IG-88

DontHate is somehow managing to out-awful herself on this page

Well you're right about this, at least.

Saying that a particular text or an author's body of work doesn't happen to conform to your interests or preferences, or creates an unpleasant experience for you when you try to read it -- sure, I don't think you can really argue about that. However, claiming that something is "aimless" or "pretentious" or that someone is an "idiot" or "hack" -- these are value judgements, and they can be debated.

I don't have anything to say about Eugenides' work or his Pulitzer, but do you consider Infinite Jest's treatment of emotional disorders, addiction and substance abuse to be "aimless virtuosity"? I'm surprised that someone who deplores "aimless virtuosity" would count him/herself as a Ben Marcus fan.

That's a cool, long list of authors. Would you describe David Foster Wallace's fiction as "realist"? Did he write in the "Balzacian mode"? Your facetious description of this type as "the next great (almost always already white) male novelist" seems to concern the way which these guys have been treated by literary journalists -- not the style or content of their work. I'm still not sure if the "realist dude-novel" refers to anything except a small, arbitrary group of authors you've decided you don't like.

What is a "realist dude-novel"? How does it differ from other genres of the contemporary novel?

So Dickens is a cheap sentamentalist, psychoanalysis is "unimpressive," Freud's no good because of the ways in which he has been "egregiously abused," Stein is unimportant, and Austen and Conrad are just plain boring.

FWIW, those GRE numbers are from 2003-2005. Also, a statistical average of such a small sample size is not very meaningful.

I see plenty of authors of primary texts being listed

Sorry I should probably quote this post in all of its bitterness:

So econosocio complains about ad hominem attacks and then proceeds to write a 250-word screed supported by little more than a stereotype of the female humanities scholar. Okay.

Gross.

Are applications with 12/15 deadlines due at 11:59pm that evening?

No it doesn't.

That cannot be true. It's my understanding that very few graduate students produce publishable work until they are at least a couple of years into their programs.