I know you don’t have a lot of time to read. You have classes, studying and whatever. You also have a social life and “friends.” But being someone who also has those things (I swear -- all of them), let’s talk about this, you and me. I’ve got some book suggestions, and you’ve got at least an hour or two to spare. So because this month has been pretty heavy with news related to him, we’re gonna talk about David Foster Wallace, and coincidentally it’s one of my favorite things to do. Nope, that’s a lie, it’s actually my favorite thing to do.
Four years ago on Sept. 12, David Foster Wallace (often truncated to DFW in an endearingly unspoken literary community custom) hung himself in his patio, leaving behind his wife, his dogs, a manuscript and a devastated following. People got emotional. He was 46. To those who did not personally know him (aka most of his fans), it was like losing someone close to them. It was difficult not to feel like you knew him, given the way he wrote, which was like a particularly smart friend telling you about complex and interesting things, in the way that good friends do: patiently and kindly. People still miss it.
This past month there’s been a surge of nostalgia for David Foster Wallace, which hit its crescendo with the publishing of a biography released fittingly close to the anniversary of his death. Upon reading the biography, fellow writer Bret Easton Ellis launched a 700 character rejection of DFW and his fans over Twitter. The New Yorker, in response to both anniversary and biography, launched “DFW Week” on one of their blogs.
The hyper-nostalgic literary community shows the clearly divided faction system among the people who know about DFW: Those who feel very deeply, specifically, and usually verbally about him and his works, and those who agree with Bret Easton Ellis. That is, he’s sentimental, overrated and a means by which people (specifically those bleeding heart liberal academic types) make themselves feel smart. I guess neither is particularly right, especially because he’s dead and has no way to prove anything with more work to judge. Being a bleeding heart liberal sucker myself, I’m drawn to the former category.
I picked up “Infinite Jest” during winter break two years ago thinking I could probably get it done in a few weeks. I was wrong, because it is a 1,000 pages. But in the span of a 1,000 pages, I went through a few emotionally troubling but eventually gratifying stages, outlined thusly:
Stage 1: “This is actually the most pretentious, dense, self-indulgent paperweight I’ve ever read. I get it, you can juggle really long sentences, and sentences within sentences.” And then I checked on Google to see if people agreed with me. I nodded very fervently and seriously to the people on Yahoo! Answers. This is disconcerting in retrospect.
Stage 2: “Oh, yeah, I’ve felt that before. I guess that is what that feels like. Actually that’s exactly what that feels like. How did he make sense of that with language?”
Stage 3: “Oh my God, that was the most intensely I’ve ever felt because of a sentence.” And then I put the book down and looked pensively out a window for a while.
The best part being that because “Infinite Jest” is a book, it’s a whole huge collection of sentences, and so I went through my self-conceived stage 3 repeatedly until I finished the book. It’s overwhelming, much like DFW’s writing, which is densely packed and endless. It’s, not to dissuade anyone, a certain type of highly verbal assault.
Don’t worry, though; it’s not exactly the same with all of his work. His Kenyon College Commencement Speech, “This is Water,” is far more direct and clear, without losing the same precision, sensitivity and thoughtfulness that carries through to his other works.
Check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vET9cvlGJQw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEjVnB7AeBQ&feature=relmfu
So, look. As a friend, I’m suggesting you give some of his work a try. At the very least, it’ll give you something to talk about with someone, specifically liberal artsy grad students. At the very most, it will change how you think. There’s all kinds of ways to try him out, for all amounts of time a person can devote to reading:
• If you haven’t felt the sinking shame of procrastination in a while, definitely try “Infinite Jest.”
• If you’ve been looking for something good to read, but don’t want to devote months of time on a book, try one of his anthologies of fiction, like “Oblivion,” or essays, like “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Here’s an essay about living in the Midwest and tennis and another essay that chronicles him going on a cruise (the title essay of the anthology I suggested), which is shows his humor at its best.
• If you require coffee to function because you have been conscious for 24 plus hours, try a YouTube video of him reading his work or some flash fiction.
• If reading’s for losers and nerds, then you can watch the movie version of his book “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” It’s on Netflix’s Instant Queue. But you don’t get a link.
**** Bonus ****
Here’s John Krasinski doing a reading of DFW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_zBfxma9Po
So, yes. Dreamy.
David Foster Wallace in his natural habitat.
