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All texts contained in Der Spaß an der Sache (the complete essays translated into German).
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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!
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!
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This collection of essays contains the two pieces that David Foster Wallace is probably best known for: "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All," his observations on attending the Illinois State Fair, and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," his musings on a week-long Caribbean cruise. Both pieces are truly fantastic reading, entertaining, educational and brilliant all in the same breath.
Since I've often suspected that a mass market cruise would mirror my own personal version of Hell, I related particularly well to his commentary on the emotional underbelly that lurks beneath the shiny surface of the "managed fun" the cruise ship staff does its best to inflict upon its passengers. In the wake of the author's recent suicide, it was terribly sad to read some of his thoughts on the despair this situation inspired in him. At the time he wrote it, however, that despair was balanced out by an astounding sense of humor, and I am still laughing as I reflect upon sections such as the fear he inspired in innocent bystanders during his first skeet shooting attempts and the footnote in which he detailed the numerous breaches of etiquette he managed to make during Elegant Tea Time.
Other topics addressed in this collection include the impact of television on his generation of fiction writers (written long before reality television burst on the scene, leaving me wistfully wondering if he had written anything on that topic before his untimely death—if anyone knows of anything, I'd appreciate being pointed to it), observations on director David Lynch and why his films are so creepily disturbing, commentary on certain points of literary theory that was so far beyond me it came close to making my head explode (fortunately, this piece was short) and a surprisingly fascinating look at the "minor leagues" of professional tennis, those players whose names we never hear but who are the foundation upon which the TV-friendly greats all stand.
My favorite piece in this book, however, is the first one, "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley." It is a meditation on his own early tennis ambitions and how his understanding of math and intuitive sense of Midwestern weather allowed him to progress farther in his playing than his mediocre talent alone would have allowed. There is something so profound about the bittersweet tone of this piece and the intensity of its ending that I suspect it will stay with me for a long, long time.
David, you will be sorely missed.
Since I've often suspected that a mass market cruise would mirror my own personal version of Hell, I related particularly well to his commentary on the emotional underbelly that lurks beneath the shiny surface of the "managed fun" the cruise ship staff does its best to inflict upon its passengers. In the wake of the author's recent suicide, it was terribly sad to read some of his thoughts on the despair this situation inspired in him. At the time he wrote it, however, that despair was balanced out by an astounding sense of humor, and I am still laughing as I reflect upon sections such as the fear he inspired in innocent bystanders during his first skeet shooting attempts and the footnote in which he detailed the numerous breaches of etiquette he managed to make during Elegant Tea Time.
Other topics addressed in this collection include the impact of television on his generation of fiction writers (written long before reality television burst on the scene, leaving me wistfully wondering if he had written anything on that topic before his untimely death—if anyone knows of anything, I'd appreciate being pointed to it), observations on director David Lynch and why his films are so creepily disturbing, commentary on certain points of literary theory that was so far beyond me it came close to making my head explode (fortunately, this piece was short) and a surprisingly fascinating look at the "minor leagues" of professional tennis, those players whose names we never hear but who are the foundation upon which the TV-friendly greats all stand.
My favorite piece in this book, however, is the first one, "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley." It is a meditation on his own early tennis ambitions and how his understanding of math and intuitive sense of Midwestern weather allowed him to progress farther in his playing than his mediocre talent alone would have allowed. There is something so profound about the bittersweet tone of this piece and the intensity of its ending that I suspect it will stay with me for a long, long time.
David, you will be sorely missed.
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DFW, what’s not to like? Zeven heerlijk hilarische, lang uitgesponnen essays, in een taal die zo rijk is dat je er letterlijk van gaat duizelen en nagenoeg elke zin traag voor een tweede keer leest om zeker te zijn dat je alles goed meehebt en langzaam kan laten indringen. Onvergetelijk en onvergelijkbaar.
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Hilarante crónica en la que el genio estadounidense, a bordo de un crucero en apariencia inofensivo, destripa sin contemplaciones la cara más amarga de la industria recreativa. En manos de Foster Wallace, lo familiar se transforma en hostil, lo asombroso en terrorífico y algo que a primera vista solo tiene la finalidad de entretenerte acaba poblando tus peores pesadillas. Impregnado de esa corrosiva sátira con la que suele amenizar sus escritos, Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volveré a hacer supone otra inapelable prueba del superdotado instinto analítico que hizo del fallecido escritor norteamericano todo un icono de su generación.
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alla fine se ne esce sempre arricchiti
Un libro di Wallace che forse può essere definito una “raccolta di saggi”, anche se questa asettica classificazione crea la falsa aspettativa di dotte disquisizioni povere di fantasia e non rende giustizia alla sequenza quasi ininterrotta di illuminazioni e suggestioni che si susseguono nelle sue pagine.
Io sono arrivato tardi a Wallace (ma sto recuperando): in tanti hanno già osservato che, di qualunque argomento scriva, l’autore riesce sempre a suscitare l’interesse del lettore, affermazione che sottoscrivo anche se preciserei che ciò avviene “nella peggiore delle ipotesi”; perché di solito, e qui ne abbiamo abbondanti esempi, oltre all’interesse vengono stimolati il sense of humour, l’ammirazione per la capacità di analisi, la cultura, lo spirito di osservazione: insomma, per farla breve, alla fine se ne esce sempre arricchiti, riconoscenti e, in qualche modo che non so spiegare, migliori, con una massa di annotazioni, di desideri di approfondire gli argomenti (rivedere il film di Lynch, capire cos’è la Fiera dell’Illinois, vedere quel match di tennis…) e, immancabile, la voglia di ricominciare da pagina 1.
I 6 chiamiamoli-saggi non sono omogenei nella loro struttura: “Invadenti evasioni” che descrive la visita alla Fiera dell’Illinois è quello che maggiormente si avvicina allo stile dell’esilarante cronaca di una crociera pubblicata in Italia a parte, “Una cosa divertente che non farò più”, che in originale faceva parte (e dava il titolo) a questa raccolta. Il pezzo sul set di David Lynch invece è un saggio di uno spessore tale da fare arrossire gran parte della critica cinematografica contemporanea (che si sia o meno un fan del regista di Blue Velvet).
Il saggio “E unibus pluram”, sul rapporto fra la tv e il suo pubblico, che probabilmente al tempo dell’uscita della raccolta era la pietra portante di quest’opera per il livello di approfondimento del tema, mi è tuttavia sembrato quello che più ha risentito del passare degli anni (e anche dell’angolazione all-american sia dell’analisi che dei riferimenti esemplificativi che Wallace porta in quantità); in altri termini mi è parso un po’ datato…
E poi ci sono i due pezzi sul tennis che sono davvero eccellenti (anche se a me questo sport non ha mai destato alcun interesse) e in cui la capacità descrittiva e analitica dell’autore raggiunge i suoi vertici.
L’osservazione ad esempio (la prima che mi viene in mente…) che il tennista M.Joyce, n.79 del ranking, che Wallace ha occasione di frequentare da vicino, “nella macchina di solito guarda fisso davanti a sé come un pendolare”, è di per sé nulla più di una divertente similitudine quasi buttata lì; però sottende sia la constatazione del prosciugamento esistenziale di tutti i pendolari sia, a uno strato ancora sottostante, la realtà di questi ammirati professionisti che vivono in uno stato semi-catatonico tale da non percepire neppure il paesaggio circostante al percorso fra l’hotel, l’aereoporto e i campi da tennis…
Più avanti W. analizza in modo più approfondito questo concetto arrivando alla conclusione che “…la radicale compressione della sua personalità gli ha permesso di praticare un’arte a un livello di trascendenza” e che Joyce “…è un uomo completo anche se in una maniera grottescamente limitata”
Considerazione normalmente interessante.
Il punto è che in questo libro ve ne sono letteralmente migliaia!
Un libro di Wallace che forse può essere definito una “raccolta di saggi”, anche se questa asettica classificazione crea la falsa aspettativa di dotte disquisizioni povere di fantasia e non rende giustizia alla sequenza quasi ininterrotta di illuminazioni e suggestioni che si susseguono nelle sue pagine.
Io sono arrivato tardi a Wallace (ma sto recuperando): in tanti hanno già osservato che, di qualunque argomento scriva, l’autore riesce sempre a suscitare l’interesse del lettore, affermazione che sottoscrivo anche se preciserei che ciò avviene “nella peggiore delle ipotesi”; perché di solito, e qui ne abbiamo abbondanti esempi, oltre all’interesse vengono stimolati il sense of humour, l’ammirazione per la capacità di analisi, la cultura, lo spirito di osservazione: insomma, per farla breve, alla fine se ne esce sempre arricchiti, riconoscenti e, in qualche modo che non so spiegare, migliori, con una massa di annotazioni, di desideri di approfondire gli argomenti (rivedere il film di Lynch, capire cos’è la Fiera dell’Illinois, vedere quel match di tennis…) e, immancabile, la voglia di ricominciare da pagina 1.
I 6 chiamiamoli-saggi non sono omogenei nella loro struttura: “Invadenti evasioni” che descrive la visita alla Fiera dell’Illinois è quello che maggiormente si avvicina allo stile dell’esilarante cronaca di una crociera pubblicata in Italia a parte, “Una cosa divertente che non farò più”, che in originale faceva parte (e dava il titolo) a questa raccolta. Il pezzo sul set di David Lynch invece è un saggio di uno spessore tale da fare arrossire gran parte della critica cinematografica contemporanea (che si sia o meno un fan del regista di Blue Velvet).
Il saggio “E unibus pluram”, sul rapporto fra la tv e il suo pubblico, che probabilmente al tempo dell’uscita della raccolta era la pietra portante di quest’opera per il livello di approfondimento del tema, mi è tuttavia sembrato quello che più ha risentito del passare degli anni (e anche dell’angolazione all-american sia dell’analisi che dei riferimenti esemplificativi che Wallace porta in quantità); in altri termini mi è parso un po’ datato…
E poi ci sono i due pezzi sul tennis che sono davvero eccellenti (anche se a me questo sport non ha mai destato alcun interesse) e in cui la capacità descrittiva e analitica dell’autore raggiunge i suoi vertici.
L’osservazione ad esempio (la prima che mi viene in mente…) che il tennista M.Joyce, n.79 del ranking, che Wallace ha occasione di frequentare da vicino, “nella macchina di solito guarda fisso davanti a sé come un pendolare”, è di per sé nulla più di una divertente similitudine quasi buttata lì; però sottende sia la constatazione del prosciugamento esistenziale di tutti i pendolari sia, a uno strato ancora sottostante, la realtà di questi ammirati professionisti che vivono in uno stato semi-catatonico tale da non percepire neppure il paesaggio circostante al percorso fra l’hotel, l’aereoporto e i campi da tennis…
Più avanti W. analizza in modo più approfondito questo concetto arrivando alla conclusione che “…la radicale compressione della sua personalità gli ha permesso di praticare un’arte a un livello di trascendenza” e che Joyce “…è un uomo completo anche se in una maniera grottescamente limitata”
Considerazione normalmente interessante.
Il punto è che in questo libro ve ne sono letteralmente migliaia!
...
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This is a totally enjoyable book where some of the essays talk about stuff that I would think I have no interest in, like tennis, or a cruise ship, but that are written so well I ended up laughing out loud at some points, something which I never ever do, I am usually the mute laughter sort of reader.
DFW is totally brilliant, I must confess that while reading him I always had my dicionary close by, thus adding new words to my vocabulary, while enjoying everything he writes about. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Anyway, why does he make it so likable? It must be his personal approach, he has a totally different way of writing essays, they are an experience, not just something to be analysed, and everything seen through his eyes is so much better for being that.
I loved the one on David Lynch, Blue Velvet, when it came out to me, living in tijuana, and crossing to san diego to see it was a life changing experience, I thought it was the coolest, most bizarre thing I had ever seen in my life, and I loved it, even while being repulsed by it. The movie the essay is about, Lost Highway, was a very strange thing for me, I came out with a big interrogation sign on my forehead, I hadn’t seen the tv series… Duh.
There is something that he says in the one about television and fiction writers, that I just loved;
“Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk didisapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal; shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nidged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘oh how banal’. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisionment without law.”
Yeah, rebellion is about taking chances, about a risk, and those risks change every day, just as we do ourselves, our ways of comunicating, our way of expressing ourselves.
And the one about the cruise ship, well that was just laugh out loud funny, his portrait of the whole experience is something you don’t want to miss. Great great book by a great writer.
DFW is totally brilliant, I must confess that while reading him I always had my dicionary close by, thus adding new words to my vocabulary, while enjoying everything he writes about. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Anyway, why does he make it so likable? It must be his personal approach, he has a totally different way of writing essays, they are an experience, not just something to be analysed, and everything seen through his eyes is so much better for being that.
I loved the one on David Lynch, Blue Velvet, when it came out to me, living in tijuana, and crossing to san diego to see it was a life changing experience, I thought it was the coolest, most bizarre thing I had ever seen in my life, and I loved it, even while being repulsed by it. The movie the essay is about, Lost Highway, was a very strange thing for me, I came out with a big interrogation sign on my forehead, I hadn’t seen the tv series… Duh.
There is something that he says in the one about television and fiction writers, that I just loved;
“Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk didisapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal; shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nidged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘oh how banal’. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisionment without law.”
Yeah, rebellion is about taking chances, about a risk, and those risks change every day, just as we do ourselves, our ways of comunicating, our way of expressing ourselves.
And the one about the cruise ship, well that was just laugh out loud funny, his portrait of the whole experience is something you don’t want to miss. Great great book by a great writer.
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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.
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.
...
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I'm bewitched by this glorious magenta cover with yellow starfish and the peculiarly flattened and shaped white font. I don't know why it is, but whenever I purchase the British edition of a book, inevitably I aesthetically prefer its differing cover artwork, layout, colour scheme, blurb text—the whole canoodle is just presented to this set of timeworn eyes in a more attractive package than what is offered from North American publishing houses. Not to mention that they generally even smell better—and if you are one of those weirdos who doesn't sniff your book's pages, well, I'm sure I won't be the first person to inform you that you are missing out on an integral component of the entire reading experience. Bury that nose, Jack.
I read the first essay n Derivative Sport in Tornado Alleyn this morning while the fog of sleep was slowly dissipating from my brain—it was a little meatier fare than I had initially expected. Gorgeous opening paragraph, though, ending in the following wonderfully etched phrase that immediately informed me I would need to brew myself up some coffee: The area behind and below these broad curves at the seam of land and sky I could plot by eye way before I came to know infinitesimals as easements, an integral as schema. Math at a hilly eastern school was like waking up; it dismantled memory and put it in light. Calculus was, quite literally, child's play. Then a very nice essay reflecting upon DFW's childhood amidst the corn-rich, lush black earth of the Illinois segment of the fertile American midwest, told through his formative years as a junior tennis player and framed with the mathematical boundaries of the playing court and the differentiating vectors of the omnipresent flavors of wind that live out their rich aerial life over these flat and fecund fields. Somewhat difficult in DFW's uniquely readable style that forces your mind into a slightly off-kilter rhythm, and with that humorous wit splayed throughout his self-deprecating description of his usage of an enviro-mathematical understanding of the elements—that sky dervish wind most of all—as an integral component of his tennis game, making an ally out of what bedeviled and frustrated his more talented opponents. It gains in power as it moves through its short textual life, ending with a brilliantly conceived depiction of an Alley tornado—or pseudo-tornado—that descended one day, flattening the fields like a titanic, invisible hand brutally caressing its verdant earthly lover. DFW's description of his being lifted from pursuit of the neon tennis ball, overtaking it and then, together with his playing partner and friend Gil Antitoi, being waffle-ironed into the chain-link fence in Warner Brothers fashion, makes for a pitch-perfect ending.
It also took me somewhat longer to finish n E Unibus Pluramn than I had originally anticipated. As a fiction writer—albeit one whose work has an audience of Me, Myself, and I—I can immediately locate myself in DFW's opening description of that kind; and his commiserative outlining of what constitutes a lonely person cuts through in can-opener fashion to expose the roots of self-isolation within awareness using but a few lines of simple truth. This is one of those reading experiences that assembles myriad ideas and thoughts and analyses which one has previously encountered from different sources and writers and coheres them into a whole that is profound, which unfolds with the inevitable logic of a sunrise and casts a new light upon the shadowy world that lies before it. In addition to instilling in me a renewed avowal to tackle DeLillo's White Noise, I thought that his argument was firmly constructed: a walk-through of the way in which the Televisual has co-opted the postmodernist usage of irony, the absurd, ridicule, and self-awareness and managed to inoculate itself from the effects of such criticisms; how this post-postmodernist revolt against the revolution was a logical and foreseeable progression from the literary and artistic tropes of modernism; that one of these linkages proceeds through the cultural and existential implications of mass-communication technologies in which the evolution is from individuals comforted with the illusion of being immersed within the communal masses to that of said masses becoming individualized as unique—and uniquely superior—personalities ironically aware of the sublimating deceptions of the former state but oblivious at the important levels as to the subtle changes at work within the latter, including the immersion of the personality inside the fantasy of the Televisual screen; and that this irony, noninvolvement, and ridicule, whilst entertaining and amusing as put into action by both the Televisual and the literary authors who are endeavoring to undermine it, is ultimately a despairing and stagnant strategy whose end result seems only to be a paralysis towards societal changes. Is the answer to be found in a new generation of young writers willing to commit, to risk the backlash of scorn and mockery for penning characters with ideals and beliefs and writing about them sincerely? A backing away from the Jon Stewartization of liberal news into liberal entertainment, from knowing winks and Geddit?Geddit! nods? I think it's a step in the right direction. But it will be very difficult: in an essay in which he presented the thesis outlined above, he was unable to refrain from indulging in the same ironic awareness, the same refusal to fully commit to a claim (his two or three asides that he wasn't trying to say that television is this or the industry that), and the same (gentle) ridicule, especially present in the tweaking of George Gilder's breathless conservo-libertarian technophilia towards the end of the essay, a subtle choice by DFW, made—and acknowledged afterwards—in order to strengthen his textual argument: that this postmodernist technique has become so prevalent that even an author like this one, aware of its allure, finds it exceedingly difficult to break away from its pervasive influence. A very worthwhile essay, one which I am glad to have finally read and which, it seems to me, has only become more relevant in this new century.
At first glance, n Greatly Exaggeratedn doesn't strike one as the kind of essay that would appeal to very many reader's tastes, being a relatively brief review of Morte d'Author: An Autopsy, the commercial print of a Ph.D. dissertation submitted by the enchantingly named H. L. Hix, whom Wallace describes as appearing to have arrived at about the ripe old age of twelve according to the jacket photo. Hix had positioned himself as an adjudicator for the estranged and bifurcated camps of the rather turgid world of literary criticism: the predominantly continental Pro-Death gang—holding the author to be an effect of the text—and the principally Anglo-American Anti-Death crowd, who deem the author to be the cause. I've never taken a university course in my life, nor read any books about literary theory—which, come to think of it, might go a ways towards explaining the content and style of my Goodreads reviews—and what little I've come across describing the strangled arguments of these Poststructuralist and New Critical positions has struck me as labyrinthine and rather immaterial—though Jeff Goldstein, of the US conservative blog Protein Wisdom, had written some very interesting and clarifying posts—before he suffered a meltdown he has never fully recovered from—arguing for the Intentionalist point-of-view. DFW, in the space of a mere eight pages, stakes the positions of the various camps, the combinatory attempt by Hix to reconcile these bickering critical standpoints, delivers a good number of enlightening lines and amusing digs about the entire affair, and closes with a quote from William Gass that seems particularly apropos. Typical to my experience so far with this book of essays, Wallace possesses the arrhythmic ability to switch on a dime from easy, bantering prose to one laden with unfamiliar and daunting words that block the stream and hobble one's pace, jarring the reader out of his comfort zone and forcing him to regroup and concentrate anew upon what Wallace is saying. It can sometimes make for a slower reading experience, but, ultimately, one more enriching.
n Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Argle-Bargle-Too-Long-To-Typen is my favorite essay thus far. I truly love the manner in which DFW writes about tennis, the combination of detached observation, passionate advocacy, breezy and witty analogy, and acute deconstruction of what is taking place both on and off the court that he brings to the task—and the fact that he once attained the ranking of 17th as a junior within the Midwest Division gives him an insider's knowledge of the mechanics of the game—the requisite functional computation of angles and tactics on the run whilst dealing with all of the mental and physical pressures placed upon and within the human frame in trying to chase down and whack a tangerine-sized ball and dealing with an opponent skilled in the same conscious and unconscious calculations and reactions in pursuit of the same seamed neon spheroid—that only adds depth and veracity to his reportage. When Wallace categorically states that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is I admit to full agreement—allowing myself, of course, the hedge of declaring that it shares that summit with ice hockey and football (soccer to us North American philistines); but the latter two are team games, and as far as solo sporting endeavors are concerned, tennis is firmly placed at the aesthetic acme. It was Wallace, after all, who described Roger Federer's mesmerizingly beautiful forehand as a great liquid whip, which is of such an apt, exquisite perfection that it will forever spring to mind when I spy the Mighty Fed cracking winners. Wallace's awe and appreciation of the power and grace, the speed and dexterity, the patience and endurance that intertwine within the world-class tennis professional shine through whenever he writes about tennis, and especially in this essay, in which the then-79th-ranked-and-22-years-old American Michael Joyce, a sturdy, prematurely-balding power baseliner, built in the mold of Agassi—whom DFW loathed—serves as the locus for Wallace's musings about the action underway during the 1995 Canada Masters in Montréal, with a particular focus upon the Qualifying Tournament that preceded the main event, a struggle between sixty-four pros without sufficient ranking to guarantee entry to receive one of the eight available qualifier placements. The few niggardly quibbles I had—in describing the career arc of singles' journeyman Jakob Hlasek, he entirely omitted the latter's fine results in doubles tennis, in which he won the 1992 French Open and reached four other Grand Slam semifinals; his unawareness that each year Toronto and Montréal swap locations for the ATP Men's and WTA Women's events respectively; his much-too-harsh condemnation of John McEnroe becoming a tennis color commentator—are minor ones indeed; this is a wonderfully written tour of the world of men's tennis circa 1995. His descriptions of the tour's players are spot-on and brilliant; his relation of the tawdriness and excitement of the event amusingly excellent; his understanding and analysis of the type of psyches required, the drive of both parent and child to produce such a sleek, athletic automaton, both deep and convincing; his details of the peripatetic lifestyle, the challenges and chill lonelinesses of the low-paid, struggling tennis would-be-stars commiserative and informatory; and his assessment of the newly-emergent and -dominant style of the Power Baseliner—which, by 2004, had effectively eliminated the serve-and-volley game, that of personal favorites such as Sampras, McEnroe, Ivanisevic, Becker, and Edberg, from professional tennis—absolutely nails it, especially his perceptive observation of it as awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty. Preach it, brother.
I read the first essay n Derivative Sport in Tornado Alleyn this morning while the fog of sleep was slowly dissipating from my brain—it was a little meatier fare than I had initially expected. Gorgeous opening paragraph, though, ending in the following wonderfully etched phrase that immediately informed me I would need to brew myself up some coffee: The area behind and below these broad curves at the seam of land and sky I could plot by eye way before I came to know infinitesimals as easements, an integral as schema. Math at a hilly eastern school was like waking up; it dismantled memory and put it in light. Calculus was, quite literally, child's play. Then a very nice essay reflecting upon DFW's childhood amidst the corn-rich, lush black earth of the Illinois segment of the fertile American midwest, told through his formative years as a junior tennis player and framed with the mathematical boundaries of the playing court and the differentiating vectors of the omnipresent flavors of wind that live out their rich aerial life over these flat and fecund fields. Somewhat difficult in DFW's uniquely readable style that forces your mind into a slightly off-kilter rhythm, and with that humorous wit splayed throughout his self-deprecating description of his usage of an enviro-mathematical understanding of the elements—that sky dervish wind most of all—as an integral component of his tennis game, making an ally out of what bedeviled and frustrated his more talented opponents. It gains in power as it moves through its short textual life, ending with a brilliantly conceived depiction of an Alley tornado—or pseudo-tornado—that descended one day, flattening the fields like a titanic, invisible hand brutally caressing its verdant earthly lover. DFW's description of his being lifted from pursuit of the neon tennis ball, overtaking it and then, together with his playing partner and friend Gil Antitoi, being waffle-ironed into the chain-link fence in Warner Brothers fashion, makes for a pitch-perfect ending.
It also took me somewhat longer to finish n E Unibus Pluramn than I had originally anticipated. As a fiction writer—albeit one whose work has an audience of Me, Myself, and I—I can immediately locate myself in DFW's opening description of that kind; and his commiserative outlining of what constitutes a lonely person cuts through in can-opener fashion to expose the roots of self-isolation within awareness using but a few lines of simple truth. This is one of those reading experiences that assembles myriad ideas and thoughts and analyses which one has previously encountered from different sources and writers and coheres them into a whole that is profound, which unfolds with the inevitable logic of a sunrise and casts a new light upon the shadowy world that lies before it. In addition to instilling in me a renewed avowal to tackle DeLillo's White Noise, I thought that his argument was firmly constructed: a walk-through of the way in which the Televisual has co-opted the postmodernist usage of irony, the absurd, ridicule, and self-awareness and managed to inoculate itself from the effects of such criticisms; how this post-postmodernist revolt against the revolution was a logical and foreseeable progression from the literary and artistic tropes of modernism; that one of these linkages proceeds through the cultural and existential implications of mass-communication technologies in which the evolution is from individuals comforted with the illusion of being immersed within the communal masses to that of said masses becoming individualized as unique—and uniquely superior—personalities ironically aware of the sublimating deceptions of the former state but oblivious at the important levels as to the subtle changes at work within the latter, including the immersion of the personality inside the fantasy of the Televisual screen; and that this irony, noninvolvement, and ridicule, whilst entertaining and amusing as put into action by both the Televisual and the literary authors who are endeavoring to undermine it, is ultimately a despairing and stagnant strategy whose end result seems only to be a paralysis towards societal changes. Is the answer to be found in a new generation of young writers willing to commit, to risk the backlash of scorn and mockery for penning characters with ideals and beliefs and writing about them sincerely? A backing away from the Jon Stewartization of liberal news into liberal entertainment, from knowing winks and Geddit?Geddit! nods? I think it's a step in the right direction. But it will be very difficult: in an essay in which he presented the thesis outlined above, he was unable to refrain from indulging in the same ironic awareness, the same refusal to fully commit to a claim (his two or three asides that he wasn't trying to say that television is this or the industry that), and the same (gentle) ridicule, especially present in the tweaking of George Gilder's breathless conservo-libertarian technophilia towards the end of the essay, a subtle choice by DFW, made—and acknowledged afterwards—in order to strengthen his textual argument: that this postmodernist technique has become so prevalent that even an author like this one, aware of its allure, finds it exceedingly difficult to break away from its pervasive influence. A very worthwhile essay, one which I am glad to have finally read and which, it seems to me, has only become more relevant in this new century.
At first glance, n Greatly Exaggeratedn doesn't strike one as the kind of essay that would appeal to very many reader's tastes, being a relatively brief review of Morte d'Author: An Autopsy, the commercial print of a Ph.D. dissertation submitted by the enchantingly named H. L. Hix, whom Wallace describes as appearing to have arrived at about the ripe old age of twelve according to the jacket photo. Hix had positioned himself as an adjudicator for the estranged and bifurcated camps of the rather turgid world of literary criticism: the predominantly continental Pro-Death gang—holding the author to be an effect of the text—and the principally Anglo-American Anti-Death crowd, who deem the author to be the cause. I've never taken a university course in my life, nor read any books about literary theory—which, come to think of it, might go a ways towards explaining the content and style of my Goodreads reviews—and what little I've come across describing the strangled arguments of these Poststructuralist and New Critical positions has struck me as labyrinthine and rather immaterial—though Jeff Goldstein, of the US conservative blog Protein Wisdom, had written some very interesting and clarifying posts—before he suffered a meltdown he has never fully recovered from—arguing for the Intentionalist point-of-view. DFW, in the space of a mere eight pages, stakes the positions of the various camps, the combinatory attempt by Hix to reconcile these bickering critical standpoints, delivers a good number of enlightening lines and amusing digs about the entire affair, and closes with a quote from William Gass that seems particularly apropos. Typical to my experience so far with this book of essays, Wallace possesses the arrhythmic ability to switch on a dime from easy, bantering prose to one laden with unfamiliar and daunting words that block the stream and hobble one's pace, jarring the reader out of his comfort zone and forcing him to regroup and concentrate anew upon what Wallace is saying. It can sometimes make for a slower reading experience, but, ultimately, one more enriching.
n Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Argle-Bargle-Too-Long-To-Typen is my favorite essay thus far. I truly love the manner in which DFW writes about tennis, the combination of detached observation, passionate advocacy, breezy and witty analogy, and acute deconstruction of what is taking place both on and off the court that he brings to the task—and the fact that he once attained the ranking of 17th as a junior within the Midwest Division gives him an insider's knowledge of the mechanics of the game—the requisite functional computation of angles and tactics on the run whilst dealing with all of the mental and physical pressures placed upon and within the human frame in trying to chase down and whack a tangerine-sized ball and dealing with an opponent skilled in the same conscious and unconscious calculations and reactions in pursuit of the same seamed neon spheroid—that only adds depth and veracity to his reportage. When Wallace categorically states that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is I admit to full agreement—allowing myself, of course, the hedge of declaring that it shares that summit with ice hockey and football (soccer to us North American philistines); but the latter two are team games, and as far as solo sporting endeavors are concerned, tennis is firmly placed at the aesthetic acme. It was Wallace, after all, who described Roger Federer's mesmerizingly beautiful forehand as a great liquid whip, which is of such an apt, exquisite perfection that it will forever spring to mind when I spy the Mighty Fed cracking winners. Wallace's awe and appreciation of the power and grace, the speed and dexterity, the patience and endurance that intertwine within the world-class tennis professional shine through whenever he writes about tennis, and especially in this essay, in which the then-79th-ranked-and-22-years-old American Michael Joyce, a sturdy, prematurely-balding power baseliner, built in the mold of Agassi—whom DFW loathed—serves as the locus for Wallace's musings about the action underway during the 1995 Canada Masters in Montréal, with a particular focus upon the Qualifying Tournament that preceded the main event, a struggle between sixty-four pros without sufficient ranking to guarantee entry to receive one of the eight available qualifier placements. The few niggardly quibbles I had—in describing the career arc of singles' journeyman Jakob Hlasek, he entirely omitted the latter's fine results in doubles tennis, in which he won the 1992 French Open and reached four other Grand Slam semifinals; his unawareness that each year Toronto and Montréal swap locations for the ATP Men's and WTA Women's events respectively; his much-too-harsh condemnation of John McEnroe becoming a tennis color commentator—are minor ones indeed; this is a wonderfully written tour of the world of men's tennis circa 1995. His descriptions of the tour's players are spot-on and brilliant; his relation of the tawdriness and excitement of the event amusingly excellent; his understanding and analysis of the type of psyches required, the drive of both parent and child to produce such a sleek, athletic automaton, both deep and convincing; his details of the peripatetic lifestyle, the challenges and chill lonelinesses of the low-paid, struggling tennis would-be-stars commiserative and informatory; and his assessment of the newly-emergent and -dominant style of the Power Baseliner—which, by 2004, had effectively eliminated the serve-and-volley game, that of personal favorites such as Sampras, McEnroe, Ivanisevic, Becker, and Edberg, from professional tennis—absolutely nails it, especially his perceptive observation of it as awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty. Preach it, brother.
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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.
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La mia prima esperienza con D. F. Wallace era stata piuttosto negativa. Avevo letto la sua raccolta di racconti La ragazza dai capelli strani e, se il primo racconto, "Piccoli animali senza espressione", mi era piaciuto, da lì in poi era stato un calando di interesse. Mi ricordo ancora con orrore un racconto sul presidente Lyndon Johnson che mi parve più lungo di Guerra e pace (in realtà saranno state un ottantina di pagine) e che, riuscendone a leggere solo due o tre pagine al giorno, mi trascinai per settimane.
A quel punto ero dell’idea che D.F. Wallace semplicemente non facesse per me. Forse lo apprezzo di più come scrittore di non-fiction, non so, ma non mi sembra nemmeno che l’autore di quei racconti sia la stessa persona che ha scritto "Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più", libro che ha di gran lunga superato le mie più rosee aspettative.
"Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più" è un saggio divertente, scritto benissimo, interessante e che ti fa venir voglia di diventare amico di D. F. Wallace. E a me personalmente delle crociere extralusso interessa veramente poco, non è nemmeno un tipo di vacanza che mi attira, (ma ha parecchi elementi in comune con i famosi villaggi turistici in cui quasi tutti siamo stati almeno una volta nella vita. Anche più di una volta) quindi non fatevi frenare dall'argomento un po’ bizzarro.
Mi piace l’umorismo di D.F. Wallace, non “educatino” ma nemmeno eccessivamente cattivo.
Le note sono meravigliose. E le note delle note.
Nonostante sotto tutto il divertimento obbligato e sotto il divertimento della lettura si percepisca una certa tristezza e il tutto talvolta assuma delle prospettive sociologiche, rimane una lettura leggera, un libro breve, intelligente e simpatico, perfetto per periodi un po’ stressanti.
Forse sembrerà un po' eccessivo ma credo che dato l'argomento fosse impossibile (o quasi) scrivere un libro migliore di questo.
A quel punto ero dell’idea che D.F. Wallace semplicemente non facesse per me. Forse lo apprezzo di più come scrittore di non-fiction, non so, ma non mi sembra nemmeno che l’autore di quei racconti sia la stessa persona che ha scritto "Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più", libro che ha di gran lunga superato le mie più rosee aspettative.
"Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più" è un saggio divertente, scritto benissimo, interessante e che ti fa venir voglia di diventare amico di D. F. Wallace. E a me personalmente delle crociere extralusso interessa veramente poco, non è nemmeno un tipo di vacanza che mi attira, (ma ha parecchi elementi in comune con i famosi villaggi turistici in cui quasi tutti siamo stati almeno una volta nella vita. Anche più di una volta) quindi non fatevi frenare dall'argomento un po’ bizzarro.
Mi piace l’umorismo di D.F. Wallace, non “educatino” ma nemmeno eccessivamente cattivo.
Le note sono meravigliose. E le note delle note.
Nonostante sotto tutto il divertimento obbligato e sotto il divertimento della lettura si percepisca una certa tristezza e il tutto talvolta assuma delle prospettive sociologiche, rimane una lettura leggera, un libro breve, intelligente e simpatico, perfetto per periodi un po’ stressanti.
Forse sembrerà un po' eccessivo ma credo che dato l'argomento fosse impossibile (o quasi) scrivere un libro migliore di questo.
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Prosa brillante y desternillante la de mi muy admirado David Foster Wallace en este fantástico libro que, entre chascarrillos colmos de ingenio, se acerca de forma profunda y lúcida a las desasosegantes paradojas del hombre moderno.
El autor forma ya parte de los escritores a los que profeso una extraña forma de devoción, porque, al igual que Primo Levi o Thomas Merton, habla de la pobreza infinita del hombre y logra, sin embargo, contrarrestar el doloroso efecto de su discurso con el brillo insuperable de su belleza interior y su inteligencia.
En este libro compruebo (con el mismo asombro que otras veces) cómo Wallace consigue plasmar en papel una radiografía muy mejorada y amplificada de mis propios sentimientos respecto a ciertas situaciones; es como si los rescatase de un remoto almacén común, los desempolvase y luego los adornase con la gracia, viveza y perspicacia que le son propias. De hecho, yo también hice un crucero de lujo hace muchos años, y de la pluma de Wallace descubro que yo también desarrollé un respeto casi reverencial (cuando no amor romántico) por mi camarero, que sentí euforia y náuseas a partes iguales, que la nada primordial del océano me hacía sentir asustada y diminuta y, sobre todo, que quise creerme la “Fantasía Vacacional Suprema” (que consistió en pensar que el lujo y el placer iban a conseguir hacer callar mi parte Infantil, que a día de hoy, a pesar de las arrugas acumuladas, sigue si quedar saciada...).
A golpe de carcajadas, Wallace nos hace recorrer sin excesivos temores un peliagudo itinerario de cuestiones más bien graves, tales como el miedo a la muerte, las crisis de desesperación, la tendencialmente obsesiva necesidad de recibir cuidados y la insaciabilidad del ego. Confieso que no puedo evitar reflexionar a menudo sobre estos asuntos, pero les juro que cuando lo hago no consigo pasármelo bien. Con Wallace es distinto; con él ambas cosas son perfectamente compatibles. No sé cómo lo hace, pero, en mi opinión, quien hablando de lo triste consigue hacerte reír, se merece que lo quieran. Y eso hago.
El autor forma ya parte de los escritores a los que profeso una extraña forma de devoción, porque, al igual que Primo Levi o Thomas Merton, habla de la pobreza infinita del hombre y logra, sin embargo, contrarrestar el doloroso efecto de su discurso con el brillo insuperable de su belleza interior y su inteligencia.
En este libro compruebo (con el mismo asombro que otras veces) cómo Wallace consigue plasmar en papel una radiografía muy mejorada y amplificada de mis propios sentimientos respecto a ciertas situaciones; es como si los rescatase de un remoto almacén común, los desempolvase y luego los adornase con la gracia, viveza y perspicacia que le son propias. De hecho, yo también hice un crucero de lujo hace muchos años, y de la pluma de Wallace descubro que yo también desarrollé un respeto casi reverencial (cuando no amor romántico) por mi camarero, que sentí euforia y náuseas a partes iguales, que la nada primordial del océano me hacía sentir asustada y diminuta y, sobre todo, que quise creerme la “Fantasía Vacacional Suprema” (que consistió en pensar que el lujo y el placer iban a conseguir hacer callar mi parte Infantil, que a día de hoy, a pesar de las arrugas acumuladas, sigue si quedar saciada...).
A golpe de carcajadas, Wallace nos hace recorrer sin excesivos temores un peliagudo itinerario de cuestiones más bien graves, tales como el miedo a la muerte, las crisis de desesperación, la tendencialmente obsesiva necesidad de recibir cuidados y la insaciabilidad del ego. Confieso que no puedo evitar reflexionar a menudo sobre estos asuntos, pero les juro que cuando lo hago no consigo pasármelo bien. Con Wallace es distinto; con él ambas cosas son perfectamente compatibles. No sé cómo lo hace, pero, en mi opinión, quien hablando de lo triste consigue hacerte reír, se merece que lo quieran. Y eso hago.
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