Why novelist David Foster Wallace’s books are arduous and what he wants in return for giving you joy using only words.


A book that I thought will take me less time than Infinite jest. Infinite jest is considered as a door stopper, as a brick, as a thing you can kill something or someone with. All it took me to complete infinite jest 52 days. This lil bastard, ‘A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again’? Took me way more than that. Why? We don’t know that. Many people say to start your David Foster Wallace journey from here, but now I get why many have failed and never get into attempting the Mont Blanc of books.° There are many reviews that talk about what things have been discussed in the book, so I’ll not do that, I’ll just point out one thing and that is DFW LOVED tennis, that’s for sure. There are 2 essays on just tennis.°

Reading some pages of this book in a plane° with an empty seat nearby made me feel like Jesse Eisenberg from the movie, ‘The end of the tour’ sitting beside DFW himself (I imagined him sitting next to me) and him talking unpremeditatedly with me about whatever comes to his mind. I learned two things:

The first thing I learned, take a DFW or any book you are having a hard time to read on a plane, do not download anything on your phone before stepping on the plane, ignore the inflight entertainment°, play some music and stare outside with the book on the tray table or at your book. Stare at the difficult piece of shit in your hand. Maybe due to the embarrassment of people seeing you just staring at the cover or by some inner motivation, you will end up reading it, maybe the introduction maybe one page, maybe two. But at least something.

The second thing I learned is of reading David Foster Wallace (by not just reading this one book, but after reading 3 books [this one included as well] by him) is that it tires your brain. Pick up a book by Lee Child (Jack Reacher series) you can easily read it in a day, or 2 if you have other things to do. But DFW writes books that are hard to digest. After reading for 40-60 mins, you will think that you have easily read around 50 pages, but in reality you might’ve only read around 20 pages. Sure you can rush and read 100 pages in 60 minutes, but have you absorbed anything? Probably not. DFW is a substance you have to inject in yourself slowly.
Reading DFW is like digging a hole, you keep on digging and digging and after a while you see how much you have dug and it’s very less for the amount of energy you have used. In short, reading DFW is arduous. Sure DFW is fun, I agree, but it’s not like a book from the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ series. DFW wants to you make some efforts and read his books, he will make you laugh but in return he wants you to provide something in return, what is that something? Your attention. Your time. Your entire focus.


The last essay of this book that shares the same name as its title, is best to understand how a cruise travel really is or maybe the best way to put it would be, how a cruise travel really is when you are David Foster Wallace, a genius in your field° and yet a schmo when it comes to social interaction and formal wear°.
The essay about the fair didn’t capture DFW’s character as how the last essay did, it felt like reading his diary or being on a call with him.


I will pick up Infinite Jest on a whim if someone asks me to be their buddy read. But if someone asks me if I’ll ever read this book again, my answer for sure will be: “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again.”°




1°. I say Mont Blac, and not Everest because there are more books difficult than this (‘The Man Without Qualities’ and ‘Ulysses’ to name a few), and if you are a mountaineer or one who has knowledge about mountains, you’d know that Mont Blac is also not an easy journey, many novices have died.

2°. The second essay on tennis, ‘Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness’ is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever read. I used to play tennis, but it’s a sport that I’ve not loved a lot, you will not find me watching tennis for fun or as a way to pass time, and still I was very much hooked while reading this essay. DFW had a way to capture people with his writing. Wish he was still here with us.

3°. I read ‘David Lynch Keeps His Head’ while having very little idea of who David Lynch is, I’ve heard of him and all I wanted to do in that damn airplane was to search how David Lynch looks like and have I ever seen a movie that he has directed. I forgot as soon as the plane landed, and while coming back I read and completed this essay once again in a plane, and once again all I wanted to do was search who the hell he is.

4°. Which 90% of time sucks.

5°. Writing, using big words, teaching.

6°. Please just go and read it and you will get what I mean by “Formal Wear”.

7°. I remember laughing loudly at a small note about a cap that DFW is wearing in this essay.

HO VISTO COSE CHE VOI UMANI...



Nel 1997 la rivista Harper’s commissiona a David Foster Wallace un reportage di viaggio su una lussuosissima nave da crociera, per la classica vacanza da ricchi americani: 7 notti ai Caraibi con la Nadir della Celebrity Crociere.
Sette giorni di ozio, lusso, cibo, vizi e viziati di ogni genere. Cosa chiedere di meglio?
La trama è tutta qui: in queste pagine si racconta per l’appunto la settimana che DFW ha passato in crociera su quella nave, in quei posti, con quella gente.
Solo che grazie alla sua intelligenza e sensibilità, quella nave, quei posti, e quella gente diventano tutte le navi da crociera, tutto il mondo e tutta l’umanità che trascorre il tempo in quelle attività.
Pagine di analisi acute, taglienti, divertenti, anche disturbanti, sicuramente imbarazzanti.
Inoltre, ogni aspetto tecnico, sociologico e psicologico di un viaggio in crociera, e di quello che scatena nella mente umana.


Una nave da crociera della Celebrity: questa è la Zenith, DFW è stato sulla Nadir.

Una cosa divertente che farò sempre più spesso?
Leggere DFW, sicuramente.

Questo libro è un reportage che diventa saggio antropologico e sociologico e demografico... È spassoso e spumeggiante, intenso e devastante.

C'è una maniacalità, un'ossessione ossessiva, un'ansia e una nevrosi in DFW che nutre la sua scrittura rendendola speciale.


Imperdibile la didascalia. DFW direbbe: Coppie benestanti abbronzate e bloccate in una paresi di piacere.

Quello che per me la rende ancora più speciale è che DFW, pur apparentemente agendo come un vivisezionista con le cavie, pur non lesinando colpi di rasoio (ma non di accetta), pur non risparmiando niente e nessuno, si sente parte di quello che analizza, e descrive, e a suo modo massacra – non si pone mai sopra – anche dalla distanza dell’entomologo, si sente parte dell’oggetto di analisi.

Il commento alla brochure è da introdurre come argomento di studio nei master in scienza della comunicazione e affini: avrei voluto averla (la brochure) davanti e leggerla come testo a fronte usando la chiosa di DFW come traduzione e spiegazione.


Caraibi

Le note sono un valore aggiunto, tanto più per me che ho un debole per le note in genere (deformazione contratta ai tempi dell’università): non si tratta di note, ma di testo nel testo, di commento al commento – nello stile usato da Altan nei suoi vecchi capolavori (Franz, Colombo, Casanova: tra striscia e striscia c'era una riga dove inseriva la sua voce più esilarante e tagliente).

È bello incontrare un autore che ha la musica dei grandi, che non conoscevo (primo tentativo in epoca sbagliata, ahimé: mi arenai su 'Lyndon') e che continuerò a frequentare.



Devo però confessare che in due cose dissento radicalmente da DFW:
1) il caviale è ottimo, certo non accompagnato al tè;
2) il breve momento di passaggio, misurato in due secondi da DFW, tra quando si sente di dover starnutire e lo starnuto vero e proprio è niente solo se non si sta guidando un mezzo a due ruote nel traffico urbano – in questo caso diventa un minuscolo lasso di tempo in cui si teme che tutto possa accadere, e tutto sommato, effettivamente, tutto può accadere, nel senso di tutto il peggio.

Ho visto un sacco di gente seminuda che avrei preferito non vedere seminuda. Mi sono sentito depresso come non mi sentivo dalla pubertà e ho riempito quasi tre taccuini per capire se era un Problema Mio o un Problema Loro.

I am in awe of the fact that I wouldn't have been as charitable about the experience DFW had on this "fun thing". I KNOW I would have hated it, and made use of the vomitorium for quite different reasons than overeating. This essay convinced me that people who consider David on the spectrum…(btw, I have this urge to call him "David" or even "Dave" if that's okay….just because I feel like he's my age, one of the guys who grew up in my neighborhood in Illinois, and rolled his eyes with me up in the Utopian treehouse world we could have built , at the world surrounding us…he doesn't feel like one of those stuffy authors who you identify by last name and use footnotes to codify). But I digress. Anyway, this essay convinced me that Dave has enough facial/emotive recognition skills to not be labeled "on the spectrum."

Well, now I am laughing to myself that my typing program red-squiggles "vomitorium"--apparently not a concept it is familiar with……recognitional, neither.

I love how he just finds cool stuff to notice everywhere, even on the boring ocean, the boring tropics (made contemptuous to me due to familiarity--as I live within a stones throe of the setting). Like noticing the degree of whiteness in the competing cruise lines, the varieties, from lime green to peach to various shades of blue-blue-green to mimic the changes in the Caribbean waters. I like how he doesn't dwell on the inanity of the passengers--they must be a bit inane: they are on a luxury cruise and watch the onboard talent with enthusiasm!, and even come back for 2nd, 3rd, season passes to cruise!!! Instead he describes the ship employees--much more interesting, although sometimes a bit garish themselves, especially the captains and administrative staff...

I love this kind of humor. It makes me feel less alone in a world full of rich, or at least upper-middle class, spoiled pampered Americans who distain Wonder Bread and expect the Artisan loaf, who find Ivory Soap "drying" and must use Orange Oil and Orchid infused body wash instead, who haven't eaten canned Campbell's soup--despite it's Warholian iconography, for well over 15 years! And favor aged Asiago over Kraft American processed cheese--well, who doesn't!! Let's not even discuss coffee….

Premessa: oggi avevo voglia di scrivere qualcosa di sconclusionato lasciandomi guidare dal flusso di pensiero. Sempre oggi ho anche finito questo libro, quindi le cose si sono un po' fuse. Il tutto è finito su Goodreads dal momento che la chimica reattoristica degli SCR mi stava annoiando.

È settembre del 2021, un settembre afoso e noioso; sono solo e due dei miei migliori amici sono rispettivamente a Vienna e ad Innsbruck. No, non è vero, Bruno è ancora da qualche parte in Svezia, o forse Norvegia. O era Finlandia? Ho chiaramente la tendenza a confondere le cose. Strano perché mi son sempre ritenuto acuto o bravo o quanto meno erudito in geografia; eppure, non distinguo i tre paesi.

Tronfio della mia ignoranza mi perdo in pensieri ondivaghi e lapalissiani su quanto sia strana la vita, la lettura e soprattutto su quanto l’uso di del termine lapalissiano possa celare insoddisfazione o smania di protagonismo (termine altamente inflazionato nello scritto di Wallace).

Ecco, è in questo clima di strana tranquillità che, rimandando l’odioso esame di Energy Conversion mi appresto a leggere il libro di David Wallace. E arrivo anche molto lontano. Il suo stile mi piace; mi rivedo nei suoi tentativi umoristici di descrivere i virtuosismi di una sardanapalesca crociera con un punto di vista cinico. Sarà sempre così questo David? Me lo immagino seduto sul ponte, con un bel sigaro, a farsi una grassa risata pensando ai soprannomi spiritosi che sta ideando per schernire il cameriere Aragustus o il capitano Dermatitis. Geniali questi soprannomi; calzano a tal punto a pennello che credo se li sia inventati ad-hoc. Sì, chiaramente li ha inventati, non può mica riportare quelli veri e rischiare una denuncia. Sta scrivendo un articolo per conto di una rivista dopo tutto. Anche se magari questo nichilista burbero cela un lato sfrontato e antisistema; spero di no. Non perché chi è antisistema mi dia fastidio, anzi, quanto perché il caro vecchio David Wallace me lo immagino con le fattezze del David Wallace di The Office, un uomo di palazzo, insomma.

Ma veniamo al punto, perché sto perdendo il mio tempo per scrivere di un libro che sì, è interessante carino e a tratti mi ha fatto ridere parecchio, ma che ha già avuto la sua dose di argute recensioni dal 1997 ad oggi. Perché a metà libro mi son detto: diamine, devi scrivere anche tu qualcosa del genere. Odi anche tu la pomposità, il lusso, il peso psicologico di una vacanza surreale, … e anche tu potresti parlarne in toni a metà tra il criptico ed il divertito. Non sono uno scrittore (al contrario di quel che dice il mio curriculum, alludendo ad un fantomatico corso di scrittura creativa del liceo. Cosa che non cambierò, esagerare in questo modo mi diverte assai). Potrei però puntualizzare che il sottotesto di Joël Dicker ne “La verità sul caso Harry Quebert” sembra essere che uno scrittore famoso non diventi tale per la sua encomiabile preparazione, quanto per caso, fortuna o coincidenze.

Beh, potrei farlo anche io forse; non ho la laurea in psicologia di Wallace, né posso dire di aver frequentato e poi abbandonato Harvard ma anzi mi si potrebbe definire come un cinico ingegnere che insoddisfatto del pragmatismo schietto della sua categoria di appartenenza decide di dedicarsi a tempo perso alla lettura. Così mi immagino futuri alternativi in cui anche io, assoldato da un improbabile amico direttore di un giornale, ho la libertà ed i mezzi per dedicarmi a tempo pieno alla realizzazione di recensioni caotiche e guidate dal flusso di pensiero, senza la preoccupazione di un pubblico esigente o di una turbina sbilanciata. Chi lo sa, magari potrei scrivere allo stesso Wallace per dei consigli. Qui la mia fantasia vacilla e sembra ingarbugliarsi da sola. Per alcuni secondi si immagina Wallace rifilarmi una pletora di incoraggiamenti a credere nei miei sogni, in pieno stile sogno-americano, ma poi una seconda voce fa prevalere il carattere di Wallace, che credo di aver intuito essere orientato al nichilismo, distruggendo ogni mio sogno.

Forse dovrei davvero chiamare Wallace. Magari potrebbe seriamente rispondermi; d'altronde cosa so di lui se non che ha raggiunto il successo grazie ad una recensione di una crociera extra lusso nel 1997. Potrebbe essere una di quelle celebrità o scrittori che dopo i primi anni di sfrenata fama ha perso prima gli ammiratori, poi la vena creativa ritrovandosi dopo 20 anni a godersi una santa pace che all’apice della carriera bramava e che ora invece gli sta stretta. Non auguro nulla del genere al vero Wallace, ma se in questo modo il finto me può avere un’ipotetica e sentita conversazione tra le valli dolci dell’Iperuranio con un David felice di avere ancora un ammiratore, beh allora tutto è giustificato. Basta, devo cercare il suo numero.

Apro Wikipedia e leggo “David Foster Wallace, all'anagrafe David Wallace (Ithaca, 21 febbraio 1962 – Claremont, 12 settembre 2008), è stato uno scrittore, saggista e accademico statunitense”. David è morto. Morto suicida. Mi prede un grande scoramento. Mi sono affezionato a David; nella mia fantasia beviamo un caffè lungo americano a Yellowstone mentre mi erudisce circa l’importanza di raccontare in una brochure informativa di come il sistema di risucchio liquami di una crociera sia fondamentale e degno di nota. A me ricorda quello dei treni Italo di classe economy, tutta un’altra storia, ma sorrido ed annuisco, prendendo appunti su uno di quei taccuini alla “investigatore privato sotto copertura”.

Adesso la mia fantasia non esiste più. Non so perché ma penso che il mio io immaginario si trovi più a suo agio discorrendo con Newton o Laplace o con un intellettuale non appartenente alla sua epoca piuttosto che con qualcuno che in altre circostanze avrebbe potuto incontrare dal vivo. Ma sto costruendo città invisibili.

Questo libro non ha poi molto di speciale; mi ha divertito parecchio perché si basa su un presupposto molto semplice, ossia quello di scrivere un reportage in prima persona, senza preoccuparsi di star venendo effettivamente pagati per un lavoro del genere. A renderlo speciale è la personalità di David di cui le pagine trasudano.

O forse sto semplicemente cercando in un elaborato satirico dei segnali di quello che portò David al suicidio per mascherare il fatto che sapere della sorte dello scrittore mi mette a disagio. O quanto meno mi fa pensare.

A collection of seven non-fiction essays on diverse, but traditionally Wallacian subjects:

1. Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley - Wallace reminisces about his childhood playing tennis in tornado alley. A short, fairly unremarkable essay, except in its structure, which culminates short-story style in fulfillment of its earlier themes, in something resembling a literary epiphany. Wallace considered himself a fiction rather than non-fiction writer, and this piece is a good example of how his natural disposition influenced his non-fiction writing.

2. E Unibus Pluram - A lengthy exploration of TV's influence on literature and modern culture. Wallace is clearly conflicted, as someone who both appreciates TV's positive aspects, but who sees the average 6-hour daily American intake as something inherently disastrous (these are of course ideas that Wallace explores more thoroughly in Infinite Jest). Times have certainly changed in the 28 years since this essay was written, and the influence of TV has waned considerably, but if anything mass addiction to entertainment has only increased, though the media of delivery have diversified substantially. Whether Wallace would have been pleased or concerned by the direction we have moved is an interesting question to consider.

3. Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All - Wallace is commissioned by a magazine to report on a Midwestern agricultural fair: a pretty mundane assignment, but he makes the most of it. Wallace's skill is in people-watching. He categorises them into types, describing ordinary people as if they were alien creatures or museum exhibits. Of course, some exaggeration is necessary to add colour, but I felt that Wallace often crossed a line into uncomfortably callous cynicism, coming off as unkind and elitist in these usually unflattering accounts of normal people living normal lives.

4. Greatly Exaggerated - A very short discourse on literary criticism, and whether work is best interpreted textually, or in the context of authorial intent. It's interesting, though brief, an the references are largely esoteric (for me, anyway).

5. David Lynch Keeps His Head - In which Wallace loiters extensively on the set of a David Lynch movie, without ever actually interacting with the director. Wallace describes the experience of being on set (his characteristic people-watching skills come to the fore), as well as deconstructing Lynch's oeuvre, and defining a place for his art in the context of his contemporaries. Lynch is a director who I've perhaps unfairly suspected of being overrated, yet I found this piece very entertaining and insightful.

6. Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness - I love tennis. I play every week, and it's one of the few sports I can watch others play with any interest. So for me, Wallace's explanations of the game of tennis by analogy to baseball and basketball didn't hit the right notes. Also, the vicissitudes of the 1995 pro tour, despite inciting feelings of resounding nostalgia (this specific year for reasons of my age and upbringing I consider to be something of a golden age of tennis) seem in the current year wildly out-of-date and inconsequential. I did enjoy the strategic analysis of certain players, and the exploration of the mental aspects of the game and competition in general (those being the ones listed in the title of the essay).

7. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - At nearly a hundred pages, this is the longest essay here. It's essentially a sequel to the State Fair piece, carrying the same fish-out-of-water vibe, and is another vehicle for Wallace's witty and humorous observations. There are echoes here, too, of Infinite Jest, as Wallace contemplates the fleeting and relative nature of happiness. The piece is certainly entertaining - Wallace is a likable and erudite guy - but I think I prefer his analyses of more serious topics, to his people-watching.

Wallace's writing as always offers a unique and compelling perspective, but the gulf between something like this and Infinite Jest is vast. This collection gets a solid "I liked it" on the Goodreads rating scale.

DFW was entirely in his element when he was writing non-fiction. I’ve read 2 of his fiction books, including the magnum opus Infinite Jest, and while having enjoyed them both, I felt like something was clearly missing from them. That “something” is not missing in any of the essays published in “A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again”.

These essays are brilliance itself: they exude a passion for choosing the right words among an arsenal that’s larger even than that of many professional writers’. They engage your mind with acute and never once banal observations. They are written by a very-high-nervous-energy writer, which gives great vitality to the book. They are often really funny and lighthearted, in a way that makes DFW’s suicide even more bitter and sad to digest.

In the title essay, originally published in Harper's magazine as "Shipping Out", Wallace describes the excesses of his one-week trip in the Caribbean aboard the luxury cruise ship MV Zenith, which he rechristens the Nadir. He is uncomfortable with the professional hospitality industry and the "fun" he should be having, and explains how the indulgences of the cruise cause introspection, leading to overwhelming internal despair.

Like in Infinite Jest, Wallace uses footnotes extensively for various asides. And a weird phenomenon takes place: his “writing voice” in the footnotes actually changes. It becomes more colloquial, excited and invariably funnier than the voice he uses for the main body of the essay.

Another essay in the same volume takes up the vulgarities and excesses of the Illinois State Fair.

This collection also includes Wallace's influential essay "E Unibus Pluram" on television's impact on contemporary literature and the use of irony in American culture. I do not agree with his main thesis about TV having absorbed any potential revolutions by incorporating irony, because I think he approaches TV too much as if he was doing literary criticism. But who cares what I think? It’s a magnificent essay.

Then we have "Greatly Exaggerated" : A review of Morte d'Author: An Autopsy by H. L. Hix, including Wallace's personal opinions on the role of the author in literary critical theory. Very technical.

"David Lynch Keeps His Head" (1996). Wallace's experiences and opinions from visiting the set for the movie “Lost Highway” and his thoughts about Lynch's oeuvre. A ton of extremely insightful observations on tv fiction and on the work of David Lynch.

"Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" (1996): Wallace's reporting of the qualifying rounds for 1995 Canadian Open and the Open itself. As an amateurish tennis player myself, this is the essay that I’ve enjoyed the most. The fact that DFW was a very good tennis player makes his writing on this subject so engaging, funny and just exceptionally clever.

P.S. I’ve read this book in part from the physical book and in part — out of necessity due to my car commute to work — as audiobook. Didn’t like the reader’s voice in the least, unfortunately. Extremely nasal and not always in synch with Wallace.

David Foster Wallace é um GÉNIO!
Tudo o que escreve é revelador de uma Inteligência e Imaginação Ilimitadas.
É assombrosa a sua capacidade de observação, análise e exposição de situações e temas que passariam despercebidas ao comum dos mortais.

Este volume contém oito ensaios - alguns baseados na sua própria experiência como repórter contratado por revistas americanas - e o único discurso que fez para finalistas de um colégio.
É uma experiência única - umas vezes triste, outras divertida - "ouvi-lo falar":
sobre a sua visão da vida;
sobre a sua paixão pelo ténis;
sobre a televisão e a sua influência nos escritores americanos;
sobre o cinema de David Lynch;
sobre a crueldade a que são sujeitos os animais com que nos alimentamos;
sobre o Horror do dia 11 de Setembro;
sobre a pornografia e os problemas "do pau" dos actores;
sobre as viagens de cruzeiro e a forma perfeita (e ridícula) como tudo está organizado para mimar e divertir o viajante.

Um dia não terei mais nada para ler de David Foster Wallace. Talvez porque o mundo dos vivos seja demasiado pequeno para os Seres Superiores...

"Dois peixes novitos vão a nadar e, por acaso, cruzam-se com um peixe mais velho, a nadar na direcção oposta, que os cumprimenta com um aceno da cabeça e diz: Bom dia, rapazes. Que tal a água?
E os dois peixes novitos continuam a nadar durante um bocado e, por fim, há um que olha para o outro e pergunta: Que raio é que é a água?"

This, my first experience reading David Foster Wallace, disabused me of a few prejudices that in retrospect seem shamefully naive, one of which being that objects of the American Media Hype Machine are necessarily mediocre. I believed that there had to be something vapid or cheap or sensationalist about things or persons that become loci of the intellectual-creative “next-voice-of-our-generation” ballyhoo. It’s tough not to be cynical. The whole zeitgeist of our times is cynicism, aloofness, a disdain of sensitivity bordering on neurosis (and I mean a healthy, cultured sensitivity, one nurtured in restraint and consideration and taste, not an emo-ish “horticulturally cultivated five o’clock shadow thick glasses staring pensively over a latte and word document always always in public in sight of the pretty girls” sensitivity). Fight Clubs, Heartbreaking Works of Staggering Geniuses, American Psychos,... if these are the voices of our times let me be an anachronism. In my narrow-mindedness, I lumped DFW in with these other bright young things, figuring he was another spoiled product of moneyed, media-saturated, hipper-than-thou America, wielding an a priori standoffishness as crutch and sword. It’s what I’d come to expect of popular entertainment as a whole. I don’t mean Harry Potter/Girl with the X tattoo lit. (stuff that is immensely popular but actually has redeeming factors and is based in a solid tradition of plot, earnest character development, involved drama, etc.), but stuff that was supposed to represent the intellectual undercurrents of what it is to be a living mind in America in the early twenty-first century; you know, edgy stuff. McSweeney’s has some funny t-shirts, but in the end all the irony can be fucking despairing. Contrived coolness, ultraviolence representing god knows what, involuted sexual obsessions as supposed comment on middle-class repression and ennui or some nonsense, solipsistic unearned first-person memoiric explorations of “what-am-I-in-this-crazy-work-a-day-world”- it keeps on piling up to a vomitous apogee, and I find myself saying “fuck it” and reading Proust or Walser or Pessoa or Flaubert just so I can fucking breath, just to feel someone expressing something honest and with an unmanufactured posture.

Enter DFW. I can’t comment on Infinite Jest (a book for another day, when I again have surplus hours to give to a tome, hopefully soon), but A Supposedly Fun Thing... cuts through all of my above complaints like a glowingly-hot knife through butter. It has come to be the ubiquitous descriptor of Wallace, that he was “a decent guy”, and from what I can glean from this collection of essays the shoe fits (and is there really a higher compliment?)... but in addition to his essential decency (involving empathy, kindness, a bullshit detector always set on 11, the keenest eye for a telling detail I’ve encountered in books of my times), it is the way he subsumes the alienating, cheapening aspects of our culture into his vast intellect, deconstructs them into their vital parts, analyzes their components, and restructures them into a completely non-ironic, funny-as-hell, and enlightening statement about what it is to be a human being. And my god, the humor in this book! Never before have I bitten my lip to bleeding so many times attempting to restrain outright bursts of mad laughter reading this in public. And it’s consistent. And underneath the laughter is that certain lattice within modern humor at its best form (and I’m thinking of like Louis CK here, or Mitch Hedberg, or Bill Hicks) where the laughter is ringing above a potential abyss, and that humor and the transformation of creeping despair into something luminous are the only ways of redeeming contemporary things and ideas from utter degradation and fitting them back into the lineage of a culture of thorough humanist examination. Calling DFW “the last humanist” is tempting, but then I’d be falling into the same traps of cynicism these essays made me believe it is possible to free ourselves from.

Good readers go into books looking for an honest, unique interpretation of some facet of genuine experience; over the years I have found myself searching farther back into other cultures and other eras very distant from mine for that kind of fulfilling, rounded perspective. What A Supposedly Fun Thing... has shown me is that while it is still an essential component of a dedicated humanist to understand the history of thought and expression, especially in the face of the dulling, warping aspects of rudderless progress and an increasingly fragmented reality, that there are outposts of sincerity, of good-nature, representatives of the “decent guys” of the creative temperament, hard at work, chewing on the problems that haunt us, me, you, this very day, dealing with the stuff of our every days in terms that elevate them above the every day (DFW, in this book alone, elevated tennis, state fairs, David Lynch, television, a week-long cruise, the athlete, to the realm of eternal motif). They’re just working a lot harder, being driven down tougher paths, having to fortify their honesty and sensitivity and steel themselves in the face of fragmentation to a greater degree. DFW disabused me of the notion that I have to look outside of my own times for some hero of the candid, the honest, the unique, and I think he would have considered that some sort of success.

On a more depressing note, I understand now that the media hype that at first so turned me off to the David Foster Wallace machine was in a great part due to his suicide. Suicide makes everything more momentous, gives a retrospective ur-meaning to all the aspects of a life, imposes an immediate posterity on a creative human being’s works. I can’t fathom what it would have been like in 2008 had I known his work, but I can sense the immense loss to our times that his passing has meant. I mean, imagine looking forward to more Harper’s experiential essays, a complete Pale King, more laughter, more insights. Overly sensitive souls run the risk of being so sensitive that all they feel is pain, and the weird and baroque regimen of drugs Wallace was on somehow did not dull this sensitivity, this awareness (and in some perverse way made him even more representative of our times). As I said before, really insightful humor runs right along an abyss of terror, things that uplift keep a dialogue with things that destroy us, they inform and expand awareness in the other. Somewhere early in the titular essay of this book, Wallace goes on one of his famous footnote-digressions, which also happens to be quite representative of his sense of humor and mode of observation, about the despairing phenomenon of “The Professional Smile”. I’ll quote it at length:

”...the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry... You know this smile- the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia w/incomplete zygomatic involvement- the smile that doesn’t quite reach the smiler’s eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair? Am I the only person who’s sure that the growing number of cases in which totally average-looking people suddenly open up with automatic weapons in shopping malls and insurance offices and medical complexes and McDonald’ses is somehow causally related to the fact that these venues are well-known dissemination-loci of the Professional Smile?

Who do they think they are fooling by the Professional Smile?

And yet the Professional Smile’s absence now also causes despair. Anybody who’s ever bought a pack of gum in Manhattan cigar store or asked for something to be stamped FRAGILE at a Chicago post office or tried to obtain a glass of water from a South Boston waitress knows well the soul-crushing effect of a service worker’s scowl, i.e., the humiliation and resentment of being denied the Professional Smile. And the Professional Smile has by now skewed even my resentment at the dreaded Professional Scowl: I walk away from the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the counterman’s character or absence of goodwill but his lack of professionalism in denying me the Smile. What a fucking mess.”

I’m confident David Foster Wallace was never giving us the Professional Smile.

One of the reasons I write. Really turned me on the possibilities of a naturally rangy, engaging, humorous, insightful voice . . . I just read Tolstoy's definition of art as, in part, being necessarily able to *infect* the reader with an emotion or mental state, and this book totally fulfills that jawn. I always compare DFW to AI (Allen Iverson), in that after I watched every Sixers game in the winter of 1998, my game improved tremendously in the spring: I could suddenly dribble and move more effectively without the ball -- AI transmitted skills by example. DFW's non-fiction has a similar viral intelligence: it infected me, at least, and so I think it's pretty artful. You'll like these essays a lot if you like reading things that are funny and smart. I like DFW's non-fiction more than his fiction [NOTE: I WROTE THAT LINE BEFORE I READ "INFINITE JEST"] he's got a lot to say and he says it an entertaining way that nevertheless respects (and most importantly *reveals*) the complexity of, well, everything . . . .

The Illinois State Fair piece has not aged well, but the rest of the pieces are great. I love the Lynch article, and "E Unibus Pluram" might as well be my version of the New Testament.

Tutti sappiamo di cosa parla questo libro, ovvero dell'agorafobia e delle pare mentali di David Foster Wallace alle prese con uno dei non-luoghi più strani di sempre: una nave da crociera!
Ma non tutti sanno che il titolo originale di questo reportage è "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" ovvero "Una cosa APPARENTEMENTE divertente che non farò mai più".
Perché mai è sparito questo avverbio nella versione italiana?
L'ho capito a fine lettura.
Ebbene sì, il nostro David Foster Wallace, sotto sotto, si è divertito e non apparentemente!
Ma non è un divertimento legato agli svaghi organizzati proposti a bordo della nave, è piuttosto un divertimento amaro, sarcastico, generato dall'osservazione.
Quel divertimento un po' cringe che ti assale quando ti ritrovi a sorridere dei tuoi simili e al contempo ti vergogni che siano appunto dei tuoi simili.
Una sensazione che a un certo punto si acuisce e subisce un capovolgimento di prospettiva quando DFW per dovere di cronaca decide di partecipare ad alcune attività e da osservatore diventa osservato, da giudice diventa giudicato...
Un sentirsi fuori posto che fa sorridere e rabbrividire allo stesso tempo.
Ed ecco che il titolo nella sua versione italiana assume un significato particolare, ironico, caustico.
Ma l'altra faccia della medaglia è che le aspettative che crea questo titolo privo di avverbio vengono parzialmente disattese.
Il libro è divertente sì, ma a modo suo.
Non aspettatevi grasse risate, ecco.
Io quell'APPARENTEMENTE, ad essere onesti, l'avrei lasciato.
In definitiva il libro in sé non mi è dispiaciuto ma DFW ha scritto di meglio!

David Foster Wallace is one awesomely smart guy. This is both his greatest strength and his potential Achilles heel as a writer. Personally, I will read anything this man writes, because I think he is a true genius with a rare sense of compassion, and a hilarious sense of humor. Even when his writing falls victim to its own cleverness, I still find it worthwhile - perhaps because one senses that the writer is a true mensch (not something I feel when being dazzled by the cleverness of a Dave Eggers, for instance).

Oh hell, I want to be seated next to DFW on a long transpacific flight subject to major delays, OK? I have an enormous intellectual crush on this man. And when I cavil, it is done out of love, pure and simple.

But when discussing this book of his, caviling would simply be out of place. It contains two of the funniest essays I have ever read in my life (the descriptions of his experiences on a cruise liner and at the state fair, respectively). I think you should buy your own copy, because I certainly am not going to loan you mine.

Added on edit: so, I've noticed that goodreads seems to order books listed by review according to the wordcount of the reviews in question, from longest to shortest. A result of this has been that my negative review of DFW's ill-starred "Everything and More" shows up ahead of my 5-star review of this collection. This pains me enormously, as I really admire this writer's prodigious talent immensely - even his occasional misfires beat the pants off many a less talented author's best efforts. So I am shamelessly adding this paragraph in a transparent effort to game the system - the desired result being that my positive review of this quirky, talented author show up before the negative review.

I am guessing that the preceding paragraph will have been sufficient to accomplish my devious ends, so will curtail my empty babbling here. Let's see if I'm right in this conjecture.