Reddit mentions of Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will

I view The Broom of the System as, like you said, him trying to prove to his professors just how smart he was. He had dropped out of Amherst twice due to depression and he had already written another thesis on philosophy (which you can apparently buy [here] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fate-Language-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0231151578))- he really had to step up to the plate to prove himself as a writer. Nevertheless, I view it as an admirable feat of writing, especially at such a young age. I think it is important to keep in mind just how much writers progress over time, as they gather life experience, knowledge, and skill.

Lots of other writers kind of do something similar. Take a look at James Joyce's Dubliners. Compare that to Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. It is a walk in the park in comparison to what those two texts offer to the reader, and it sometimes seems downright amateurish. However. The text itself is still pretty good. And even in a non-literary genre, authors still grow amazingly quickly. JK Rowling's skills increased greatly over the Harry Potter series, both in terms of prose and plot complexity.

I don't know, man. The Broom was not my favorite, but I respect it because DFW did it when he was only 22 or 23. Besides, it would be unfair to DFW to hold all of his work to the level of Infinite Jest or Hideous Men, only to excuse The Broom as nothing special; it was good for what he was doing at the time, and he grew beyond it.

tl;dr- writers grow up and get better.

the funny thing is, the dude the quote is from wrote a book on that too

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0231151578

I think by the whole ‘nobody is an atheist’ thing, he means that nobody is without a captivation toward something exterior or bigger than themselves (i.e. God, a project, a deity, sports team etc.). All people are worshipers of something. Therefore, there are no people who are without or indifferent to (a—) an object (God) (—theist) of worship/attention/praise. Nothing about this is weak logical reasoning—you just have to see into the meaning through how the terms are used. That’s a very brief Wittgensteinian analysis of this, at least, who was a great philosopher and was a massive influence on DFW. Though I could be mistaken here, since you’re use of ‘literal’ might be more narrow. Although, I don’t see what’s not literally obvious about what he was intending.

As to you’re later point about him not being a philosopher nor a logical thinker, I’d really push back. The dude had an undergrad in philosophy, published work (see here) and went to graduate school for a short time—all of which was primarily centered around symbolic logic and semantics.

My interpretation of what you were getting into could be wrong and perhaps you have countless other examples of his logical lacking ‘rigour.’ I realize that this is the exact kind of fan-boy analysis one would expect to defend DFW. This isn’t meant to be that. I just think you’re mistaken.