Are you a David Foster Wallace fan? Most literary critics are it seems; most of his fellow writers, too. Whenever his name comes up, they wax rhapsodic about his prodigious talent and bemoan the tragic loss of that talent that occurred when Wallace was finally overcome by his depression and killed himself in 2008.
I admit that I totally missed out on the Wallace worship of the late 1990s and early 2000s. I was entirely ignorant of him. Obviously, my head was somewhere else at the time.
In fact the first time I really became aware of him was in late 2010 when I saw an article entitled "13 books that everyone says they have read - but haven't." I wrote a blog post about it in which I said that I had no intention of reading Infinite Jest, Wallace's book that was on the list.
But I felt bad about cavalierly dismissing a book that so many people seemed to adore and the next year my conscience - and my curiosity - got the better of me and I committed to reading it.
I didn't like it much.
Lately, I've been giving some thought to the book and wondering if perhaps I should give it another try. After all, all those very smart critics keep telling me what a wonderful, world-changing book it is. Did I utterly misjudge it?
Have you read Infinite Jest? If you have, I would be interested in your thoughts on it. Here's what I thought about it back in 2011.
~~~
June 28, 2011
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: A review
I will freely admit that I may just not be smart enough to understand this book. I've read a few reviews of it by people who obviously are more versed in modern literature than I, and, for the most part, those reviews have ranged from mildly positive to raves. Moreover, looking at Mr. Wallace's biography, one sees that he won multiple prizes for his writing and some of them were for this book. That biography also tells us that the themes and style which he used in his writing were metamodernism and hysterical realism. I would have to say that the emphasis was more on the hysterical than the realism.
The events of this book take place in the not-too-distant future, when Canada, Mexico and the United States have come together in an organization of North American states, abbreviated as O.N.A.N. (Wallace makes a fetish of using abbreviations, often without explaining what they mean.) It is a time when vast herds of rampaging feral hamsters overrun the wastelands of the Northeast.
There is no real protagonist here, no one that the reader can identify with and pull for. The action takes place at two main sites, the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House, a sanctuary for recovering addicts and the psychologically impaired.
Enfield was run by a genius named James O. Incandenza who ultimately ended it all by sticking his head in a microwave, but he is survived by three sons, one a pro-football punter, one a severely deformed child who is filming a documentary of his world, and one (Hal) who is a tennis prodigy who is also mentally gifted. To the extent that the book has a central character, it is Hal.
At Ennet, we see Joelle van Dyne, a recovering freebase habitue', and another addict named Gately. I could never really get a clear picture of either of them.
Tennis is an obsession of many who people these pages and long, tedious passages are devoted to the minutiae of the sport.
The action switches back and forth between the two main venues and sometimes veers off into the Arizona desert and introduces other characters who never develop or seem to have anything interesting to tell us.
More confusing still for the unwary reader is the fact that time is no longer measured in numerical years like 2011 or 1985. Now, the naming rights to years are bought by companies and products. Thus we have the Year of Depend Adult Undergarment or the Year of the Whopper or the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.
Parts of this book are beautifully written with a clarity that makes the reader long for more, but typically those passages are followed by page after page after page of what I can only describe as incomprehensible dreck. The book is more than a thousand pages long. One gets the impression that the editors were so intimidated by Wallace's genius that they were reluctant to suggest removing a single word. They did the reader no favor with their shyness.
My overall impression of the book was that it was written by a terribly confused and unhappy author. Was my impression influenced by the fact that I knew that Wallace suffered from depression and later killed himself? Maybe. But it seems clear to me - hindsight is 20/20 after all - that the seeds of his obsession with suicide are discernible here.
As I was slogging through this book, sighing and cursing with just about every page, my husband asked me, "With all the good books out there that would give you pleasure, why are you reading one that you clearly don't enjoy?" Good question. I had challenged myself to read the book and I stubbornly perserved until I had met my challenge. Or at least until I had turned every page.
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Showing posts with label David Foster Wallace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Foster Wallace. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Thursday, May 9, 2013
This is water
Graduation season is almost upon us. All over the country, students are finishing up years of study and will be going into the world to begin their adult lives. But before they can do that they have to endure the tradition of the commencement speech.
Most of those speeches are instantly forgettable. I certainly can't remember anything about mine that I heard all those years ago. But occasionally someone makes one that is worth remembering.
In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace made such a memorable speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. It has become something of a phenomenon and has been widely disseminated through audio tapes and videos.
Now someone has made a short movie utilizing long excerpts from the speech and, frankly, it's a gem. There is a lot of wisdom there. Watch and enjoy.
Hearing these words and watching the film make one even sadder to contemplate that wisdom from this man, juxtaposed against his own tragic end as a suicide three short years later. In his own life, it seems that he was unable to make the fortunate choice.
Most of those speeches are instantly forgettable. I certainly can't remember anything about mine that I heard all those years ago. But occasionally someone makes one that is worth remembering.
In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace made such a memorable speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. It has become something of a phenomenon and has been widely disseminated through audio tapes and videos.
Now someone has made a short movie utilizing long excerpts from the speech and, frankly, it's a gem. There is a lot of wisdom there. Watch and enjoy.
Hearing these words and watching the film make one even sadder to contemplate that wisdom from this man, juxtaposed against his own tragic end as a suicide three short years later. In his own life, it seems that he was unable to make the fortunate choice.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: A review
I will freely admit that I may just not be smart enough to understand this book. I've read a few reviews of it by people who obviously are more versed in modern literature than I, and, for the most part, those reviews have ranged from mildly positive to raves. Moreover, looking at Mr. Wallace's biography, one sees that he won multiple prizes for his writing and some of them were for this book. That biography also tells us that the themes and style which he used in his writing were metamodernism and hysterical realism. I would have to say that the emphasis was more on the hysterical than the realism.
The events of this book take place in the not-too-distant future, when Canada, Mexico and the United States have come together in an organization of North American states, abbreviated as O.N.A.N. (Wallace makes a fetish of using abbreviations, often without explaining what they mean.) It is a time when vast herds of rampaging feral hamsters overrun the wastelands of the Northeast.
There is no real protagonist here, no one that the reader can identify with and pull for. The action takes place at two main sites, the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House, a sanctuary for recovering addicts and the psychologically impaired.
Enfield was run by a genius named James O. Incandenza who ultimately ended it all by sticking his head in a microwave, but he is survived by three sons, one a pro-football punter, one a severely deformed child who is filming a documentary of his world, and one (Hal) who is a tennis prodigy who is also mentally gifted. To the extent that the book has a central character, it is Hal.
At Ennet, we see Joelle van Dyne, a recovering freebase habitue', and another addict named Gately. I could never really get a clear picture of either of them.
Tennis is an obsession of many who people these pages and long, tedious passages are devoted to the minutiae of the sport.
The action switches back and forth between the two main venues and sometimes veers off into the Arizona desert and introduces other characters who never develop or seem to have anything interesting to tell us.
More confusing still for the unwary reader is the fact that time is no longer measured in numerical years like 2011 or 1985. Now, the naming rights to years are bought by companies and products. Thus we have the Year of Depend Adult Undergarment or the Year of the Whopper or the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.
Parts of this book are beautifully written with a clarity that makes the reader long for more, but typically those passages are followed by page after page after page of what I can only describe as incomprehensible dreck. The book is more than a thousand pages long. One gets the impression that the editors were so intimidated by Wallace's genius that they were reluctant to suggest removing a single word. They did the reader no favor with their shyness.
My overall impression of the book was that it was written by a terribly confused and unhappy author. Was my impression influenced by the fact that I knew that Wallace suffered from depression and later killed himself? Maybe. But it seems clear to me - hindsight is 20/20 after all - that the seeds of his obsession with suicide are discernible here.
As I was slogging through this book, sighing and cursing with just about every page, my husband asked me, "With all the good books out there that would give you pleasure, why are you reading one that you clearly don't enjoy?" Good question. I had challenged myself to read the book and I stubbornly perserved until I had met my challenge. Or at least until I had turned every page.
The events of this book take place in the not-too-distant future, when Canada, Mexico and the United States have come together in an organization of North American states, abbreviated as O.N.A.N. (Wallace makes a fetish of using abbreviations, often without explaining what they mean.) It is a time when vast herds of rampaging feral hamsters overrun the wastelands of the Northeast.
There is no real protagonist here, no one that the reader can identify with and pull for. The action takes place at two main sites, the Enfield Tennis Academy and the Ennet House, a sanctuary for recovering addicts and the psychologically impaired.
Enfield was run by a genius named James O. Incandenza who ultimately ended it all by sticking his head in a microwave, but he is survived by three sons, one a pro-football punter, one a severely deformed child who is filming a documentary of his world, and one (Hal) who is a tennis prodigy who is also mentally gifted. To the extent that the book has a central character, it is Hal.
At Ennet, we see Joelle van Dyne, a recovering freebase habitue', and another addict named Gately. I could never really get a clear picture of either of them.
Tennis is an obsession of many who people these pages and long, tedious passages are devoted to the minutiae of the sport.
The action switches back and forth between the two main venues and sometimes veers off into the Arizona desert and introduces other characters who never develop or seem to have anything interesting to tell us.
More confusing still for the unwary reader is the fact that time is no longer measured in numerical years like 2011 or 1985. Now, the naming rights to years are bought by companies and products. Thus we have the Year of Depend Adult Undergarment or the Year of the Whopper or the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad.
Parts of this book are beautifully written with a clarity that makes the reader long for more, but typically those passages are followed by page after page after page of what I can only describe as incomprehensible dreck. The book is more than a thousand pages long. One gets the impression that the editors were so intimidated by Wallace's genius that they were reluctant to suggest removing a single word. They did the reader no favor with their shyness.
My overall impression of the book was that it was written by a terribly confused and unhappy author. Was my impression influenced by the fact that I knew that Wallace suffered from depression and later killed himself? Maybe. But it seems clear to me - hindsight is 20/20 after all - that the seeds of his obsession with suicide are discernible here.
As I was slogging through this book, sighing and cursing with just about every page, my husband asked me, "With all the good books out there that would give you pleasure, why are you reading one that you clearly don't enjoy?" Good question. I had challenged myself to read the book and I stubbornly perserved until I had met my challenge. Or at least until I had turned every page.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Infinite wordiness
Last year, I wrote a post here about a list I had seen of thirteen books that everyone says he/she has read but hasn't. One of the books on that list was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. At that time, I admitted my literary ignorance of the book and maintained that I would probably never read it. I didn't even know who David Foster Wallace was. That was the depth of my ignorance.
After writing that, I felt bad. Who was I to dismiss a book and an author that I didn't even really know anything about? So, I decided to learn about Wallace and his work.
I looked him up on Wikipedia and was appalled to learn that he had killed himself in 2008. He had suffered from severe depression for many years and had only been able to function with the help of medication.
I discovered some of his essays and found them to be well-written and interesting and to express sentiments with which I could agree. To make a long story short, I decided to put Infinite Jest on my "to be read" list.
Well, now, Wallace's editor has finished with Wallace's last work, an unfinished novel called The Pale King and it has been published to glowing reviews - just as Infinite Jest was. Last week, while on the road on vacation, I heard the editor reading an excerpt from the book and it was beautiful, really more poetry than prose. I decided to move Infinite Jest up on my list and this week I started reading it.
It is a daunting reading challenge, over 1000 pages of small font type, sentences that run on to paragraph-length and paragraphs that sometimes go on for a page or more. Moreover, it has some eccentric punctuation which is really a pet peeve of mine. (And what exactly did e e cummings have against capital letters anyway?)
I'm only a few chapters into the book so far. Some of the writing that I've encountered is luminous and some is just irritating, but, my goodness, it is wordy! Don't publishers use editors anymore, or were they so intimidated by Wallace's genius that they were afraid to suggest cutting anything? Oh, well, I will slog on and in the end, I will no longer be ignorant of David Foster Wallace and his work and I will have been able to check off another of those books that everyone says they have read, and I actually WILL have!
After writing that, I felt bad. Who was I to dismiss a book and an author that I didn't even really know anything about? So, I decided to learn about Wallace and his work.
I looked him up on Wikipedia and was appalled to learn that he had killed himself in 2008. He had suffered from severe depression for many years and had only been able to function with the help of medication.
I discovered some of his essays and found them to be well-written and interesting and to express sentiments with which I could agree. To make a long story short, I decided to put Infinite Jest on my "to be read" list.
Well, now, Wallace's editor has finished with Wallace's last work, an unfinished novel called The Pale King and it has been published to glowing reviews - just as Infinite Jest was. Last week, while on the road on vacation, I heard the editor reading an excerpt from the book and it was beautiful, really more poetry than prose. I decided to move Infinite Jest up on my list and this week I started reading it.
It is a daunting reading challenge, over 1000 pages of small font type, sentences that run on to paragraph-length and paragraphs that sometimes go on for a page or more. Moreover, it has some eccentric punctuation which is really a pet peeve of mine. (And what exactly did e e cummings have against capital letters anyway?)
I'm only a few chapters into the book so far. Some of the writing that I've encountered is luminous and some is just irritating, but, my goodness, it is wordy! Don't publishers use editors anymore, or were they so intimidated by Wallace's genius that they were afraid to suggest cutting anything? Oh, well, I will slog on and in the end, I will no longer be ignorant of David Foster Wallace and his work and I will have been able to check off another of those books that everyone says they have read, and I actually WILL have!
Saturday, September 11, 2010
David Foster Wallace - worth a second look
Recently, I wrote a post here about the 13 books that everybody says they have read but haven't. I had actually read seven of the books on the list, but one of the remaining six was a book that I could not remember having heard of. In fact, I could not remember having heard of the author either. That writer was David Foster Wallace and the book was Infinite Jest. It had been published and evidently made a big splash back in the mid 1990s when I, apparently, wasn't paying attention.
I commented in my post that I had no intention of reading the book, but I felt guilty about that. How could I dismiss a book and a writer that I didn't even know? So, I decided to find out about the writer and his work.
Reading about Wallace, the man, gave me a lot of empathy for him. He was almost terminally shy and suffered from depression. He was also quite a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, much of it highly praised and award-winning. He had a philosophical turn of mind and was very interested in philosophy and logic. In fact, he majored in English and philosophy at Amherst College. David Foster Wallace accomplished much in his too brief life. He was born in 1962 and died in 2008 by his own hand. The depression that had tormented his life had finally consumed it.
In researching Wallace, I found an essay that he had written about a year before he died. He wrote it for The Atlantic and I think it deserves a second look on this anniversary.
Are there some things worth dying for? Is an open and diverse society one of them? Will any of those draconian laws and events that Wallace mentioned in his essay actually make us any safer, or do they, in the end, only exacerbate the situation? Can we accept the fact that we will never be perfectly safe in this world and then go and live our lives joyfully, as if nobody hated us and wanted to destroy us? Is it possible for us to have an open and honest debate about this without resorting to political talking points that instantly shut down communication? These are some things that I think we should consider on September 11, 2010, as we remember the 2,973 who died that day, "democratic martyrs" and "sacrifices on the altar of freedom".
I think the proper response to all those deaths is not to say "Never again!" because, almost certainly, there will be an "again" some day. The proper response is to say that these martyrs to our open society shall not have died in vain - that we will continue to treasure our openness (And damn those, foreign or domestic, who would try to take it from us!) and make this society a shining light of diversity for all the world to see.
And, yes, I am putting Infinite Jest on my to be read list.
I commented in my post that I had no intention of reading the book, but I felt guilty about that. How could I dismiss a book and a writer that I didn't even know? So, I decided to find out about the writer and his work.
Reading about Wallace, the man, gave me a lot of empathy for him. He was almost terminally shy and suffered from depression. He was also quite a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, much of it highly praised and award-winning. He had a philosophical turn of mind and was very interested in philosophy and logic. In fact, he majored in English and philosophy at Amherst College. David Foster Wallace accomplished much in his too brief life. He was born in 1962 and died in 2008 by his own hand. The depression that had tormented his life had finally consumed it.
In researching Wallace, I found an essay that he had written about a year before he died. He wrote it for The Atlantic and I think it deserves a second look on this anniversary.
Just Asking
Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?* In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?
In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?
In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?
FOOTNOTES:
1. Given the strict Gramm-Rudmanesque space limit here, let’s just please all agree that we generally know what this term connotes—an open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist 10, pluralism, due process, transparency … the whole democratic roil.
2. (This phrase is Lincoln’s, more or less)
Are there some things worth dying for? Is an open and diverse society one of them? Will any of those draconian laws and events that Wallace mentioned in his essay actually make us any safer, or do they, in the end, only exacerbate the situation? Can we accept the fact that we will never be perfectly safe in this world and then go and live our lives joyfully, as if nobody hated us and wanted to destroy us? Is it possible for us to have an open and honest debate about this without resorting to political talking points that instantly shut down communication? These are some things that I think we should consider on September 11, 2010, as we remember the 2,973 who died that day, "democratic martyrs" and "sacrifices on the altar of freedom".
I think the proper response to all those deaths is not to say "Never again!" because, almost certainly, there will be an "again" some day. The proper response is to say that these martyrs to our open society shall not have died in vain - that we will continue to treasure our openness (And damn those, foreign or domestic, who would try to take it from us!) and make this society a shining light of diversity for all the world to see.
And, yes, I am putting Infinite Jest on my to be read list.
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