View Full Version : David Foster Wallace
Mirabell
14-Sep-2008, 03:39
David Foster Wallace, maybe the best American writer of his generation and one of the best American writers alive, is dead.
Writer David Foster Wallace found dead - Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wallace14-2008sep14,0,7461856.story)
I wanted to post this in our DFW thread and realized we, for whatever strange reason, do not have one. Situation rectified, I want to express my shock and grief.
Wrote an insipid obit-ish post at my blog (http://shigekuni.blogspot.com/2008/09/david-foster-wallace-went-away.html) and getting drunk now.
fuck.
Terrible news. Beyond my own selfish sadness, I really feel terrible thinking about his wife who discovered the body.
fuck indeed.
spooooool
14-Sep-2008, 17:28
It's his wife i keep thinking of now
Mirabell
14-Sep-2008, 17:50
would you call him selfish for doing that? I'm just wondering. The net is full of strange attacks against him.
spooooool
14-Sep-2008, 17:55
I wish he hadn't, but i don't see that it's for me to be angry for her. The net is too full of people being greedy about another person's grief. I'm very very sad that he's not here anymore
Mirabell
14-Sep-2008, 18:01
When a writing writer goes away it's like this hole in the air, this interrupted trajectory of a great mind. Looking at the fragments of a dead writer, such as Bachmann's last novels/poems makes that trajectory palpable. A teacher once, when I was trying to digest Sylvia Plath's suicide, proposed this world view to me: the line that leads from someone's birth to their suicide is not an interrupted line but a clear line, and the writing is part of that trajectory. If the person wasn't suicidal, their writing would be different. You can't get one without the other.
Mirabell
14-Sep-2008, 18:56
Kakutani's obit
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15kaku.html?hp
spooooool
14-Sep-2008, 21:04
i think the teacher was muddling two, three things, i agree that it's hard to fathom the Sylvia we know without the suicide. That isn't for me the same thing as atrajectory, a clear line, which is an assertion after the fact, only seems inevitable because theyre able to say it There's a bit early on in "phenomenology of perception" when Merleau-Ponty talks about people behaving in a certain way and afterwards attributing their attributing those behaviours to their character. So i think i think that people just are, and to look for reason is understandable but reason is oftentimes exhausted by "stuff"
Patrick Murtha
14-Sep-2008, 21:35
What a terrible sadness this is. It has been now been reported in the blogosphere that Wallace spoke to a friend of suicidal impulses early in his publishing career, and actually considered checking himself into a hospital for observation at one point. I have also seen it suggested, on what basis I'm not sure, that Wallace suffered from bi-polar disorder.
Whatever the truth of these or other observations, it is possible that Wallace lived with this tendency for a long time. We will probably learn more in the coming days. Having lived with a suicidal partner, and having suffered from acute depression and suicidal thoughts myself, I do not think it is fair of anyone to suggest that Wallace acted selfishly. But no suicide is inevitable; much can be done to pull people through, and there are more resources to assist in that way than there ever have been. Whatever Wallace did to reach out for help, it is not unreasonable to wish that he had done that much more.
David Foster Wallace, [...] one of the best American writers alive, is dead.
He would have appreciated that phrasing, I think.
Caleb Crain on an interview 5 yrs ago:
Steamboats Are Ruining Everything: "The great postmodern uncertainty that we live in" (http://www.steamthing.com/2008/09/the-great-postm.html)
Patrick Murtha
16-Sep-2008, 01:55
Apparently he did try quite a lot. I read today that he had several stays in psychiatric hospitals over the years, and the New York Times obituary described Wallace's anguish in some detail:
His father said Sunday that Mr. Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years and that it had allowed his son to be productive. It was something the writer didn?t discuss, though in interviews he gave a hint of his haunting angst...
James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor?s suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said.
?He was being very heavily medicated,? he said. ?He?d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn?t stand it anymore.?
Mirabell
16-Sep-2008, 21:29
three obits:
decent
Conversational Reading: David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008) (http://www.conversationalreading.com/2008/09/david-foster-wa.html)
good
paperpools: oblivion (http://paperpools.blogspot.com/2008/09/oblivion.html)
excellent
Tabula Rasa: Rollercoaster ride - un petit au revoir (http://table-rase.blogspot.com/2008/09/rollercoaster-ride-un-petit-au-revoir.html)
Best:
Inside Higher Ed (http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/09/17/mclemee)
To be fair I'm being cheeky and not really comparing. :)
Another from a few years back: Larry McCaffery, "An Interview with DFW (http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/catalog/show_comment/240)" in Review of Contemporary Fiction (via Conversational Reading (http://esposito.typepad.com/))
I'm afraid I nothing about David Foster Wallace, except what I read on the Toomas Vint thread. Wallace wrote two novels, three short-story collections and committed suicide on account of depression, so much I know, but those who are more knowledgeable than the Wikipedia could write a little about him here.
Wikipedia:
David Foster Wallace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace)
Wallace should not be mixed up with Toomas Vint, an author who has written some eight novels, several collections of short-stories, since the 1970s, and is still alive.
Mirabell
21-Nov-2008, 22:23
you know nuthin 'bout dfw? the dfw thread we already have could have set you straight
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/4285-david-foster-wallace.html
further down there are a few good obits which are good in summing up his writing and career.
I've now read the infinitely jestful article on the net and the Wiki article on him. I have decided that his type of manic hopping from subject to subject is not for me.
But as I was saying about Toomas Vint...
Well hijacked. So come on then, Toomas Vint...
Stewart
25-Nov-2008, 16:25
Let's keep Vint to his own thread (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/5869-toomas-vint.html). ;)
miobrien
01-Mar-2010, 01:20
Anyone here a fan of David Foster Wallace, the American writer? He died back in the fall of 2008 (committed suicide), sadly enough, but is one of my favorite writers. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction, though I think he considered the former his main interest, and the latter simply a paid break. Interestingly enough, while his fiction has its detractors and critics, almost everyone I've encountered praises his nonfiction. He is normally described as a postmodernist, though his writing is more nuanced than that: postmodernist, metafictional, but also a reaction against these genres, and altogether grounded in a very empathetic, moralistic approach to fiction. His posthumous novel, The Pale King, is coming out in 2011. Excerpts from it have appeared in The New Yorker and Harper's. Anyway, if you're interested in DFW, let's discuss!
Bottle Rocket
01-Mar-2010, 02:11
I always get somewhat suspicious when a guy like DFW comes along: he seems so perfect and does all sorts of cool stuff almost like natural, as when he uses inline footnotes, which strikes me as an improvement but not a one-up on Nicholson Baker.
But I really enjoyed INFINITE JEST, and I'm reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
It's really terrible he hanged himself.
:( BRocket :(
Stiffelio
01-Mar-2010, 04:12
I am very curious about DFW. All my Lit/Bookie friends who've read him say he's amazing. I have bought Infinite Jest but, at more than a 1000 small-print pages, I view reading it as a daunting enterprise. I must find a relaxed period of time to tackle it.
I always get somewhat suspicious when a guy like DFW comes along: he seems so perfect and does all sorts of cool stuff almost like natural, as when he uses inline footnotes, which strikes me as an improvement but not a one-up on Nicholson Baker.
As a sweeping generalization, I'd say Baker tends towards the smaller issues, whereas Wallace tends to go for the bigger ones.
But I really enjoyed INFINITE JEST, and I'm reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
If your Wittgenstein's up to scratch, you should love The Broom of the System. But if it's not, you should still enjoy it anyhow.
It's really terrible he hanged himself.
Of course, but then he had suffered from depression many years, so it wasn't a great surprise.
These are a few comments I made on bits of the non-fiction of Wallace (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/search?q=foster+wallace).
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
I am very curious about DFW. All my Lit/Bookie friends who've read him say he's amazing. I have bought Infinite Jest but, at more than a 1000 small-print pages, I view reading it as a daunting enterprise. I must find a relaxed period of time to tackle it.
Daunting is the right word, but stick with it and it really pays dividends. I always recommend a pre-reading of Stephen Burn's short, scholarly David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide: it's fascinating, and very rewarding.
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/)
Bottle Rocket
01-Mar-2010, 20:07
There was also a lovely story in the New Yorker called All That (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/14/091214fi_fiction_wallace), published a year or so after his death; they also did Good People (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/02/05/070205fi_fiction_wallace) and Wiggle Room (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace).
... which in no way "summarize" Wallace, but they show some of his writer's chops: I particularly like his Scientific Method: the Remix in All That ...
The one thing I recall as "difficult" was switching among major storylines; you need more than Thomas the Tank Engine and Sir Topham Hat to get you from the Effield Tennis Academy to Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and back (and forth and back add forth)
(But as lionel says, "Great book!!) ... also one more step up the tree toward High Pynchon, John the Divine, and Tristram Shandy. And INFINITE JEST, too
:) BRocket :)
Thanks for these links, Bottle. I think what shines through David Foster Wallace's writing, fictional or non-fictional, is in essence two things:
1. His ability to empathize with anyone in perhaps any situation - in 'Up , Simba', for instance, he even had me sympathetically looking at things through John McCain's eyes! (Yes, he's that good.)
2. His ability to make anything - yes, absolutely anything - strangely fascinating.
The world has lost a great writer. And a great human being.
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
I've just been reminded of how amusing the Toomas Vint thread here - http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/writers/5869-toomas-vint.html - gets around #25 onward, when David Foster Wallace starts to take over: a very funny moment.
In the past, I've always found this Wallace site very useful, although I've not looked at it recently:
The Howling Fantods! David Foster Wallace News, Info and Links. - Home (http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/)
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Stiffelio
02-Mar-2010, 04:25
Daunting is the right word, but stick with it and it really pays dividends. I always recommend a pre-reading of Stephen Burn's short, scholarly David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide: it's fascinating, and very rewarding.
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/)
Is this essay somehow downloadable for free?
Is this essay somehow downloadable for free?
I don't think so, but you should be able to find a copy very cheaply through www.bookfinder.com (http://www.bookfinder.com).
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Bottle Rocket
05-Mar-2010, 14:54
I think Wallace was the real thing, and it's a credit to him that he held out so long. His depression and long psychiatric history were known but generally treated as private; he didn't talk about it afaik. People close to him -- I never met the man, honest! -- were aware, just as Spalding Gray's family and close friends must have been, but there's just no way to know exactly when such a person is just normally bummed and when they're one window away from flying away forever. What people who haven't experienced the feeling can't really understand is that suicides (smart, deliberate ones like Wallace or maybe Walter Benjamin) have gotten to a point of despair where cruelty and feelings and hopes and everything literally overwhelm you and you feel you cannot escape this anxiety except by death.
Bear in mind that over the last 100 years or so, we have seen Moros and Marines and SS-men and Red Guards and Baader-Me******s and stupid, morally anaesthetized kids horsing around with digital cameras and mindless humiliation at Abu Ghraib. Mind you, I'm no apologist for the barbarians who cut peoples' heads off on camera either; I'd kill any of them in a flash. But unimaginably scary stuff gets done, even by the "good guys." You start wondering who's crazy, because your own beliefs seem so far out of kilter with what supposedly "normal" people do that somebody simply has to be lying or deluded.
But I think Wallace's work speaks for itself -- he is curious, and engaging, and thoughtful. Sometimes he says kind of weird stuff, but he's hardly ever ever ever mean-spirited, and if you have the patience and stamina to follow him you'll learn all kinds of stuff.
By all accounts he was a generous man with his time, and his talent, and such of himself as he could master. His death is certainly a tragedy for those who loved him and for those who love his work, but I think he might see it as a relief for himself.
:( BRocket :(
What people who haven't experienced the feeling can't really understand is that suicides (smart, deliberate ones like Wallace or maybe Walter Benjamin) have gotten to a point of despair where cruelty and feelings and hopes and everything literally overwhelm you and you feel you cannot escape this anxiety except by death.
Maybe I've missed something here, but I can't understand what was 'smart' about Wallace's suicide. I can see that he achieved what he wanted to do, OK, but no matter what state his mind was in, was it really 'smart' to leave the mess for his wife to find?
blog (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
but no matter what state his mind was in, was it really 'smart' to leave the mess for his wife to find?
Come on, Lionel. You once said you worked with the mentally ill, I think you should be a little more understanding. Being "smart" has nothing to do with it. Apparently he'd been suffering from depression for a long time and doing his best to cope - he seems to have been an essentially loving kind of person who didn't want to hurt anyone else and so put on a brave face. His state of mind when he made the decision to end his life was probably not rational, as you or I would see it, but it would have been to him.
There comes a time for such severely depressed people when suicide seems like the best thing to do for everyone involved.
BRocket
By all accounts he was a generous man with his time, and his talent, and such of himself as he could master. His death is certainly a tragedy for those who loved him and for those who love his work, but I think he might see it as a relief for himself.I agree.
Being "smart" has nothing to do with it.
That's exactly what I was trying to say.
Infinite Jest will always have a special place in my heart for being the first really really amazing, great, spectacular classic novel I ever read that was actually linked to the world I live in. At least thats how I felt. Its as if Thomas Pynchon was fifty years younger, knew what hip hop was and had realized that smoking weed is something that only high-shcool kids can do with dignity. I dont know, its hard to explain. Thats why I relly wish he was still alive because he was one contemporary writer I could really relate to. I wish Cormac Carthy had hanged himself instead.
Apparently he'd been suffering from depression for a long time and doing his best to cope - he seems to have been an essentially loving kind of person who didn't want to hurt anyone else and so put on a brave face.I've read that he tried to get off the medication he had been on for over ten years, but this proved impossible and again re-adjusting to that mediacation would have taken several month if not longer and been terribly painful and he just couldnt stand the thought of it. But really its none of our business.
Bottle Rocket
15-Mar-2010, 04:36
Quote:
Originally Posted by lenz
Being "smart" has nothing to do with it.
That's exactly what I was trying to say.What I was trying to say in selecting the word "smart" wasn't that the suicide itself was smart or considerate of his wife or anything other than flat-out tragic.
All I really meant was that a person as manifestly intelligent as DFW must have covered this ground over and over, from every direction imaginable as well as at least a few unimaginable to those of us lucky enough not to be in such dire psychiatric straits. He was clearly at risk for a very long time, but I simply do not believe that there was anything "magical" about his thinking in the sense that he had the sort of "boy will they be sorry" sort of inability to grasp that when it all goes black it stays that way forever. He was sick, yes, very, but he was a genuine adult who went over every inch of the prison of himself in search of any escape, and (right or wrong) found only the one he ultimately took. The fact that it may have been an impulsive act at the moment he kicked away the chair does not mean that it was unconsidered or accidental -- and certainly neither smart nor stupid in any ordinary sense of either word.
:( BRocket :(
DB Cooper
15-Mar-2010, 05:28
I wish Cormac Carthy had hanged himself instead.
Im sure you meant this in jest, but still thats a bit much.
Bottle Rocket
15-Mar-2010, 17:49
Im sure you meant this in jest, but still thats a bit much.I'm gonna guess he didn't mean it in jest at all (although I agree that actually saying it may be a bit much)
I won't go so far as to offer any candidates myself, but I can think of a great many writers (or just random scuzzballs) I would consider far more expendable than Wallace by almost any standard. They are fortunate (and so am I) that I am not God.
I think I know just what you mean, DBC, but tell me, what was your reaction when Dick Cheney had his recent heart attack? In honesty, although I regretted it immediately, I have to admit to a savage sort of exultation. I don't hate many people, but Cheney's one of the half-dozen or so who'd probably make my short list. At this point, mostly after the fact, it's almost purely vengeful, which I believe is unworthy -- but there are arguably tens of thousands of people who might be alive today had one of Cheney's earlier heart attacks killed him. In the classic formulation: you're on a switchyard bridge and you see a runaway locomotive, By moving the switch one way, you save a dozen dope-smoking teenagers but sacrifice a baby sitting on the other track; by moving it the other, you kill an innocent child but save twelve lives.
Think fast.
:confused: BRocket :confused:
... to me, letting chance take its course is not a solution but an evasion; would you disagree?
miercuri
15-Mar-2010, 23:14
I really want to read him! I bought a copy of Infinite Jest for only ?2.50 when I was visiting a friend in Scotland last week, only I couldn't fit it in my bag so my friend will bring it when she comes home in June.
DB Cooper
16-Mar-2010, 05:07
I agree, let chance decide. As far as Cheney is concerned, it makes no difference to me. Yes he has done things that could be considered evil, but so have many other before, and so will many others after. His fate will ultimately be the same as ours, and he is no longer in a position of power. He alone has to look in the mirror each morning and consider the havok he has been responsible for, and the lives he has destroyed. Whether he lives or dies, it has no bearing on my life, so I honestly couldnt care less. The train, I say kill the one to save the many. Im in no position to judge how people conduct their lives so despite the fact that a baby may be considered "innocent" that doesnt make its life more valuable than a dozen people, no matter how they decide to live.
EDIT: For some reason I think that DFW would get a kick out of the direction this thread has gone
Bottle Rocket
16-Mar-2010, 11:06
Well, I'm inclined to think that yours is the position he'd espouse. I am not proud of feeling the rage against Cheney that I do and I wish I knew a better way to cope with it than empty ranting.
However, as a private, personal matter it's important to me to acknowledge how I feel, so as to channel it in a more productive direction. It is not as though I have any brief for the people Cheney really intended to "get," but the mind-boggling dishonesty, breathtakng arrogance, and carelessness of the welfare of our troops and the truly innocent bystanders amounts (to me at least) to criminal negligence at best. But as you say, short of being selected (by chance) for a jury, it is not our privilege to judge him.
I still do, though.
:confused: BRocket :confused:
miobrien
26-Aug-2010, 21:09
Apparently a new excerpt from The Pale King (his posthumous novel) is going to be published in the September 2010 issue of Harper's Magazine!! Can't wait to get a copy when it hits the shelves.
This excerpt previously appeared in the January 2010 issue of The Lifted Brow. Tried to get a copy of it a while back but they were sold out. I'm considering the excerpt new since The Lifted Brow doesn't have as wide a range as Harper's or The New Yorker obviously.
This is the fifth excerpt from the novel. It's titled: "A New Examiner." I've been impressed with the previous excerpts -- though I've read that others weren't. It seems to me that there's definitely a style to these excerpts that differs with his other work. I also remember reading that he wanted to move away from the "DFW-maximalist" style he was known for.
Also if you haven't read David Lipsky's new book - Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace - then you should definitely pick it up. It's a quick read, as it's mostly one long transcript of their conversations, but with lots of great stuff here and there.
miobrien
07-Sep-2010, 21:38
Purchased a copy of Harper's, and read through "A New Examiner." It was shorter than I hoped but fun to read. I think the best way to describe DFW's style here is "controlled." I feel he's trying to reign in his manic tendencies and refine them. Nonetheless, I am a bit worried if The Pale King will work in the end -- while his prose might be probing and revealing, I'm not sure if the story will sustain itself. We'll see ... in about a year.
miobrien
19-Oct-2010, 23:59
The Pale King is up on Amazon.com. Release date is April 15, 2011.
Amazon.com: The Pale King (9780316074230): David Foster Wallace: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Pale-King-David-Foster-Wallace/dp/0316074233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287528823&sr=8-1)
Here's the cover:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Kp%2BZwtnWL._SS500_.jpg
Two others books I recently came across:
Consider David Foster Wallace
Amazon.com: Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays (9780976146575): David Hering: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Consider-David-Foster-Wallace-Critical/dp/0976146576/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Y5UQzLXoL._SS500_.jpg
Fate, Time and Language -- Comes out on Dec. 14
Amazon.com: Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (9780231151573): David Foster Wallace, Steven M. Cahn, Maureen Eckert, Jay Garfield, James Ryerson: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Fate-Time-Language-Essay-Free/dp/0231151578/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b)
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ze2fYNjjL._SS500_.jpg
liehtzu
21-Oct-2010, 05:45
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Interview with Salon, 1996
If you the writer succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you don?t worry about making yourself accessible or relevant. You worry about making your work structurally and technically cutting-edge, making the appropriate intertextual references. Not really caring about whether you?re communicating with a reader who cares something about that feeling in the stomach which is why we read. Then, the other end of it is very crass, cynical, commercial pieces of fiction that are done in a formulaic way?essentially television on the page?that manipulate the reader, that set out grotesquely simplified stuff in a childishly riveting way.
What?s weird is that I see these two sides fight with each other, and really they both come out of the same thing, which is a contempt for the reader. The project that?s worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it?s also pleasurable.
Part of it has to do with living in an era when there?s so much entertainment available, genuine entertainment, and figuring out how ficton is going to stake out its territory in that sort of era. It?s unbelievably difficult and confusing and scary, but it?s neat. There?s so much mass commercial entertainment that?s so good and so slick, this is something that I don?t think any other generation has confronted. That?s what it?s like to be a writer now. I think it?s the best time to be alive ever, and it?s probably the best time to be a writer. I?m not sure it?s the easiest time.
.................................................. ..............
A friend sent me this around the time of the Wallace suicide. Brings up a number of interesting questions. I agree with the first part - the self-styled "genius" who writes impenetrable pseudo-novels is just as boring and worthless as the writer of so-called commercial fiction.
But the last part sticks in my craw. I've heard the same sentiment voiced a number of times by modern writers: that novels must somehow "compete" with TV. This is foolish. First, very simply, the audience that consumes enormous amounts of TV, they ain't readers. They ain't a-ever gonna become readers. End of story. You can't win them back by writing great yet accessible fiction. The entire world is becoming slouching baboons mesmerized by the glowing picture totem. Even "books" are going to become something one reads from a glowing screen - I hope that means we can burn all the useless paper ones.
Foster was an exceptionally bright guy with a lot of interesting things to say, but again, like so many of his generation - it isn't enough to be brilliant. To show that you know something about nuclear physics and molecular biology and Plato and stonemasonry and that can find Uzbekistan on a map is all fine and well, but it doesn't add up to too much in the end. A terribly superficial intelligence, totally lacking in wisdom. Why Tolstoy and Shakespeare and even a great number of lesser writers have staked a claim in the history of literature, and those of Foster's generation will be forgotten.
To assert that we live in an era of "genuine entertainment" is almost as hopelessly ludicrous as asserting that this is "the best time to be alive ever" (not to be crass, but apparently Foster did not really believe this to be the case). Very little of the so-called entertainment out there is genuine - it is as bombastic, silly, slick and phony as can be. The idea that a writer should compete with Sex and the City is degrading. Which leads to why I have no interest in reading Mr. Wallace's books: the sort of bombast that runs from Pynchon to Rushdie to Wallace is godawful tiresome.
In the same vein:
FREDRICH SCHILLER
?On the Use of the Chorus in Tragedy,? 1803
The assertion so commonly made, that the public degrades art, is not well founded. It is the artist that brings the public to the level of his own conceptions, and in every age in which art has gone to decay, it has fallen through its professors. The people need feeling alone, and feeling they possess. They take their station before the curtain with an unvoiced longing, with a multifarious capacity. They bring with them an aptitude for what is highest?they derive the greatest pleasure from what is judicious and true; and if, with these powers of appreciation, they begin to be satisfied with inferior productions, still, if they have once tasted what is excellent, they will in the end insist on having it supplied to them.
It is sometimes objected that the poet may labor according to an ideal?that the critic may judge from ideas, but that mere executive art is subject to contingencies and depends for effect on the occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display?the audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and they are disappointed if mental exertion be required, when they expected only amusement. But if the theater be made instrumental toward higher objects, the pleasure of the spectator will not be increased but ennobled. It will be a diversion, but a poetical one. All art is dedicated to pleasure, and there can be no higher and worthier end than to make men happy. The true art is that which provides the highest degree of pleasure, and this consists in the abandonment of the spirit to the free play of all its faculties.
Without having read Infinite Jest I'll hold back a little on this, but have you read any of David Foster Wallace's work? I agree that there's a lot of technical innovation and experimental play in novels without the reason nor the wisdom to back it up, and few things bothers me more than that kind of pretentious posturing, but this man rises well above that airy vapidity in every piece of his work that I've read; in essays, stories, reviews, general journalism he's continually shown his sageness and a sense of the 'wonderful humanity' around him, and he was not just some "some exceptionally bright guy with a lot of interesting things to say", he was a genius with profound things to say. Remember where he got the title for that massive tome of his:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it.
David Foster Wallace knew his stuff, complex mathematics, logical philosophy, literature, he wasn't prancing around in Pomo underpants without a staggeringly solid background like some of his contemporaries, but even people living and writing well before him. I don't agree with everything he said in that little tidbit but I know that part of what he's saying has to do with connecting to people in any way possible, something Television and Movies do better than anyone though in the most superficial ways, whether by screaming at them or verbally smacking them to get them out of their stupors of being "baboons mesmerized by the glowing picture totem". And he's making a comparison that seems reasonable, because in many ways the avant-garde and the experimental foreplay of middling novelists does more to capture the attention of people than any amount of James or Balzac or Ibsen, and in that way, that momentary attraction to something that's not a flashing screen, there's something to capitalize on for the sake of true happiness and humanity.
I'll admit that I find some of his more experimental pursuits very 'precious' but it's only because the subject matter hardly seems able to keep up with Wallace's copious footnotes and monstrous intellect. Infinite Jest goes big in every direction, and though, again, I've not yet taken it on, because of that, all the games should hold. But if you think he's just going to disappear then you may need to reassess your vision of literature's direction and read one of my favorites: Consider the Lobster.
liehtzu
23-Oct-2010, 06:19
Without having read Infinite Jest I'll hold back a little on this, but have you read any of David Foster Wallace's work?
As I mentioned above, quote: "I have no interest in reading Mr. Wallace's books." Which indicates that I have not read any of Mr. Wallace's books. However, if it makes you feel any better, I have read several essays and occasional pieces by Mr. Wallace. My judgment ("an exceptionally bright guy with a lot of interesting things to say") is based on those. Which have each been fine reads, but have not led me racing out the door to buy one of the man's novels. I think his ideas and opinions - though always well put - are fairly common for an educated fellow of his (and my) generation. The ideas and opinions of the liberal, humanist, educated class in the West are pretty predictable, and range from animal rights to the awesome potential of the electronic age ("the best time to be alive ever"), are mostly boring and disagreeable to me.
Elsewhere I've stated my deep loathing of "postmodernism," so this can all be summed up as a matter of taste. The modern crop of American writers has nothing to say to me and, I would argue, nothing much of value to say to anyone. Well-intentioned people, all very nice, who are concerned about the environment, who vote Democrat, who write sprawling, manic, noisy, books for people of similar tastes and opinions.
I have a good friend who thinks Thomas Pynchon's the cat's meow. I want to take my wrath out on the nearest pedestrian after five pages of Thomas Pynchon.
he was not just some "some exceptionally bright guy with a lot of interesting things to say", he was a genius with profound things to say. Here with your use of the word "genius" I shall draw from an old interview with Vladimir Nabokov:
Do you see yourself sometimes as Nabokov the writer
isolated from others, flaming sword to scourge them, an
entertainer, a drudge, a genius, which?
The word "genius" is passed around rather generously,
isn't it? At least in English, because its Russian counterpart,
geniy, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe
and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers,
Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy. To such deeply beloved
authors as Turgenev and Chekhov Russians assign the thinner
term, talвnt, talent, not genius. It is a bizarre
example of semantic discrepancy-- the same word being more
substantial in one language than in another. Although my
Russian and my English are practically coeval, О still feel
appalled and puzzled at seeing "genius" applied to any
important storyteller, such as Maupassant or Maugham. Genius
still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of
phrase, a unique, dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not
the talent of Henry James. I'm afriad I have lost the thread of
my reply to your question. What is your next one, please?
here: Nabokov's interview. (13) BBC-2 [1969] (http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter13.txt)
While I would assign the word to more writers than Nabokov, I completely agree that not every bright lad or lass who writes a decent book should be dubbed one. There are no living literary geniuses, as far as I'm concerned.
but I know that part of what he's saying has to do with connecting to people in any way possible, something Television and Movies do better than anyone though in the most superficial ways, whether by screaming at them or verbally smacking them to get them out of their stupors of being "baboons mesmerized by the glowing picture totem". Oh, God, I was hardly screaming. Simple statement of fact, old chap. Come on now: have you ever watched people watching TV (or in front of a computer, for that matter)?
And he's making a comparison that seems reasonable, because in many ways the avant-garde and the experimental foreplay of middling novelists does more to capture the attention of people than any amount of James or Balzac or Ibsen, and in that way, that momentary attraction to something that's not a flashing screen, there's something to capitalize on for the sake of true happiness and humanity.I'm not sure how to reply to the "true happiness and humanity" bit, or how that ties to television, so I'll leave that aside. But I suspect you're making something of the same argument made in a reprehensible piece I read in that rag the New York Times, wherein the teachers assign comic books and The Devil Wears Prada now, because little Suzy likes this stuff, and little Suzy, she just ain't got the attention span for real fine litertoor like To Kill a Mockingbird - that stuff just hurts her wee brain too much.
By suggesting that we all "capitalize" on short attention spans, and bring education down to the level of poor wee Suzy, well, that's just... dumb.
And I don't think "the avant-garde and the experimental foreplay of middling novelists does more to capture the attention of people than any amount of James or Balzac or Ibsen." The "people," God help them, couldn't give a shit about either of your categories. The "postmodern" novelists really only write for that cream of readers who like to be soothed by recognizing their favorite Simpsons quotes along with that reference they can identify from their Freshman Philosophy 101 class ("Ooh, looky! It's Hegel!").
But if you think he's just going to disappear then you may need to reassess your vision of literature's directionNo, I'm pretty sure of my assessment of literature's direction, as well as Western culture's as a whole (the former, after all, reflects the latter): round and round in diminishing rings into a porcelain hole.
As I mentioned above, quote: "I have no interest in reading Mr. Wallace's books." Which indicates that I have not read any of Mr. Wallace's books. However, if it makes you feel any better, I have read several essays and occasional pieces by Mr. Wallace. My judgment ("an exceptionally bright guy with a lot of interesting things to say") is based on those. Which have each been fine reads, but have not led me racing out the door to buy one of the man's novels. I think his ideas and opinions - though always well put - are fairly common for an educated fellow of his (and my) generation. The ideas and opinions of the liberal, humanist, educated class in the West are pretty predictable, and range from animal rights to the awesome potential of the electronic age ("the best time to be alive ever"), are mostly boring and disagreeable to me.
I just don't know how you can make an informed decision about the merit of an author without at least tackling him at book-length. I'd understand if you picked him up and were given a migraine before reaching the end, but as far as I can tell, you've only read him as an "occasional" author. And on "animal rights" I'd guess you're making a reference to the "Consider the Lobster" essay that has been so touted by Wallace's contemporaries, but even if the subject is the same the angle at which he analyzes it is unique and distinctly original, an amazing essay.
Elsewhere I've stated my deep loathing of "postmodernism," so this can all be summed up as a matter of taste. The modern crop of American writers has nothing to say to me and, I would argue, nothing much of value to say to anyone. Well-intentioned people, all very nice, who are concerned about the environment, who vote Democrat, who write sprawling, manic, noisy, books for people of similar tastes and opinions.
Here with your use of the word "genius" I shall draw from an old interview with Vladimir Nabokov:
Do you see yourself sometimes as Nabokov the writer
isolated from others, flaming sword to scourge them, an
entertainer, a drudge, a genius, which?
The word "genius" is passed around rather generously,
isn't it? At least in English, because its Russian counterpart,
geniy, is a term brimming with a sort of throaty awe
and is used only in the case of a very small number of writers,
Shakespeare, Milton, Pushkin, Tolstoy. To such deeply beloved
authors as Turgenev and Chekhov Russians assign the thinner
term, talвnt, talent, not genius. It is a bizarre
example of semantic discrepancy-- the same word being more
substantial in one language than in another. Although my
Russian and my English are practically coeval, О still feel
appalled and puzzled at seeing "genius" applied to any
important storyteller, such as Maupassant or Maugham. Genius
still means to me, in my Russian fastidiousness and pride of
phrase, a unique, dazzling gift, the genius of James Joyce, not
the talent of Henry James. I'm afriad I have lost the thread of
my reply to your question. What is your next one, please?
here: Nabokov's interview. (13) BBC-2 [1969] (http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter13.txt)
While I would assign the word to more writers than Nabokov, I completely agree that not every bright lad or lass who writes a decent book should be dubbed one. There are no living literary geniuses, as far as I'm concerned.
Just in the US? Or in the world? There's a few where an argument would be valid.
Oh, God, I was hardly screaming. Simple statement of fact, old chap. Come on now: have you ever watched people watching TV (or in front of a computer, for that matter)?
Sorry, I wasn't saying you were screaming, I was saying that it seems authors have been forced to scream over the din of the TV.
I'm not sure how to reply to the "true happiness and humanity" bit, or how that ties to television, so I'll leave that aside. But I suspect you're making something of the same argument made in a reprehensible piece I read in that rag the New York Times, wherein the teachers assign comic books and The Devil Wears Prada now, because little Suzy likes this stuff, and little Suzy, she just ain't got the attention span for real fine litertoor like To Kill a Mockingbird - that stuff just hurts her wee brain too much.
Hardly, and anyone who thinks books like The Broom of the System or any work like it is only the slow man's replacement for real Lit is underestimating the strength of our contemporary output.
And I don't think "the avant-garde and the experimental foreplay of middling novelists does more to capture the attention of people than any amount of James or Balzac or Ibsen." The "people," God help them, couldn't give a shit about either of your categories. The "postmodern" novelists really only write for that cream of readers who like to be soothed by recognizing their favorite Simpsons quotes along with that reference they can identify from their Freshman Philosophy 101 class ("Ooh, looky! It's Hegel!").
Explain the sales of Jonathan Safran Foer, the whole McSweeney's bunch, and the fact that whenever a new novel by Pynchon comes out it's sitting there in the front window of Barnes and Noble or Borders books? And why does nearly every single would-be, might-be English major tell me they've loved Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I also love) but their faces go blank when I ask about Laurence Sterne (who I've admittedly not yet read) or, I think worse, respond "Who?" when I mention Proust?
No, I'm pretty sure of my assessment of literature's direction, as well as Western culture's as a whole (the former, after all, reflects the latter): round and round in diminishing rings into a porcelain hole.
I don't mean to force you in any direction or sound huffy and arrogant, I'm just saying that a movement so large, with so many "classics" is going to have an influence on future literature, it's too big a style and group for the whole slew of postmodern hysteria to disappear. Gravity's Rainbow is coming on 40 years now, the postmodern trend has been here a while.
I'm just saying that a movement so large, with so many "classics" is going to have an influence on future literature, it's too big a style and group for the whole slew of postmodern hysteria to disappear. Gravity's Rainbow is coming on 40 years now, the postmodern trend has been here a while.
Yes, but some people continue to deny the vital importance of literary postmodernism no matter what. Just as some people still believe the Earth's flat. It ain't worth the effort.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
liehtzu
29-Oct-2010, 06:11
I just don't know how you can make an informed decision about the merit of an author without at least tackling him at book-length.
It's an opinion, but I never said it was an informed one. Still, one reads interviews with a writer, some essays he's written, some descriptions of his work, and I think that allows one to make a decision whether or not one wants to throw hours or days behind him at book-length. Basically: the world is full of books. There are too damned many. One must choose how and where to spend one's time. I follow my whims. This goes for "the classics," as far back as the ancient Greek and Chinese poets who still, as far as I'm concerned, have much to teach us and remind us concerning beauty, wisdom, truth. Which are cliche and passe notions but, because I'm something of an old-fashioned guy, mean more to me than the yawn-inducing fireworks of so-called postmodernism (which is itself a stupid term) ever will. Also, Wallace, Eggers, DeLillo, Franzen, etc write about modern middle-class American life, and few things are more phenomenally boring and trivial than that.
"Consider the Lobster" essay that has been so touted by Wallace's contemporaries, but even if the subject is the same the angle at which he analyzes it is unique and distinctly original, an amazing essay.I don't mind the essay. Just didn't really excite me.
Just in the US? Or in the world? There's a few where an argument would be valid. There are no literary geniuses, as I define the word, in on God's green. Not that I know of. There are fine talents (J. M. Coetzee, Oe Kenzaburo, and a few fine poets: Tomas Venclova, Reiner Kunze, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Miodrag Pavlovic, etc), but no genius in the Shakespeare-Tolstoy-Joyce sense, no.
Sorry, I wasn't saying you were screaming, I was saying that it seems authors have been forced to scream over the din of the TV.This statement for me is the root of the problem. Authors shouldn't try to scream over the din of the TV, which will always drown them out regardless. For me the important writers are almost always the ones who insist on a calm, even voice, an intelligent chat in a quiet cafe. People get enough hysterical jabber in their day-to-day. I suspect that a number of people read "serious literature" as a means of putting cotton-balls in the ears, with the same sense of "Ah..." as when some fine fellow stands up and turns the volume down on the television in a public place. Among the many great horrors of modern society is the practically inescapable noise.
Hardly, and anyone who thinks books like The Broom of the System or any work like it is only the slow man's replacement for real Lit is underestimating the strength of our contemporary output. I really don't think I'm underestimating the strength of our contemporary output. I wish I were. It isn't a great joy to me to live in an age of mediocre art, believe me. I read Chekhov, then Jhumpa Lahiri, who is quite hilariously compared to Chekhov, and it's pretty forcefully brought home. The gulf between.
Explain the sales of Jonathan Safran Foer, the whole McSweeney's bunch, and the fact that whenever a new novel by Pynchon comes out it's sitting there in the front window of Barnes and Noble or Borders books? And why does nearly every single would-be, might-be English major tell me they've loved Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which I also love) but their faces go blank when I ask about Laurence Sterne (who I've admittedly not yet read) or, I think worse, respond "Who?" when I mention Proust?Again, the equation of popularity (and I suspect that with the authors you mention it is among a very narrow crowd - young, white, comfortable, educated) with significance. The window of Barnes and Noble is thoroughly meaningless. Any author worth his salt rejects fashion completely (unless, like Picasso, he leads the parade and everyone else hurries to play catch-up), goes contrary to the tide, and intransigent to the point of rudeness. If I were a writer I would be horrified to see a book of mine in the window of a Barnes and Noble. It would mean I had surely done something wrong.
I don't mean to force you in any direction or sound huffy and arrogant,That's OK. I'm somewhat arrogant myself. Better that than the timidity and mediocrity that so often hides behind "good manners."
Gravity's Rainbow is coming on 40 years now, the postmodern trend has been here a while.Because it's seen nothing viable to replace it. Thus the signs pointing, for me, to the exhaustion and demise of American literature.
liehtzu
29-Oct-2010, 06:20
If there's a party here, I'm in liehtzu's corner. That book was my one excursion into the genre only because I used to live in Lake Forest, and I would classify it as advanced juvenilia. A book like that may be memorable in fifty years to the last dying Gen-Xers, but will thenceforth become a footnote to a footnote of literature, if only because it will have been recorded as a bestseller. In my private experiments I've found that today's young literary types, particularly the M.F.A.'s, inhabit an unsustainable little bubble.
Right. A big source of the problem: writers who graduate with a degree in English Lit (or, more horrifying, "Feminist Studies" or some such tripe). As if you could learn to write in school. You learn to write by reading, by reflecting on what you read, and most importantly: the old School o' Life! People spend the best part of their first thirty years of life in the so-called education system and then write a book! That, to me, is as tragic as it is hilarious. People who haven't lived much outside of the incredibly narrow, soul-crushing world of academia writing for people who haven't lived much outside the narrow, soul-crushing world of academia. Not Herman Melvilles here precisely.
adaorardor
29-Oct-2010, 15:29
I would just like to register the fact that I personally dislike most of DFW's essays and short stories that I have read, and found his style/tone pretentious and massively overrated. For this reason, I didnt' read Infinite Jest for a long time. HOWEVER, when i finally did, I discovered that it really is a great great novel, where the stars aligned for Wallace and he discovered the perfect subject and characters that his voice was suited to, and wrote better by miles than he had in anything else I've read by him. Perhaps it was a one-off, and one reason The Pale King was taking him forever was that he couldn't figure out how to do it again. Anyway, the point is: regardless of what you think of most of his (yes, incredibly pretentious, and largely unsuccessful) stories and essays, IJ is a great great novel.
I'll admit that I find some of his more experimental pursuits very 'precious' but it's only because the subject matter hardly seems able to keep up with Wallace's copious footnotes and monstrous intellect. Infinite Jest goes big in every direction, and though, again, I've not yet taken it on, because of that, all the games should hold.
I would just like to register the fact that I personally dislike most of DFW's essays and short stories that I have read, and found his style/tone pretentious and massively overrated. For this reason, I didnt' read Infinite Jest for a long time. HOWEVER, when i finally did, I discovered that it really is a great great novel, where the stars aligned for Wallace and he discovered the perfect subject and characters that his voice was suited to, and wrote better by miles than he had in anything else I've read by him. Perhaps it was a one-off, and one reason The Pale King was taking him forever was that he couldn't figure out how to do it again. Anyway, the point is: regardless of what you think of most of his (yes, incredibly pretentious, and largely unsuccessful) stories and essays, IJ is a great great novel.
My informed speculation now has some support. Huzzah!
As I've said before several times, the word "pretentious" has had a bad press, but, often, it's only by being pretentious that writers can achieve wonderful things - it simply means they're aspiring to greatness. Where would literature be without the extremely pretentious T. S. Eliot or James Joyce? Still there of course, but considerably reduced. Fiction or non-fiction, Wallace's legacy is brilliant by any standards, although Infinite Jest is certainly his crowning achievement: a crazy masterpiece.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
miobrien
11-Jan-2011, 06:53
From AlDaily.com:
Conferences, books, an academic archive – David Foster Wallace is the focus of a robust scholarly enterprise. “He’s the next canonized American writer”.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Afterlife-of-David-Foster/125823/
Very interesting, and very informed, article.
Interesting too that it mentions Stephen Burn's David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide, which I mentioned further back on this thread. And that it suggests - again - that Wallace seemed to be aiming for a different kind of postmodernism.
And, of course, there would indeed be no Dave Eggers, et al, were it not for Wallace.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
This article was very heartening, I'm interested to see how The Pale King will be regarded in the midst of all this commotion.
And having heard rather recently that Wallace considered Ozick and DeLillo the best living writers in America, I think I've been confirmed in some relations I've been finding between DeLillo and Wallace. In fact, I'd say I see a direct line of influence from DeLillo to Wallace to Franzen in regards to their positions on irony (I know, I know, too much on irony) especially (Franzen of course using it the least and having the weakest control over it), but also religion (did we all know that Wallace was a dedicated churchgoer?).
I also wonder how big an influence Kafka will be wielding over The Pale King. With a lineage coming down so importantly from DeLillo, I can't imagine Wallace's view of such a complicated (and dull) bureaucracy as the tax-system not rooting itself, though hopefully not too much, in Kafka's The Trial and The Castle. And given Wallace's short and revealing essay "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed", I believe he knows Kafka well enough to turn out something indebted but not smotheringly so.
(did we all know that Wallace was a dedicated churchgoer?).
No. I obviously missed that: can you point me to where it's said? I always thought that Wallace had an extremely broad definition of religion, which included a strong belief in anything, like, football or fishing could be a religion. Sure, he was endlessly tolerant of other people's beliefs, but surely he didn't regularly go to church of his own will to commune with Big G? Now, that would really disappoint me.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
He’s the next canonized American writer.Wait till Waalkwriter gets a wind of this. What, NOT Ursula Le Guin? How dare they?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe you wouldn't make fun around a brilliant writer it you'd bothered to read him. Then again, you probably would. Yeah, you definitely would, cos you'd have missed the brilliance. Just keep taking the Byatt and the Mantel placebos.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blgospot.com)
Thanks, man, love you too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe you wouldn't make fun around a brilliant writer it you'd bothered to read him.Just now I'm rereading The Mabinogion for the hundredth time and enjoying it enormously. Not sure if you approve, but hey, different strokes [fill in the blank].
You're right though, I should, in theory, give Wallace a try. I just can't force myself to pick up the infinite brick that is Infinite Jest, I jest not! :p
You're right though, I should, in theory, give Wallace a try. I just can't force myself to pick up the infinite brick that is Infinite Jest, I jest not! :p
Give it a go, you won't break your wrist. But you might break your prejudice: it's from a Shakespeare quotation, after all. It's worth it. :)
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
OK, I know you're the one person on this forum who won't judge me for a bit of vulgarity, :o...
...different strokes...
...you won't break your wrist...See, I'm not so sure about that. What with being single for over six months I've been forced to resort to a lot of manual self-abuse (and now that it's vacation time, forget it, the sky is the limit); all in all, my wrist does feel tender from tenderizing the magic stick, and Infinite Jest might just be enough to break it. Then again, I could probably prop it up against my pillow, :p.
Stiffelio
12-Jan-2011, 03:17
And having heard rather recently that Wallace considered Ozick and DeLillo the best living writers in America, ....
He also greatly admired Cormac McCarthy; he was blown away by Blood Meridian and Suttree.
all in all, my wrist does feel tender from tenderizing the magic stick, and Infinite Jest might just be enough to break it. Then again, I could probably prop it up against my pillow, :p.
You'll find it has a detumescent effect, so your wrist will have plenty of time to heal: good therapy, you see.
BLOG (http://www.tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
As I'm in the Boston area for a few weeks in May, this Infinite Jest tour of the city looks pretty useful:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25383051@N05/sets/72157612365092520/
I could also do with one for Alexander Theroux's Laura Warholic, though. :(
BLOG (http://www.tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
No. I obviously missed that: can you point me to where it's said? I always thought that Wallace had an extremely broad definition of religion, which included a strong belief in anything, like, football or fishing could be a religion. Sure, he was endlessly tolerant of other people's beliefs, but surely he didn't regularly go to church of his own will to commune with Big G? Now, that would really disappoint me.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
I'll have to apologize since it's not in the article and, alas, it's only hinted at in his essay "The View from Mrs. Thompson's". I remember reading the essay, being surprised (as a wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_the_Lobster) said I should have been), but later seeing an article that mentioned the fact more explicitly in passing. Here's the quote:
The church I belong to is on the south side of Bloomington, [Illinois,] near where my house is. Most of the people I know well enough to ask if I can come over and watch their TV are members of my church. It's not one of those churches where people throw Jesus' name around a lot or talk about the End Times, but it's fairly serious, and people in the congregation get to know each other well and to be pretty tight. As far as I know, all the congregants are natives of the area. Most are working-class or retired from same. There are some small-business owners. A fair number are veterans and/or have kids in the military or — especially — in the reserves, because for many of these families that's what you do to pay for college.
I can't imagine Wallace considering football or fishing a legitimate religion. I've always considered him more the "with what indeed could we replace the rituals of religion? With the idiotic rituals of the touchdown celebration, or the sermon of a television?" (I swear Geoffrey Hill has written something along these lines, quite a funny (and a wittier) quote and I think I've been trying to locate it again for over a month now).
Thanks for this. It's interesting that he mentions television in a social context, because I read something one of his elderly neighbors said about him watching it for long hours at her house, but she said it in such a way that it sounded like his guilty secret - certainly not something he was investigating for 'E Unibus Pluram'.
I can't imagine Wallace considering football or fishing a legitimate religion.
Well, I just used those two examples off the top, but I was probably thinking of this, and anyway his Kenyon College, OH, speech is all over the net. Three paragraphs up from the bottom (excluding the closing one), he talks about worship: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
miobrien
13-Jan-2011, 03:47
Very interesting, and very informed, article.
Interesting too that it mentions Stephen Burn's David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide, which I mentioned further back on this thread. And that it suggests - again - that Wallace seemed to be aiming for a different kind of postmodernism.
And, of course, there would indeed be no Dave Eggers, et al, were it not for Wallace.
I think Wallace's earlier writing -- The Broom of the System and Girl With Curious Hair -- are pretty standard postmodernist works. The former reminds me of Pynchon and the latter reminds me of Barth. I think Wallace started developing his own postmodernism while working on Infinite Jest. It is evident in his post-IJ writing as well.
The empathy, disillusionment, and concern evident in IJ and the post-IJ works are what differentiate them from the earlier writings, which are pretty sterile on emotional plane in my opinion. The earlier pieces are interesting, funny, and creative, but I think they're unemotional and forgettable. They come off as intellectual exercises, well-written of course, but nothing more than that.
IJ, however, is a beast. It has the technical and intellectual ingredients of the works of Pynchon and Barth, but it also has something else: detailed, careful depictions of human suffering. And wonderful, memorable characters.
No. I obviously missed that: can you point me to where it's said? I always thought that Wallace had an extremely broad definition of religion, which included a strong belief in anything, like, football or fishing could be a religion. Sure, he was endlessly tolerant of other people's beliefs, but surely he didn't regularly go to church of his own will to commune with Big G? Now, that would really disappoint me.
I think "dedicated churchgoer" takes things too far. I think he was a tolerant, thoughtful individual who didn't outrightly dismiss religion like a lot of liberal, postmodernist intellectuals, but I doubt he regularly attended services throughout his life. In This Is Water he discusses "worship" (how we all worship something, even if it isn't "God"), and I remember a few sentences in which he subtly acknowledges his own atheism -- at least, atheism with regard to traditional religion. I think he was spiritually interested in religion. I would say the same of myself.
EDIT: hah, you got to it first!
I'll have to apologize since it's not in the article and, alas, it's only hinted at in his essay "The View from Mrs. Thompson's". I remember reading the essay, being surprised (as a wikipedia entry said I should have been), but later seeing an article that mentioned the fact more explicitly in passing. Here's the quote:
We have to remember that he was from the midwest, and belonging to a church doesn't have to have a religion implication. In Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, Wallace and David Lipsky talk about this. He says he goes to a lot of the church functions to hang out. I remember him talking about going to a square dance or something like that, and how the church he belonged to was inter-racial.
miobrien
13-Jan-2011, 03:52
Wallace wrote an essay called "Host" about a conservative radio talk show host, John Ziegler. The latter wrote an editorial about the essay after Wallace's suicide. Here it is:
http://johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=165
What do you think?
I think "dedicated churchgoer" takes things too far. I think he was a tolerant, thoughtful individual who didn't outrightly dismiss religion like a lot of liberal, postmodernist intellectuals, but I doubt he regularly attended services throughout his life. In This Is Water he discusses "worship" (how we all worship something, even if it isn't "God"), and I remember a few sentences in which he subtly acknowledges his own atheism -- at least, atheism with regard to traditional religion. I think he was spiritually interested in religion. I would say the same of myself.
We have to remember that he was from the midwest, and belonging to a church doesn't have to have a religion implication. In Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, Wallace and David Lipsky talk about this. He says he goes to a lot of the church functions to hang out. I remember him talking about going to a square dance or something like that, and how the church he belonged to was inter-racial.
And I think that "spiritual interest in religion" is one of the most interesting traits of the new strains of thought Wallace has brought into literary play.
You've always had your Dillards, your Hills, and your Miloszes, the anomalous religious authors of immense talent, but overall, with so much of postmodernism dominated by men like William Gass (who hates religion) or John Barth (who has taken some leisurely shots at religion in his time) there was certainly a sense that religion was to be nominally seen (only out of respect for writers like Eliot) but certainly not heard or listened too, and in general tossed out of hand.
Now you have an author who not only is, by all that I've seen, pretty overarchingly tolerant in terms of religion (as has been mentioned) and certainly not a fan of worshiping "money, power, beauty" (or language, I'd suggest), but in fact goes to church. For "dedicated churchgoer" I might have been better served by (I do insist) "regular churchgoer", I just thought 'dedicated' would be slightly more inflammatory.
And with regards to DeLillo's lineage of religious interest: Of all the postmodern authors (I've read), Don DeLillo seems to have the strangest, most beneficial relationship with religion, specifically the Roman Catholicism of his youth. Certainly he's asked religious questions in dominantly ironic light, but DeLillo never seems to be bored with comparing things to cathedrals; this quote being, in context, ironic, of course:
"Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. It is the closest I can come to God…standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows…" (White Noise)But then, how tongue-in-cheek is his use of the writing and philosophy of Father Teilhard de Chardin in his most recent novel Point Omega? I'd suggest not at all. And I think these are some of the things Wallace was picking up on when he read DeLillo, and his close friendship with the man, who was a quarter-of-a-decade older, suggests more than, I think, a mentor-student relationship, but the kind of mutual artistic respect that stems from reading another author particularly well.
What you say about the social nature of church (esp. in the Midwest) is something DeLillo has also referred to and talked about, and it's largely true. Church is quite explicitly a social event, and I'm sure Wallace absolutely enjoyed interacting with all these ordinary people--talking, chatting, laughing--perhaps more than his possible conversations with big "G".
Now, in the end, I don't think Wallace, at least based on what I've read, was too often engaging any "religious" questions in his writing, certainly not in the tentative, referential, ambiguous way DeLillo has, but by the nature of his personal choices on the issue, I could see a new trend of religious interest (or tolerance), in Literature, emerging, because, now that we're beginning to breathe a little clearer of the intense PoMo maneuverings of the 60s-70s-80s, religion doesn't seem so absolutely taboo anymore. And the wealth of religious authors is always beckoning, it's where most of what's written today is founded: Hopkins, Shakespeare, Donne, Browne, Bronte, Swinburne, Dante, or Greene. I'll always prefer to read a GM Hopkins poem in a Christian light rather than just an aesthetic light, it's how he wrote it, it's how it should be read:
THOU mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
Wórld’s stránd, swáy of the séa;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bóund bónes and véins in me, fástened me flésh,
And áfter it álmost únmade, what with dréad,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Óver agáin I féel thy fínger and fínd thée.
I think "dedicated churchgoer" takes things too far. I think he was a tolerant, thoughtful individual who didn't outrightly dismiss religion like a lot of liberal, postmodernist intellectuals, but I doubt he regularly attended services throughout his life.
Yes. He was a social person, and it would probably be social suicide not to attend church if you lived somewhere like Bloomington, IL. In 'The View from Mrs. Thompson's', we clearly see the distance between Wallace and the residents, who live in a very different world, and he feels alienated. He calls them innocent and far too unhip to make a cynical 'po-mo complaint' about the TV coverage of 9/11: instead, they pray. They have no knowledge of the geography of NYC, and Mrs. R. worries about a distant relative who's working in the Time-Life Building, not realizing that it's miles away from the Financial District.
Now you have an author who not only is, by all that I've seen, pretty overarchingly tolerant in terms of religion (as has been mentioned) and certainly not a fan of worshiping "money, power, beauty" (or language, I'd suggest)
He also mentions intellect in the context of worship, and this has to be significant because intellect (especially Wallace's, I'd think) can be extremely alienating outside of academia. It's a little difficult to imagine how Wallace coped in a small Midwest town, but certainly 'The View from Mrs. Thompson's' gives a few clues.
Wallace wrote an essay called "Host" about a conservative radio talk show host, John Ziegler. The latter wrote an editorial about the essay after Wallace's suicide. Here it is:
http://johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=165
What do you think?
Ziegler's article is terrible: it's bitter, dismissive, and hugely prejudiced. I imagine 'Host' is the only writing of Wallace's he's read, although he probably glanced at Infinite Jest so he could call it 'bloated'. The political binary is almost laughable: Ziegler is a conservative and Wallace 'clearly a liberal'! Binaries are of course just what Wallace is against, as anyone can tell from reading 'Up, Simba', where he goes out of his way to try to guess the psychological reasons behind McCain's behavior. He's harsher on Ziegler, though.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
I'll always prefer to read a GM Hopkins poem in a Christian light rather than just an aesthetic light, it's how he wrote it, it's how it should be read:
If it's possible at the same time to forget about the hair shirt, the self-flagellation, his agonized diary references to 'O. H' (='old habits', i.e. masturbation), etc.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
If it's possible at the same time to forget about the hair shirt, the self-flagellation, his agonized diary references to 'O. H' (='old habits', i.e. masturbation), etc.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Well, the man was certainly a devoted Jesuit. That commonly referenced "jadedness" and disillusion with the world is as much an integral part of his work as was his love for the same religion which urged these draconian practices on him.
"But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?"
No need to forget them, in fact these details (which I hadn't known of, actually), illuminate, again, the strange, divisive natures of human beings. For example, it's hard to mourn that Simone Weil died so young largely because of her religious and humanitarian beliefs, because without these beliefs she would never have been someone later generation would actually mourn.
I don't recall if this 2010 article has been posted here before, but here it is anyway:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jul/15/smarter-you-think/?page=1
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miobrien
20-Jan-2011, 07:08
I just came across this article recently. It's called "Our Psychic Living Room."
http://www.thecommonreview.org/article/article/our-psychic-living-room.html?sp=1
I don't recall if this 2010 article has been posted here before, but here it is anyway:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jul/15/smarter-you-think/?page=1
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Yeah, that's a good one. The article's author, Wyatt Mason, has championed DFW's fiction before. Here's an article he wrote on Oblivion:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n22/wyatt-mason/dont-like-it-you-dont-have-to-play
Someone elsewhere asks this. I have no idea but it just sounds interesting:
'Is anyone aware of any analysis of the striking similarity in experimental approach between Ulysses and Petersburg? Was either author, Joyce or [Andrei] Bely, aware of the other's work?' and 'Did Wallace ever state his debt to Bely or Joyce?'
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I skimmed its (Infinite Jest) pages one day in a half-hearted attempt to read it and what I remember of it are those chapter headings that went "The Year of the Garment Dependent something something." Would some one enlighten me about that particular heading? I plan to read it someday, and every bit of synergy would hasten that someday.
I skimmed its (Infinite Jest) pages one day in a half-hearted attempt to read it and what I remember of it are those chapter headings that went "The Year of the Garment Dependent something something." Would some one enlighten me about that particular heading? I plan to read it someday, and every bit of synergy would hasten that someday.
Ah, you mean 'The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment'. Remember, Infinite Jest was published in 1996, and is set in the future. In that future, huge companies take over, and even get years named after them (if they pay). The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment is actually 2009. No, it's not happened yet: Wallace was a bit premature, but then so was Orwell.
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That's what it was. And I kept reading those chapters looking for a literal correlation.
That's what it was. And I kept reading those chapters looking for a literal correlation.
Just enjoy. It's a really great read. And very funny, in a frightening kind of way. And again, I recommend Stephen Burn's brief primer.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
miobrien
10-Feb-2011, 02:48
Someone elsewhere asks this. I have no idea but it just sounds interesting:
'Is anyone aware of any analysis of the striking similarity in experimental approach between Ulysses and Petersburg? Was either author, Joyce or [Andrei] Bely, aware of the other's work?' and 'Did Wallace ever state his debt to Bely or Joyce?'
BLOG (http://blogspot3.blogspot.com)
He definitely read Joyce. The title of the story "The Soul Is Not A Smithy" in Oblivion is an allusion to Portrait of the Artist..
Not sure about Andrei Bely - doubt it but who knows.
Having read 350 pages of Infinite Jest, I feel as if I should get credit for having read an entire novel. And for a moment today I regretted ever picking up the book when what was trite and jejune suddenly took a turn to sheer unmitigated fun. This was then followed by a chapter that kept me hanging onto every word. I'll hold off on the genius tag for now, but his talent is indisputable.
Stiffelio
16-Mar-2011, 05:48
Having read 350 pages of Infinite Jest, I feel as if I should get credit for having read an entire novel. And for a moment today I regretted ever picking up the book when what was trite and jejune suddenly took a turn to sheer unmitigated fun. This was then followed by a chapter that kept me hanging onto every word. I'll hold off on the genius tag for now, but his talent is indisputable.
Hang in there, Remora! You're only a third of the way through. Genius or no genius, I'm sure you'll never regret having read this wonderful book........and don't forget reading ALL the endnotes :-)
I'm gonna eventually have to buy the book to thoroughly enjoy it (I'm reading a library copy). And the way it's looking I'll definitely be buying one for my personal library.
DB Cooper
28-Mar-2011, 21:12
I ordered my copy of The Pale King today and am quite excited for its arrival. Scant reviews out at this point and they seem to share opinions on a few points. The takeaway I get so far is the writing is amazing in stretches, some of Wallace's best work, and also that this is pretty clearly an unfinished product, and unfortunately we wont ever get a final and polished story which ultimately holds this book back from achieving greatness. Oh well, Im still excited to read some new Wallace.
Mirabell
29-Mar-2011, 00:09
I was planning to re-read IJ first. Need people to join me.
Stiffelio
29-Mar-2011, 03:26
I was planning to re-read IJ first. Need people to join me.
Don't feel guilty if you resort to one of the several reading guides of IJ; they are very useful and make for a more complete reading experience.
Mirabell
29-Mar-2011, 03:32
Don't feel guilty if you resort to one of the several reading guides of IJ; they are very useful and make for a more complete reading experience.
I had no trouble understanding it the first time around. I disagree that they make for a "more complete reading experience". I'd say they make for a different one.
DB Cooper
29-Mar-2011, 03:48
I read IJ two summers ago, so Im not quite ready to dive back into that behemoth just yet. I may read a few stories from Oblivion though. Its interesting to see the reaction and hype surrounding this book. Not really sure what it would be like if Wallace were still alive, but since his death there seems to be more academic and critical reassessment of his work in a positive way. Those that were willing to withhold praise and point out Wallace's shortcomings before have shifted their opinions now that his body of work is finished. Its time to properly study his work, and grant his place among the upper tier of his generation of American writers. Speaking of the hype and buildup around the publishing of The Pale King, its almost like a new Radiohead album being released. The internet is all abuzz.
e joseph
29-Mar-2011, 13:33
My copy arrived a few days ago, so I'm aboard. Who else?
I've got Bernhard's The Loser (halfway done) and Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle with prior TBR status, but give me three days and I'm on the bandwagon for this thing.
Stiffelio
30-Mar-2011, 06:15
I had no trouble understanding it the first time around. I disagree that they make for a "more complete reading experience". I'd say they make for a different one.
I didn't mean to say IJ was difficult to understand. It's just that there are so many characters and plot links between them that I some times lost my bearings. I used the help guides (especially the scene-by-scene cues and character listing, without the spoilers) after reading each chapter. I am generally not so obsessive about plot details in a novel but this is the kind of book where, at least to me, the author planted so many unresolved clues that I'd love to know each single detail, as a challenge.
miobrien
31-Mar-2011, 02:55
Preordered my copy of The Pale King a few weeks ago. Really looking forward to it. My expectations aren't that high though. I'm concerned about the posthumous editing process. I know they had a lot of material to work from, and I'm sure there are some wonderful individual parts, but the book as a whole might be iffy.
But who knows. Maybe this isn't a bad thing. DFW has published other things that were a bit all over the place. The Broom of the System comes to mind. I think Infinite Jest works for the most part but I can see how someone would complain about it. I love the sections on tennis and addiction but am not so fond of the political satire part of the book.
And if you haven't read it yet here's an excerpt from TPK titled "Backbone." It was published in The New Yorker a few weeks ago:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/03/07/110307fi_fiction_wallace
I wish I had time to reread IJ with ya'll but won't be able to until June. Perhaps you'll be onto TPK by then.
Looking forward to everyone's thoughts in the coming weeks.
DB Cooper
31-Mar-2011, 08:07
My copy of The Pale King shipped today. I cant remember being this excited for a newly released book since Bolano's 2666.
miobrien
31-Mar-2011, 08:30
I thought it didn't come out until April 15.
DB Cooper
31-Mar-2011, 10:10
That was the official release date, but Amazon has been shipping it for a few days now. Sometimes they ship books before the official release date, and I saw that the publisher said that sellers could ship/sell the book as soon as they had it in stock.
It almost sounds like a lost WS play has been discovered, :rolleyes:.
I have placed a hold on The Pale King at my local library and will have to see for myself what all the hype is about. Admittedly, though, I am the last person to appreciate an author like DFW fully.
Mirabell
31-Mar-2011, 17:12
Uh. Maybe you should start with a proper DFW book first? One that the author finished and not the editor?
His novels are really long, and I just don't have the time right now to delve into any of them. TPK seems short or shorter in comparison.
Mirabell
31-Mar-2011, 17:21
His novels are really long, and I just don't have the time right now to delve into any of them. TPK seems short or shorter in comparison.
short story collections. lots of em. he wrote them. you can buy them. they are short. his debut novel (~400pages) is also shorter than the pale king (~500 pages). Of all his books, only IJ is longer.
I see. But the hype is currenly on/around The Pale King, :o.
OK, I might take a look at a story collection first. Any recommendations? I will still give TPK a try, if only because I am currently # 8 on the holders' list. (Remembering last year's nightmare when the waiting list for Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall numbered in the hundreds. I think I was # 51 out of 220, LOL).
miobrien
31-Mar-2011, 20:44
The Broom of the System is fun and intriguing. Overall I think it's an unfinished novel with way to much dialogue, and I'm not sure it's the best place to start because it doesn't really show his gifts.
Infinite Jest is where it's at, and I would recommend that above all.
From Girl with Curious Hair: "Lyndon"; "Everything Is Green"; "Little Expressionless Animals"
From Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: "Forever Overhead"; "The Depressed Person"; "Think"; "Brief Interviews #42"
From Oblivion: "Incarnations of Burned Children"; "Good Old Neon"; "The Suffering Channel"
And while I agree with Mirabell that The Pale King is an awkward place to start, a handful of excerpts from that book have already been published, so it couldn't hurt to tackle them first before you get your hands on the published book.
Mirabell
01-Apr-2011, 17:53
Kakutani reviews Pale King http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/books/the-pale-king-by-david-foster-wallace-book-review.html?pagewanted=1 and does, as always, a solid job of it.
Thank you, guys, for your suggestions. I'll see what's available at my local library.
e joseph
07-Apr-2011, 21:25
About 10 pages into Infinite Jest. It's on!
DB Cooper
08-Apr-2011, 06:06
About 80 pages into The Pale King. Good to be reading some new Wallace. The style differs a bit from the other fiction of his Ive read. In the forward by the editor he states that in Wallace's notes it was mentioned that he wanted the book to seem tornadic, and I definitely get that. Some pretty strong work in there, cant wait to see what else is in store.
Mirabell
08-Apr-2011, 10:20
About 10 pages into Infinite Jest. It's on!
it's so on.
it's so on.
Oh god. There goes my hard-on, :rolleyes:.
DB Cooper
09-Apr-2011, 01:19
Im not a fan of Kakutani, but I think her review was fair and raised some good points. Usually my taste in books run the complete opposite of hers, and whenever she gives a positive review for a book that Im looking forward to reading I shudder with fear.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/08/david-foster-wallace-pale-king?INTCMP=SRCH
Harry
A fascinating and revealing interview - Karen Green on DFW:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/10/karen-green-david-foster-wallace-interview
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
miobrien
11-Apr-2011, 07:43
Great read. Thanks.
I'm not on the same wavelength as you people regarding DFW. I read the extract in the Guardian describing how the narrator's dad was dragged to his death by an underground train, and am not impressed. And the media hype around Karen Green leaves me equally cold. I feel this is yet another ploy by capitalists, who have loads of juicy manuscripts by a genius who killed himself, to leak them bit by bit and make as much money as possible. This is all a bit too histrionically "American suicide genius" for me. I prefer life-enhancing stuff to the sleaze of the subway.
miobrien
12-Apr-2011, 07:19
I can certainly see where you are coming from. For those that are currently unfamiliar with his writing, this is an awkward time to encounter it. There is large degree of hype surrounding the publication -- perhaps more, I think, than the hype surrounding Nabokov’s posthumous release last year, The Original of Laura. Which, of course, is odd, as Nabokov is, by far, a more established and famous writer. (Comma frenzy there, Jesus.)
But suicide does that -- unfortunately. It puts people in the spotlight, makes things tragic, and so on. It’s all great for the capitalists.
I will say, however, that Wallace is an author that deserves our time and consideration. I don’t really think the release of The Pale King is akin to the release of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling trilogy, which screams of manipulation by publishers. (I’ll admit I’ve read them, and enjoy them, but their popularity is ridiculous.) There are many fans, myself included, who wanted the book published. It also seems that he wanted it published. So I don’t think we can conclude that this is a case of publishers and editors and agents cashing in on the legacy of a writer’s suicide.
I haven’t read that specific excerpt yet but it’s already been pointed out in the thread that starting with The Pale King is probably not the best idea.
I’m not sure what you mean about the media hype around Karen Green. She’s only given two interviews as far as I know. And in the Guardian interview that I read last night, she seemed rather genuine in her comments about the situation. I don’t see her trying to ride the coattails of his fame at all.
I hate when he’s described as a “genius.” It’s so misleading. It also raises the bar considerably. Also, I’m not really sure he was a genius. He was really smart. Let’s just leave it at that. The genius thing, if anything, is certainly a ploy -- by journalists, publishers, editors, critics, who knows. But it’s stupid.
My affinity for Wallace’s writing is the subtle instances of compassion and empathy you find; a desire for honesty and authenticity; and a willingness to probe the mundane, ordinary aspects of contemporary American life. (And I think the fact that I live in the city in which Infinite Jest takes place adds a certain degree of clarity as a reader. It’s easier for me to see what happens in the novel because of my familiarity with Boston and its suburbs.) Detailed observations, particularly from a psychological perspective. I think of him as a Dostoevsky-like writer.
Nonetheless, his writing is very journalistic, essayistic, almost academic (though Infinite Jest is kllnown for prose that parodies academia.) It’s not elegant or poetic.
And I’m also not a huge proponent of his so-called lexical and technical skills. He sure had a good vocabulary and solid grasp of English grammar but these aren’t the reasons I find myself going back to his fiction.
I don’t think he has the widest range -- on an international scale. He most appeals to youngish, male intellectuals, and that’s not surprising. His setting is contemporary America. But, again, there is humanity and hope and generosity in his writing; this is why it's special.
I don't think DFW's 1996 radio interview with Michael Silverblatt has been posted here, but it gives a few ideas of the thinking behind Infinite Jest, and his humanity and lack of hubris shine through. Shame about the appalling music before and after.
http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=bw960411david_foster_wallace
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It’s not elegant or poetic.
But to me - paradoxically - the way he minutely dissects and analyzes, being transformative, is intensely elegant and poetic as opposed to clinical and scientific.
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miobrien
12-Apr-2011, 08:55
But to me - paradoxically - the way he minutely dissects and analyzes, being transformative, is intensely elegant and poetic as opposed to clinical and scientific.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Sure. Absolutely. Wallace's style was poetic and beautiful in its own way. What I meant was not flowery and sensual and aesthetically refined. He was going for our "brain voice."
EDIT: I'd also like to add to my first post that I think DFW should be distinguished from the writers who have come after him or who were influenced by him. I think Dave Eggers and the whole McSweeney's thing are examples of the latter -- all of it ultimately misses the compassion/empathy/etc. DFW was trying to get at while using the same hip, pomo tricks. It unfortunately amounts to clever masturbatory prattle. Kind of like the postmodernists at their worst but more juvenile.
EDIT: I'd also like to add to my first post that I think DFW should be distinguished from the writers who have come after him or who were influenced by him. I think Dave Eggers and the whole McSweeney's thing are examples of the latter -- all of it ultimately misses the compassion/empathy/etc. DFW was trying to get at while using the same hip, pomo tricks. It unfortunately amounts to clever masturbatory prattle. Kind of like the postmodernists at their worst but more juvenile.
Certainly none of the writers associated with McSweeney's hold a candle to DFW's work in terms of quality, intelligence, inventiveness, etc, although there'll always be links: Eggers wrote an Introduction to one of the editions of Infinite Jest, interviewed DFW for The Believer, and so on.
And let's not forget the very worthy work Dave Eggers has done for 826 Valencia, which has now rapidly developed into 826 National.
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...there is humanity and hope and generosity in his writing; this is why it's special.Well, plenty of writers have humanity/hope/generosity in their fiction; what makes DFW so special then? How does he turn the personal into the universal, is the question I'd like to see answered.
Perhaps because I see so little value in playing mind-games with readers (Robert Coover-style), I usually scan postmodern fiction for what I, as a medievalist, am trained to seek: language, meaning, metaphor, and complexity. Plenty of convoluted language in PoMo writing, of course, as well as what passes for complexity, but very little meaning.
Now I haven't read anything by DFW yet, so perhaps it's unfair to lump him into the same category as the others, but judging from the excerpts posted on the web I doubt he is someone I will like. Intelligence has very little to do with it, so the usual "You just don't get it" ploy won't work. I'm trained in literary theory and lit crit; I work and translate from several medieval languages so intelligence is not a problem here.
The "You're taking it out of its context" argument is also quite silly. You can make up your mind about Geoffrey Chaucer, as a poet, from reading a handful of the Canterbury Tales which, as a book, is also a deeply fractured and ultimately unfinished text. So yes. You CAN pass a judgment on a writer by reading his/her work in its unfinished and/or excerpted state, except where there's really not much to go on (i.e. Nabokov's Laura).
I will proceed as planned with reading my copy of TPK, although I will take a look at his short stories before that, since you insist on a "proper" introduction. (It's like introducing yourself to Chaucer by reading his early Dream Visions, WHY?).
Anyway, I'm sure I'm rambling again, :o.
The trouble with talking about things you know nothing about is that you end up saying just that - nothing.
David Foster Wallace is vitally important because he isn't a postmodernist: he pushed the envelope beyond that. If you'd bothered to follow this thread and the links you'd have perhaps begun to understand that, but you didn't bother, so there's no point in either of us arguing about it.
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Not checked this much at all, and it's certainly not the final state, but anyone, with all the publicity, who's thinking of starting DFW with The Pale King is making a serious error. Start with the second novel:
http://www.beaujo.net/InfiniteJest.html
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
miobrien
13-Apr-2011, 00:04
Well, plenty of writers have humanity/hope/generosity in their fiction; what makes DFW so special then? How does he turn the personal into the universal, is the question I'd like to see answered.
Detailed psychological portraits and character studies of modern contemporary Americans -- e.g., the various characters in Infinite Jest, especially the residents of Ennet House (a halfway house). Don Gately is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.
Perhaps because I see so little value in playing mind-games with readers (Robert Coover-style), I usually scan postmodern fiction for what I, as a medievalist, am trained to seek: language, meaning, metaphor, and complexity. Plenty of convoluted language in PoMo writing, of course, as well as what passes for complexity, but very little meaning.His earlier stuff, pre-IJ, is more like this. He confesses to that in the interview with Michael Silverblatt. You need to read IJ on an emotional level, in my opinion. There are a lot of tricks there, yes, but they're not as important.
Also, his fiction is very well-suited for reading aloud. It's conversational. A lot of people don't sense that. If you listen to the audio recordings of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men something really changes (they were read by him). The texts come alive in ways they don't on the paper.
The "You're taking it out of its context" argument is also quite silly. You can make up your mind about Geoffrey Chaucer, as a poet, from reading a handful of the Canterbury Tales which, as a book, is also a deeply fractured and ultimately unfinished text. So yes. You CAN pass a judgment on a writer by reading his/her work in its unfinished and/or excerpted state, except where there's really not much to go on (i.e. Nabokov's Laura).
I will proceed as planned with reading my copy of TPK, although I will take a look at his short stories before that, since you insist on a "proper" introduction. (It's like introducing yourself to Chaucer by reading his early Dream Visions, WHY?).
Anyway, I'm sure I'm rambling again, :o.
But not all works are created equal. All of us in this thread who have previously read DFW agree that Infinite Jest is his best piece of writing. The Pale King will likely not measure up to it. There's probably some great stuff in it but I doubt it can compete with Infinite Jest. And that's the problem here. Reading The Pale King might turn you off from his writing. Using it to pass judgment on his entire oeuvre is a mistake, IMO.
Nevertheless, I'll admit that I'm an OCD freak who likes to read authors chronologically. I think there's something important in observing how an author changes throughout his or her career, from work to work. That's just me though. I'm not basing that on anything from lit theory or lit crit.
I'd like to see a novel written where wicked publisher conglomerates manipulate unstable scribblers to commit suicide in order to get hold of their scribblings and sell them piecemeal to a conditioned readership of commuters who themselves would never dare to commit suicide (they're on anti-depressants, anyway) but worship the idea of getting out of their treadmill.
In the cynical world of hype and big business, I'm sure there is already a 946-page novel about such practices. The author has to be completely humourless, because any smiles in those 946 pages would reduce the sheer tragedy that the greedy publishers are trying to conjure up in the weepy minds of the helpless drone commuters to whom they will be selling this desperate literature. Then the widow will write a 946-page biography of her late husband, which will make her a pittance (owing to clever clauses in the contract) and make the publishing house another 946 million dollars.
I'll just pop over to the next book fair to sell my idea, for straight cash, to some drooling atavist waiting for good ideas.
By the way, the widow of the late Umeå Trot Stieg Larsson is coming to talk here in Uppsala this evening. I think I'll be staying at home.
IMPORTANT WARNING
An Ennet House inmate's on the prowl - lock up your cats and dogs!
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e joseph
13-Apr-2011, 15:12
Yay, groupread! Anyway, I'm only maybe 50 pages in, but a few sections have been really enjoyable. Not 100% sure where we're going yet, but at 50 out of 1,000 pages, why should I?
DB Cooper
13-Apr-2011, 23:09
Liam I dont think Wallace is a writer you would enjoy, so it would probably be a waste for you to try to get into his work. I mean he is about as far away as you can get, aesthetically, from medieval linguistics and themes. Im assuming that kind of writing is one of your favorites from the post you made. Nevertheless you do make some good points in this thread. Ill be very interested to hear your thoughts after you do read some Wallace, though I would be borderline shocked if his writing tickles your fancy.
DB Cooper
13-Apr-2011, 23:17
Im somewhere around pp 250 in The Pale King, and at this point I would place this book in the upper shelf of Wallaces work. I think the arguments re the work being unfinished, or incomplete, ring hollow for me. Infinite Jest, at over 1100 pages mind you, in no way felt finished. His first novel ended mid sentence. Tying loose ends wasnt Wallaces goal or style. I mean he barley had definable narratives. Calling TPK unfinished is a way of creating a built in excuse for any weakness the work may have, and in this case the book gains, I believe, from being a little bit looser or more unpolished than Wallace would have ever allowed to be printed. It creates something a little different from his other books. Everybody knows Kafka didnt "finish" his books, but they are masterpieces. Judge the work for what it is, on its own terms, solely by whats on the page, instead of allowing all the outside information to color your reading experience.
Tying loose ends wasnt Wallaces goal or style.Doesn't this signify shoddy writing practice?
Liam, you do make some good points in this thread.Thank you, DB, :cool:.
I would be borderline shocked if his writing tickles your fancy.Like Waalkwriter coming to appreciate Don DeLillo, you mean? LOL.
miobrien
14-Apr-2011, 03:58
Doesn't this signify shoddy writing practice?
Yes and no. Many literary writers' books have liberal plotlines. He wasn't the first. But I understand your concern, of course.
Like Waalkwriter coming to appreciate Don DeLillo, you mean? LOL.
Does it help that A. S. Byatt was one of his favorite writers? Haha.
Stiffelio
14-Apr-2011, 05:19
IMPORTANT WARNING
An Ennet House inmate's on the prowl - lock up your cats and dogs!
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Let's recruit him for a game of ESCHATON.........he could defend the Estonia base.
Let's recruit him for a game of ESCHATON.........he could defend the Estonia base.
Or how about spreading a rumor to the A.F.R that he has the Master copy? ;)
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Infinite Jest, at over 1100 pages mind you, in no way felt finished.
Perfection can perhaps exist in some finished products, but never in literature, where the concept is meaningless. So no piece of creative literature can ever be 'finished', as it can always be improved on. But the author has to let it go at some point, or nothing would get published.
And this, of course, is before you even consider subjectivity.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
David Foster Wallace is vitally important because he isn't a postmodernist: he pushed the envelope beyond that.Interesting observation, how would you characterize post-postmodernism? :) I mean, any postmodernist would tell you that the desire to get away from postmodernism is postmodern in itself, so it's a never ending loop. And a return to pure, unadulturated realism of the 19th century would be both undesirable and naive. What stranger pastures can we, as writers, haunt in the future?
Interesting observation, how would you characterize post-postmodernism? :) I mean, any postmodernist would tell you that the desire to get away from postmodernism is postmodern in itself, so it's a never ending loop. And a return to pure, unadulturated realism of the 19th century would be both undesirable and naive. What stranger pastures can we, as writers, haunt in the future?
Why don't you read what I said earlier in the thread? Anyway, listen to the Silverblatt interview, particularly near the end, to give you an idea.
Can't say anymore as I'm now in George Eliot country (Nuneaton area) for three days.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
Why don't you two stop bitching, and write lots and lots more about the life-affirmingly suicidal DFW whose surviving family, in good old Stieg Larsson wise, are trying to squeeze everything out of his estate, fame, and books that they can. I love commercialism, especially when purported Lefties become desperately capitalist when their own money, or the potential for earning same, are involved.
Lionel, you still haven't admitted to us that you never did move to France, but are still living in a minor marquee in the Northamptonshire Riviera. Come clean, my boy.
I like a bit of postmodernism, but only when it is committed to life-affirming values and not too many dads are splattered to death by train doors or other morbid shit smeared out over 867 pages.
Liam, don't ramble (as you admitted doing in a previous posting), let DFW do it for you.
When are we going to start a DFW fan club, by the way?
Lionel, you still haven't admitted to us that you never did move to France, but are still living in a minor marquee in the Northamptonshire Riviera. Come clean, my boy.
As I said a while ago, half seriously, half in (infinite?) jest, Eric, we'll probably leave for France à la Saint-Glinglin, but as I've also said, it depends on two vital things:
a) selling this property
b) my partner being made redundant.
I'm working on a), she's working on b).
And there's a great deal of information about Wallace here in the links. I particularly like Silverblatt's 30-minute interview with him.
BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)
The book jacket photo of Wallace looks exactly like the main character from Being John Malkovich: glasses, long greasy hair, etc. I wonder if one was styled after the other.
e joseph
29-Apr-2011, 14:27
Over three weeks since I started Infinite Jest; page 120. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. I get the appeal of a group read for this beast though. The Marathe/Steeply sections in particular have totally ground me to a halt once or twice. Yesterday I picked the novel up to heave it across the room, then realized I was too weak to do so. Anyway, six more months and I'm done.
e joseph
13-May-2011, 14:09
The army of one group read soldiers on. Page 300something and the book is fantastic. Everyone and anyone around me knows I'm reading this thing. So so so good.
Stiffelio
14-May-2011, 05:28
The army of one group read soldiers on. Page 300something and the book is fantastic. Everyone and anyone around me knows I'm reading this thing. So so so good.
I am glad you are enjoying IJ. I gather you are reading it in a group. How often do you meet and what's the process like in the group, do you discuss chapters as you go along?
e joseph
15-May-2011, 03:31
I'm actually going it alone. If you scroll back a few pages (and I don't suggest you do), there was brief talk of a group read which never came to fruition. It might have been nice to have some prodding once or twice in the opening 150 pages or so of the book, but after that I hit stride. Good times.
Corswandt
23-May-2011, 18:25
"Ramon Glazov" (presumably yet another pen name of John Dolan) rips DFW (and also Eggers and Vollmann) a new one on this amusingly rambling piece:
http://exiledonline.com/david-foster-wallace-portrait-of-an-infinitely-limited-mind/
Haven't read all of it as it seems to contain spoilers for Infinite Jest, but most of what I did read was fun, particularly the more nitpicky bits.
miobrien
01-Aug-2011, 03:46
Very long article by Adam Kirsch in The New Republic.
http://www.tnr.com/article/books/magazine/92794/david-lipsky-foster-wallace-pale-king?passthru=MDM0Y2MyNDQ2ZDc1OWIxYjFmZmY4OWMwNTA1 Yzc1Yzg
I'd like to saunter back in, tip my hat to Lionel (if he ever comes back around), and gloat a little over a discussion earlier in the thread. The one about Wallace and religion? Yes, that one. Seems I was spot-on in noting a similarity in DeLillo and Wallace's religious sensibility; Wallace was, himself, considering converting to Catholicism, the very wellspring from which so much in DeLillo has sprung. It is rarely a "social-participant" in religious activities who seriously ponders, contemplates conversion. The process requires too much of someone who is, primarily, content to enjoy the "square-dances" and gatherings of church community.
miobrien
25-Jan-2012, 04:59
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/news/upcoming-publications/uncollected-non-fiction-later-this-year---both-flesh-and-not.html
New unpublished nonfiction collection coming out: Both Flesh and Not.
Stiffelio
23-Feb-2012, 05:40
Yesterday David Foster Wallace would have turned 50. Alas, it wasn't to be and we shall always wonder how his genius would have continued to develop had he lived longer. Anyway, some crazy fans are celebrating him this way:
http://flavorwire.com/261864/awesome-tattoos-inspired-by-david-foster-wallace
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