Now I see what all the fuss is about.

This is my first David Foster Wallace and, while I'd been meaning to read him for sometime, it was his well known essay on cruising that finally led me to close the deal.

I recently went on a Caribbean cruise with a buddy of mine who is an absolutely cruise fiend. He'd been urging me for years to come with him and I finally agreed.

I hated it.

Sharing my hatred with numerous individuals often resulted in their saying, "Have you read that DFW essay on cruising? You'd love it!"

And I did. You might consider it a bit lengthy for an essay, at 100 pages it's the longest in this collection, but there is not a page included that does not deserve to be there.

The most amazing thing, really, is how little cruising has changed. Wallace wrote this essay back in 1995, but he could have been describing the cruise experience in 2020. There are a couple indicators of course, DFW's unfamiliarity with the term "GPS," for example, but all the things that I, and it appears, DFW, hate about the American service industry have remained consistent over time.

But while I loved the title essay, the one from this collection I actually came away with liking the most is "Getting away from already pretty much being away from it all," about DFW's time at the Illinois State Fair.

Now I've never been to a state fair, but Wallace renders it pretty much exactly as I imagine it would be. To the point that I actually sort of want to go see the tacky horror of it all for myself.

Every single page features absolutely hilarious anecdotes and examples, from the booth with t-shirts featuring various absurd slogans to Wallace's depiction of the carnies. I loved it all.

Two of the essays concern tennis, and you don't have to be a tennis fan in order to enjoy them. Though one of these two, "Derivative sport in tornado alley," is less about tennis than it is a look at DFW's upbringing, with a tornado thrown in for good measure.

Another essay, "David Lynch keeps his head," sees DFW on the set of the 1995 David Lynch film "Lost Highway."

I took a film class back in my freshman year of college in the fall of 2004. The professor was young, mistaken by nearly all of us for a student when he first walked in, and resembled Kurt Cobain. What a class that was ... one of my classmates was blind (yes, a blind girl in a film class) and her condition required that she be accompanied everywhere with a dog, Lila. The dog's birthday happened to fall on the Friday before our midterm exam, and the professor carted out a birthday cake made entirely of liver (being as it was, for the dog) and announced to the class that he would give extra credit to those who ate a slice. Of the 30 or so students, I and two others were alone in accepting the offer.

It tasted about how you'd expect liver cake to. Which is to say, disgusting.

The following day, Professor Holiday joked that "I can't really do that, so I've brought a birthday card for the dog and if the rest of you just write something witty inside, I'll give you extra credit too."

Yes, I was outraged, but what could I do?

That little story was merely a detour on my way to saying that the first time I ever saw the film "Lost Highway," or anything by David Lynch for that matter, was in that class. I rewatched it for the first time since then while reading DFW's essay and, yes, it's still pretty bad. Interesting, but bad.

But like DFW, I truly admire David Lynch and concur that other, more "popular" directors, like Quentin Tarantino, have borrowed from Lynch to such a heavy extent that they owe their success largely to him.

Also the third season of "Twin Peaks" is the best thing that's ever aired on TV, period.

"E unibus plurum: television and U.S. fiction" is largely about television advertising and how an ad can never, ever, be considered art. It's a depressing, but illuminating, look into the industry and the ways it manages to manipulate the populace.

I didn't love every essay — "Greatly Exaggerated," a look into post-structuralism and obscure (for me, anyway) literary theory wasn't quite my cup of tea — but I loved or very much liked the rest.

Now comes the obligatory note on how we have been unfortunately deprived of DFW's fantastic mind, and that is heartrending indeed. It's clear in this, his first collection, that he was a truly fabulous writer. Fortunately, I have other unread works of his to check out, including his fiction, but the mind can't help but ponder on what such a truly insightful individual would have had to say about all the things that make up our chaotic modern times.

Una disamina ironica e dissacrante sulle crociere extralusso nei caraibi. Punti deboli e punti di forza diversamente da come si legge su TripAdvisor.

Da non perdere: divertente, ironico, arguto. la cosa più bella di questo libro sono le note: una trovata geniale! E poi ho capito che una crociera proprio non fa per me: troppo claustrofobica.

"No pasa lo mismo con los barcos de las Megalíneas, No es accidental que sean todos tan blancos y limpios, porque está claro que han de representar el triunfo calvinista del capital y la industria sobre la putrefacción primaria del mar".

“Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volveré a hacer” me parece un título acertadísimo lleno de referencias y de finísima ironía referido al mundo de los cruceros de lujo, vacaciones en alta mar dónde comer, tumbarse a la bartola y la búsqueda desesperada y masiva de esparcimiento se convierten en el centro de estas vacaciones, el vacio llevado a sus máximas consecuencias. El caso es que a DFW se le ofrece pasar una semana en un crucero de lujo por el Caribe a cambio de una serie de artículos y quién ya conozca a este escritor, se imaginará ya la deriva de estos articulos y quién no, pues se encontrará con un golpe de descripciones descaradas, irónicas y en otros momentos llenas de ternura,de estos siete días de experiencia.

David Foster Wallace no solo hace una descripción detallada y minuciosa desde el momento antes de subir a bordo del crucero, observando a los pasajeros, a la tripulación, de cada paso desde el mismo momento en que están esperando para embarcar, como por ejmplo:

"La de la mujer del sistema de megafonía es la voz que uno se imagina que debe de tener una supermodelo británica. Todo el mundo agarra sus tarjetas numeradas como si fueran documentos de identidad en Checkpoint Charley. Esta espera masificada y ansiosa tiene un elemento a lo Ellis/pre-Ausschwitz, pero me siento cómodo intentando extender la comparación."

sino que en varios momentos se repite su símil de lo bovino comparándolo con los pasajeros, sobre todo americanos, pero es que tanta masificación, no puede dar lugar a otro simil posible. Hay momentos desternillantes, pero realmente dentro de este humor negro, hay mucho de reflexión y de análisis de una clase social:

"Hay algo ineludiblemente bovino en un turista americano avanzando como parte de un grupo. Hay cierta placidez codiciosa en ellos. En nosotros, mejor dicho. En puerto nos convertimos automáticamente en Peregrinator americanus, Die Lumpenamerikaner. La Gente Fea. Para mí, la boviscopofobia es una motivación todavía más fuerte que la semiagorafobia para quedarme en el barco cuando estamos en el puerto."

"boviscopofobia: el miedo mórbido a ser visto como un ser bovino."

“Llevo toda la semana haciendo todo lo que puedo para separarme a los ojos de la tripulación del rebaño bovino del que formo parte, para distanciarme de alguna forma: evito las cámaras, las gafas de sol y la ropa caribeña en tonos pastel; insisto much en llevarme mi bandeja en la cafeteria y doy gracias de forma efusiva incluso por el más pequeño servicio."

DFW comienza en un tono relajado, reflexivo, analizando, y casi disfrutando en su observación del entorno, que es como un universo paralelo, para poco a poco ir haciéndose un retrato mucho más critico, más negro, del mundo de los cruceros, del engaño, de lo que hay detrás y , de las falsas sonrisas:

“Sus Sonrisas Profesionales se activan como interruptores a mi paso. Pero también en tierra, en bancos, restaurantes, mostradores de venta, billetes de avión, etcetera. Ya conocen esa sonrisa, la contracción enérgica del cuadro circumoral con movimiento cigomático completo, esa sonrisa que no lelga a los ojos del que sonrie y que no significa nada más que un intento calculado de adelantarse a los intereses del que sonríe fingiendo que la cae bien el objeto de la sonrisa. ¿Por qué los empresarios y gerentes obligan a los profesionales de los servicios a irradiar la Sonrisa Profesional? ¿Soy el único consumidor en quien dosis elevadas de esa sonrisa producen desesperación? ¿A quién creen que engañan con la Sonrisa Profesional?”

Es decir que para mí quizás el valor más importante de este diario de DFW en torno al mundo de los cruceros de lujo no es otro que analizar lo que hay detrás de la galeria: los pasajeros son agasajados continuamente, tanto, que se puede hacer desesperante, pero detrás de esta fachada, están los tripulantes, los que agasajan y no dejan de sonreír ni un minuto y realmente es fascinante verlo todo desde el punto de vista de DFW: incisivo e irónico, no deja de cuestionar ni por un instante el trato de las jerarquías superiores , los WASP, hacia las jerarquias inferiores:

"Mi impresión era que la Alegría figuraba junto con la Rapidez y el Servilismo en las hojas de evaluación de los trabajadores que los jefes griegos estaban todo el tiempo rellenando: cuando no sabían que había pasajeros mirando, muchos trabajadores mostraban esa clase de tedio amargado que uno asocia con los empleados mal pagados en general, además de miedo."

DFW recorre con detalle casi clínico todos las fases, que quizás un pasajero normal y corriente en un crucero ni se fijaría, y lo hace con gracia, con ironia y con exposición de si mismo, porque no es solo una serie de artículos sobre su experiencia de siete días en un crucero, sino que además DFW habla de si mismo y se expone, y se ríe de alguna forma de su semiagorafobia como él la llama y de sus momentos en los que se relaciona con el resto de los pasajeros, hay momentos realmente desternillantes y otros de mucha ternura y humanidad cuando describe a ciertos personajes magistralmente:

"Petra, la de los granos y las cejas pobladas, que siempre llevaba ropa blanca de enfermera almidonada y susurrante y olía al aroma de cedro del desinfectante noruego con que limpiaba los lavabos, y que limpiaba mi camarote con un centímetro de su contenido al menos diez veces diarias pero nunca la pillaba en el acto de limpiar: una figura de encanto mágico y pertinaz, merecedora de una postal por sí misma".

En definitiva, una lectura que he disfrutado muchísimo porque quería conocer más a DFW dado que estoy sumergida en una lectura conjunta de La Broma Infiníta y este ensayo me ha venido de perlas para acercarme más a este escritor que cada día me parece más grande. Por cierto, imprescindible leer las notas, en algún momento se esconden auténticas historias en forma de joyitas entre esas notas.

"Un anuncio que finge ser arte es (en el mejor de los casos) como alguien que te sonríe con calidez solamente porque quiere conseguir algo de tí. Esto es deshonesto, pero lo más siniestro es el efecto acumulativo que semejante falta de honestidad tiene sobre nosotros (...) Hace que nos sintamos confundidos, solos, impotentes, furiosos y asustados. Provoca desesperación".

he picked up a book. he read the book. it was him all over. the best version of himself! and the worst.

n  n

what is postmodernism, really? is it a way to understand the world, to define the world, to separate yourself from the world... when you are actually a part of that world? a part of the so-called problem? you want to put a layer between you and the world. you are so much apart from it, right? an unwilling participant in all of those repulsive patriarchal and terminally corny signs and signifiers, things that disgust you, it's not fair, just because you happen to have the misfortune to be born straight & white & male and, as they say, privileged. you need the distance, the alienation, the angst of being someone, something, anything, apart... because you know you are different. right? you just know it. you enjoy things and yet you don't enjoy them, you enjoy not enjoying them, your layer of hipster irony protects you and maybe fulfills you. and you will never admit that. you self deprecate, in your own egotistical way. you are the boss of you; no one can take that away. everything is so corny and full of bullshit, surely they must see that. and yet there must be truth there, if you look for it. you tell yourself that. you write a book, a great book about life and love and living and loving, etc. you write a book, or imagine yourself writing a book. it is not this book. this book is all about the unimportant things, the annoying things, the fake shit and all the bullshit. does it satisfy you? not really. so you read a book. you feel better. let the irony take over, it comforts you. you are not angry, not angry at all. you laugh at all that fake shit, all the bullshit. angry is a hot emotion. you don't feel those, at least not anymore.

n  n

you go to a movie set. Lost Highway. you try to keep an open mind but it is all fake, it is all bullshit. there are too many assholes in the world! and yet the director at the center of it all is not fake, he is not bullshit, he's not an asshole. does he understand something about life that you do not? what does he understand, what does he know? you want to know. he is just being himself, and you don't understand that. or maybe you do. it all makes you deeply uncomfortable.

you go to a fair; you go on a cruise. both are depressing. but funny! the kind of funny that you can only sheepishly admit. perhaps you are a part of the problem; it is people who look just like you who created this world that you despise. you try to enjoy the fair. you try to enjoy the cruise. you take enjoyment from your lack of enjoyment. you write a book, a collection of short works, at times even a "personal narrative". that's the phrase, right? you personally inject yourself into the narrative, into this ridiculous world. you feel better! but not really. fuck this life. fuck this earth. there is only one way to live in this life and that is through the glass of irony, a postmodern form of protection, the strongest barrier, it will protect you, just breathe, you know you can do it, it's not so bad,

n  n.

my name is mark. i'm not white, not really, only half-white, does that count as white? i don't feel white, however that feels. i am bisexual, no really. i veer gay if that it makes it easier to swallow. oh and i wasn't born in this country, this U.S. of fucking A. and hey, what's money? i've never had it; i'll never get it. and who the fuck is David Foster Wallace? i dunno. he's some dude that everyone jacks off to, apparently.

n  n

i have a friend named Benji - a golden lad (at least in my mind; i look at him through the lense of my very first impression, forever ingrained). he is nothing like DFW. once he talked about how he doesn't see race or class or sexuality, because he's never had to. he was raised by good progressives; he was raised to love life. nice life! he talked about how he wished everyone could be like him, not white or straight or a guy or from money or whatever, but able to look at things like they were and not let all the bullshit get them down, and so just live. not assign guilt or blame, just to understand, or try to, and then move on. not judge. you know, it should be easy, life should be easy, why isn't it? i listened to him say these things and i thought i wish. i wish i could be that way. you are so naive, Benji. i fucking hate you. i fucking love you. DFW is the opposite of Benji. and yet, and yet... is the difference merely a question of awareness? of critical distance? i can't imagine being a person like Benji, being that blithe. now Benji could enjoy a county fair, an awful cruise, he could enjoy it without irony i think. certainly without that underlying feeling of sadness and, yep, i won't pretend, without the condescending irritation at the futility of all these fucking gestures, the fake shit and the bullshit, the power imbalances, the need to make form equal meaning. i love Benji but i'm not sure i understand him. so why do i understand David Foster Wallace? he is nothing like me. he is like Benji. straight white male; money: not a problem. what do i have in common with David Foster Wallace? nothing. the idea is ludicrous. and yet, and yet... why do i read him and feel like i am reading my own thoughts, right there on the page? my own thoughts, staring back at me.

2021 Update:
*small soapbox rant*
I've moved my rating from 4 to 5, as I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't 'downrate' writing I find excellent, innovative and necessary, just because I think it has a limited audience. I'm starting to trust my own opinion more because I'm starting to distrust the popular public opinion, and so my reviews from 2021 onwards are going to cater more to whoever likes what I read, rather than to what I think the general public will actually read.

Following the death of Harold Bloom, I am now beginning to question the sociopolitical factors affecting how we appreciate fiction and regard classic fiction. We are living in an age where educators are shunning classics and literary fiction as a genre for political/cultural reasons (#disrupttexts), leading to younger adults doing the same. We now have an all-time low of adults reading at all, and a declining number of people reading anything other than YA/Fantasy/NA. Postmodern writers like DFW might not be accessible, but it absolutely does not mean they are not relevant and important to the time we are living in.
*ok rant over*

Small thing I forgot to mention, is that reading this shortly before a marketing survey about brand advertisement for an academic journal made the interviewers HIGHLY interested in what I was saying. It was funny, I paraphrased E Unibus Pluram and they started focusing more on my comments than other interviewees, despite the fact I'd never used the service.

——
2017 Reflection:

Rating Breakdown & Summary

1. Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley =5/5 #3.
About DFW's tennis years.

2. E Unibus Pluram =5/5* #1. *Highly recommended*
About the psychological effects of TV and advertisement.

3. Getting Away from... =3/5 #7.
About a (boring) town fair.

4. Greatly Exaggerated =4/5 #6.
About an academic perspective of the role of the author.

5. David Lynch Keeps His Head = 4/5 #4.
About visiting the set of Lost Highway.

6. Tennis Player Michael Joyce's... = 4/5 #5.
About interviewing a cool tennis guy.

7. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again =5/5 #2.
About being on a cruise ship.


Easier to read style to read than in Infinite Jest as these were journalistic pieces meant for magazines. The title is a bit silly, as DFW doesn't really ever make any arguments but he does write very well about what might at first seem to be non-noteworthy observations. 5/5 quality all-round, perhaps even better than his fiction quality. I've given this 4/5 as I would not recommend this to just any reader. DFW's personality is so deeply embedded in all the writing and I can see how this may be unenjoyable for some readers (especially in essay 3). DFW is so good at writing that you the parts you will dislike here are just the parts of him that you dislike. I found myself not enjoying the fair essay because he was scared or allergic to almost everything.

E Unibus Pluram is probably the best essay I have ever read to date, and I would highly recommend picking up the collection just to read this essay to become consciously aware of the role of TV and advertising. There are quotes from it on the separate listing for it on GoodReads that will give you a good idea on why I am so heavily recommending it.

La cosa più spassosa di questo libro è immaginare David Foster Wallace aggirarsi come un pesce fuor d'acqua osservando i passeggeri della nave, partecipando alle feste formali con la sua maglietta con disegnato uno smoking, cercando di intrufolarsi nei locali dei dipendenti o tendendo agguati infruttuosi alla cameriera che rassetta la sua camera per capire come diavolo fa a sapere quando lui si assenta per più di 30 minuti. L'analisi della vita e degli animali da crociera che ne fa, invece, è così limpida da offrire una visione alquanto triste e desolante di una cosa divertente che credo non farò mai.

Great essays here; varying topics. A reader can definitely see the ones that DFW enjoyed writing most. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the tennis essays, when I have(had) no interest in the sport. My favorite was the Lynch essay.

una cosa divertente che farò di più: leggere DFW

n  I have felt as bleak as I’ve felt since puberty, and have filled almost three Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.n

By far my favorite review of this book—and one of my favorite reviews on this site—is Geoff’s energetic paean. So I find it somewhat ironic that, setting out to write my own review, I am forced to begin with the opposite moral: do not trust the American-hype machine. This is not because everything popular is bad, nor because of any Orwellian or Adornoesque suspicions of mass manipulation. This is, rather, for the very simple reason that inflated expectations can make even genuinely joyful experiences a touch disappointing and, thus, embittering.
tt
DFW is a sublime illustration of this. Few authors on this site, if any, can compare with the gratuitous amount of praise heaped upon them by book-worms and casual readers alike. I mean, for Pete’s sake, in one review there’s even a photoshopped image of DFW’s face edited onto Jesus’ body (an impressively literal example of idolatry). And because I had the enthusiastic voices of so many fellow readers in my head as I opened the first page, I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking the same thought: “So this is what everybody’s raving about?!”
tt
And the other unfortunate consequence of this superfluity of praise, besides giving the experience itself a tinge of discontent, is that now I feel a bit defensive about my opinion, as if not joining this chorus makes me a sinner. Perhaps I am? But listen; let me be clear from the get-go: I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It’s just I have some emotional baggage to deal with. Bear with me.
tt
This book is a collection of essays Wallace wrote during the early half of the nineties. In terms of both subject-matter and quality, it’s a mixed bag. Some are forgettable or worse; and some are fantastic and hilarious. These essays, however, all share distinctive traits and, in my opinion, serious flaws.
tt
Let me get the most obvious flaw out of the way first. Every essay is too long. I’m surprised any editor let Wallace get away with such meandering, such overabundance, and such aimlessness as one finds here. He pursues tangents, includes needless details, and generally opines about everything which passes before his eyes. I know it would feel like bloody murder to cut lines from such a talented writer. But every good writer knows, at least in the back of her head, that writing is ultimately for the reader, not the writer. The entire profession of editing exists because of the all-too-human tendency to forget this. This general too-much-ness (to use a Wallacism) often gives his writing a lack of focus and power, turning what should be an act of communication into an info-dump.
tt
Another flaw, which I admit is a bit petty of me to rag on, is his unnecessary orthographic trickery. Here’s an example: “The net, 3.5 feet high at the posts, divides the court widthwise in half; the service lines divide each half again into backcourt and fore-.” The language in this sentence strikes me as deliberately annoying and ugly. For one, the word “widthwise” is awful; and by saying “backcourt and fore-,” he forces the reader to perform a mental operation to get the sentence’s meaning—and an unsatisfying mental operation, too. And besides, this sentence is explaining what a bleeding tennis court looks like, the sort of thing you can safely omit. There’s stuff like this throughout, phrases and abbreviations which struck me as serving no purpose except to be intentionally irritating.
tt
A much deeper flaw is with some of the ideas he puts forward. The whole point of his essay about Michael Joyce, the tennis player, is that practicing to be a professional athlete requires so much time it ends up warping you—which is pretty obvious, if you ask me. And I cannot find a better way to sum up his book review about the “Death of the Author” except to say that it was intellectual masturbation to very dull porn. But this lackluster theorizing was most apparent in his essay about television, in which he argues that irony is becoming pervasive, suffocating, and dangerous. Not only has this concern been rendered obsolete because of technological advancement—an option which he explicitly rules out—but besides that, I can’t help but find Wallace’s battle-cry to “risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs,” a bit feeble, as if breaking out of your twenty-something cage of irony is a heroic struggle.
tt
All this is DFW at his worst—pretentious, show-offy, faux-profound; in other words, that annoying guy in a turtleneck who lived down the hall in your college dorm. (That was me in my dorm, in case you're wondering.)
tt
But DFW at his best is another creature entirely. He’s friendly, interesting, funny, and insightful. He’s charming—the sort of guy I’d love to have a beer with. In fact, DFW can be downright addictive; by the time I got near the end of this book, I couldn’t put it down. I was stifling laughter on the metro, and interrupting my girlfriend repeatedly to make her read a funny passage. She liked these, too, and didn’t even mind when I did it again two minutes later.
tt
DFW is at his best in two essays in this collection: his trip to the State Fair and his trip on a luxury cruise-line. They’re similar works, both involving the socially awkward, delectably nervous, highly oversensitive, somewhat misanthropic, thoroughly overeducated DFW entering an environment which caters to none of these qualities. In these situations, DFW is pushed to find humor in his situation; and this search leads him to insights, both about his environment and himself. His is the kind of humor that functions both as comedy and as philosophy, providing perspective, analysis, and interpretation, leading you to acceptance of yourself and your place in the world.
tt
What also sets these works apart is a keen anthropological eye. Details crowd these pages, lined up into lists, tucked into corners, jammed into footnotes. And although many of these details are unnecessary, and some are simply distracting, most are delectable and delicious. “The very best way to describe Scott Peterson’s demeanor is that it looks like he’s constantly posing for a photograph nobody is taking.” DFW combines a journalist’s curiosity with a neurotic’s oversensitivity and a novelist’s voyeurism. The result is a man exquisitely attuned to his environment.
tt
To sum up, I’ve decided I like the guy, and I think he’s a fantastic writer. My only regret is that I met DFW with expectations inflated to the size of the Hindenburg, which caused me constantly to measure him against the literally godlike person he was described to be. And the real shame is that, baring some youthful inability to figure out which details of his life are worth writing down, he strikes me as a humble, decent, and honest person—not the kind of person who’d want to be known as a Goodreads God. It’s a shame he’s gone.

this book made me wet myself. twice. i wish to god i was exaggerating. or elderly. but poor dfw on a cruise ship... no one has ever paired genius with social awkwardness more charmingly.

come to my blog!

ENGLISH (A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again) / ITALIANO

«Right now it's Saturday 18 March, and I'm sitting in the extremely full coffee shop of the Fort Lauderdale Airport, killing the four hours between when I had to be off the cruise ship and when my flight to Chicago leaves by trying to summon up a kind of hypnotic sensuous collage of all the stuff I've seen and heard and done as a result of the journalistic assignment just ended»

In the absence of a little courage to start the gigantic Infinite Jest, I hit up the lighter and more reassuring humorous essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". Commissioned to the author by Harper's magazine, this work is a coverage of the "7 nights Caribbean cruise", for a term of a clean week. A luxury cruise only for rich people. The David Foster Wallace's portrait of the typical American on holiday is hilarious, and the the one of the infrastructure and of the cabin crew is excessive and surreal.

The obsession of the entertainment at all costs. The compulsion of the nourishment at all times.

Vote: 7.5

«E allora oggi è sabato 18 marzo e sono seduto nel bar strapieno di gente dell’aeroporto di Fort Lauderdale, e dal momento in cui sono sceso dalla nave da crociera al momento in cui salirò sull’aereo per Chicago devono passare quattro ore che sto cercando di ammazzare facendo il punto su quella specie di puzzle ipnotico-sensoriale di tutte le cose che ho visto, sentito e fatto per il reportage che mi hanno commissionato»

In mancanza di un pò di coraggio per iniziare il mastodontico "Infinite Jest", mi butto sul più leggero e rassicurante saggio umoristico "Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più". Opera commissionata all'autore dalla rivista Harper's, si tratta di un reportage della crociera "7 notti ai Caraibi", per la durata di una settimana tonda tonda. Crociera extra-lusso per soli ricchi. Il ritratto che David Foster Wallace dipinge dell'americano medio in vacanza è esilarante, mentre quello dell'infrastruttura e del personale di bordo è eccessivo e surreale.

L'ossessione del divertimento a tutti i costi. La compulsione del nutrimento a tutte le ore.

Voto: 7.5