she walked down the street", or "She walked down the street confidently". I'm sure one of those is more gramatically proper than another, but in the end, they all get the meaning across, they each have different rhythms that might sound more attractive at the moment of writing or saying it, so who cares?

It's like listening to music for notes that are out of the key instead of just letting yourself feel the emotion of it.

Reeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaallly? How deliciously perverse! (Sort of an essential part of the turn-off, personally.)

they all suck with the word 'confidently' in there

Yeah, but out of key notes jump out at you, and so does bad writing. That's the whole point.

ij, the thing is, always felt as sprawly and adolescent as its main character, and i guess read as a book being about that its pretty good, but when ppl. try to read more into it is when i go batty and get more turned off dfw qua dfw than i should.

always liked that "westward path of the empire" short story tho, as well as some of the other material in "girl with the curious hair."

now onto the thing about eggers putting adverbs at the end of sentences, repeatedly, delimited by a comma. doing so adds finality, firmly. it's as though the thought is complete and then as a coda, there's the afterthought, dangling. doing so interrupts the flow in the middle of paragraphs, jarringly, pointlessly. also, it implies that the closing adverb isn't central to the thought which isn't the case in the screaming sentence, irritatingly.

maria has. like ten times. but she's a freak. she tried to get me to read them and i looked at her like she was made out of the funny papers.

Ten times, I'm impressed. There are passages I still remember from when I read them as a teen.