--- title: "2 Bad writing Quotes By David Foster Wallace" description: "2 Bad writing quotes by David Foster Wallace. Plus more from David Foster Wallace and more Bad writing sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg" --- > [“Interviewer ...In the case of "American Psycho" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain--or that Ellis was being cruel the way you said serious artists need to be willing to be. DFW: You're just…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psycho-i-felt-there-was-something/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg) > [“If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and not recognizably human, etc.--is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writing-flat-characters-a/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writi_1250894.jpg) ## Other authors on Bad writing ## More by David Foster Wallace > [“I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/i-felt-more-solidly-composed-now-that-i-was-horizontal-i-was/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/we-all-have-our-little-solipsistic-delusions-ghastly-intuitions-of/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/it-s-no-accident-that-in-a-bureaucracy-getting-fired-is-called/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [Footnote: 79) The anchor is gigantic and must weigh a hundred tons, and -- delightfully -- it really is anchor-shaped, i.e. the same shape…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/footnote-79-the-anchor-is-gigantic-and-must-weigh-a-hundred-tons-and/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity. The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/the-paradoxical-intercourse-of-audience-and-celebrity-the-suppressed/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“I am coming to see that the sensation of the worst nightmares, a sensation that can be felt asleep or awake, is identical to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/i-am-coming-to-see-that-the-sensation-of-the-worst-nightmares-a/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“He cranks the condo’s AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/he-cranks-the-condo-s-ac-way-down-at-night-and-still-most-mornings/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/to-me-at-least-in-retrospect-the-really-interesting-question-is-why/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“If you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough—like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say—it is only…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/if-you-re-subjected-to-enough-great-salesmen-and-salespitches-and/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/why-is-the-truth-usually-not-just-un-but-anti-interesting/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“She almost reminds the engineer of certain types in high school whom everyone adored because you sensed it made no difference to them whether…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/she-almost-reminds-the-engineer-of-certain-types-in-high-school-whom/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [To be, in a word, unborable… It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/to-be-in-a-word-unborable-it-is-the-key-to-modern-life-if-you-are/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“It is within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/it-is-within-your-power-to-experience-a-crowded-loud-slow-consumer/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [“The happy pleasure of the person alone, yes?”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/the-happy-pleasure-of-the-person-alone-yes/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) > [There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/there-is-such-a-thing-as-raw-unalloyed-agendaless-kindness/) [David Foster Wallace](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-foster-wallace/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/#itemlist", "name": "2 Bad writing Quotes By David Foster Wallace", "numberOfItems": 2, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Interviewer ...In the case of \"American Psycho\" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain--or that Ellis was being cruel the way you said serious artists need to be willing to be. DFW: You're just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it's a kind of black cynicism about today's world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what's always distinguished bad writing -- flat characters, a narrative world that's cliched and not recognizably human, etc. -- is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. You can defend \"Psycho\" as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social problems, but it's no more than that.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "David Foster Wallace" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psycho-i-felt-there-was-something/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Interviewer ...In the case of \"American Psycho\" I felt there was something more than just this desire to…” — David Foster Wallace", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and not recognizably human, etc.--is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then [Bret] Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. There's some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage… The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent. You burn with hunger for food that does not exist. A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "David Foster Wallace" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-foster-wallace/if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writing-flat-characters-a/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writi_1250894.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writi_1250894.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/ea7/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_if-what-s-always-distinguished-bad-writi_1250894.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and not…” — David Foster Wallace", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/", "name": "Bad writing Quotes by David Foster Wallace", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c46/david-foster-wallace-161_bad-writing_interviewer-in-the-case-of-american-psyc_891511.jpg" }, "description": "2 Bad writing quotes by David Foster Wallace. Plus more from David Foster Wallace and more Bad writing sayings from other authors.", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/#breadcrumb" } }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Quotes", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Topics", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/categories/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Bad Writing", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "David Foster Wallace", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/bad-writing/david-foster-wallace/" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "publisher": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } }, { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/themes/sq/assets/icons/icon-512.png", "width": 512, "height": 512 } } ] } ```