essays

I think David Foster Wallace is a brilliant writer, but can't really hit the target all the time. Either he is totally on top of something in describing it, or he writes himself into an intellectual loop that only he appreciates. When i read his stuff, i almost wonder if he is too intelligent for his audience, in that he tries to write about pop culture and similar themes that appeal to the average reader with such strength and knowhow that he seems like he's a genius stuck in a kid's mind and his descriptions of the kid's world can become too complicated for the kid to enjoy. That said, this book is well worth it, if not for the title essay on board a cruise ship which is hilarious then for the essay on amercian writing in the television age. There is a remark about irony in that essay which just blew my top off, it was great. The other notable essay is his "personal" review and account of a state fair, which is also equally funny. As for the others, i wasn't all that interested, in that i found them too wholly theoretical and dull. However, don't let this stop you, his writing is so original and fresh that its worth buying, not only for what it can give, but for what it exposes you to. Well worth it.

David Foster Wallace is a gifted writer and always a joy to read. His fiction is groundbreaking, and as this book proves, his nonfiction may even be better.

"A supposedly fun thing" is a collection of essays that are ostensibly stabs at journalism, the big joke being that Wallace is no journalist. He comes off as an endearingly neurotic-bordering-on-pathologically-self-concious red headed step child of Hunter S. Thompson. In fact, it could even be stated that this book is a sort of postmodern inversion of "The Great Shark Hunt", where Thompson's diving in head first to live inside the events he reports is replaced by Wallace's endearing midwestern unwillingness to get in the way and fear of making a nuisance and/or humiliating spectacle of himself.

Mixed in with all that, though, are startling on point revelations about the state of American Culture, what it means to be an american, the nature of art, and the human condition, which one normally doesn't expect from works about TV, Tennis, State Fairs, or Carribean Pleasure Cruises(in the title essay).

While it may not be as great an accomplishment as Infinite Jest (and the comparison to that magnificent book is the only reason this is getting four stars instead of five), "Supposedly Fun Thing" is without a doubt an incredible read and well worth the price of entry.

I find I can't look away from David Foster Wallace's writing, even though from this book onward, his work keeps playing out the same way.

If you want to understand Wallace, you can't do better than this book of essays. It's all here, from the sharp insight to the overcaffeinated but entertaining riffs on minutiae and big themes alike, to the terrific sense of order in his arguments, ebbing and flowing, delightfully departing from the pyramid structure/straw man tricks we've all seen eight billion times before.

And, vexingly, there's that Other Thing about DFW to be found all over these clever essays: a curious lack of feeling about the outer world and his inner life. It's kept him from making the leap throughout his career, and it's never been exposed more plainly than here.

You can see it in stark relief in his glimpses into sport. His essay on his own tennis playing doesn't carry the emotional freight he was gunning for, and it's no accident that the other tennis essay in this book, on the struggles of an obscure professional, is easily more evocative. Focusing on someone else, DFW is free to do what he does best (analyze) and escape from what he does the worst (feel).

You can see DFW's signature numbness undestandably coloring his looks at cruises and state fairs--activities that clearly aren't his bag. More interestingly, you can sense DFW's engine revving beneath the surface of the narrative in his homage to David Lynch. The admiration for Lynch ties back to DFW's own authorial frustrations. He can't arrange objects literally, magically, or expressionistically to conjure the responses that Lynch can; DFW doesn't have the feel for it and knows it. DFW's nonfiction wit has never translated to fiction; his imagination needs real-world facts and factoids in order to spark--weirdly and sadly, Wallace can't get going with a blank page. The dark comic bounciness of Chuck Palahniuk that should have been DFW's never happened, because Chuck knew how to navigate dark territory with voice, speed and jokes in Choke and Fight Club, whereas DFW couldn't escape his own voice, couldn't construct or pace his story when deprived of facts, and found himself trapped with himself in the creepy flatness of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Lastly, you can see DFW's problem laid bare in the book's best essay. It's on television, and it's worth multiple reads, not only because it's the best and clearest love-hate encapsulation of TV that you'll likely ever come across, but also because DFW, in a miracle of accidental self-revelation, performs an autopsy on his own fiction.

It's a virtuoso look at television's retrofitting of irony and metafiction, making them vehicles to move product and (above all else) sell television consumption itself. And DFW deftly argues that TV's dazzling use of irony has a withering effect on contemporary fiction. The essay concludes darkly with DFW admitting he can't see a way out for fiction, because practically every object, every plot line, every characterization imaginable already carries with it the oppressive weight of eerily undermining pop cultural subtexts.

It's a compelling argument, especially from DFW's point of view. Except for two things. One, fiction is like any art form with a lot of purveyors--most of what's produced in any given time isn't very good. Quality is the exception, not the rule. I'll bet that DFW is clever enough, if forced to play devil's advocate, to produce a pretty compelling essay arguing that, generally speaking, fiction from ANY era is (was) dead on arrival.

Second, well, there has been fiction that's broken through the fortress of irony since this essay. Writers depicting non-televisual, non-mainstream worlds have genuinely resonated, from Lumpiri to Leroy. The "hysterical realism" of White Teeth infused irony with playful humor, history, and real feeling, and leapfrogged DFW's quagmire. In Underworld, Don DeLillo--a hero of Wallace's--tried to burn through tired academic word games (a DFW fave) and pop cultural irony to find feeling, and for the most part, he succeeded. Even the low pop phenomenon of Harry Potter seems to won over the most impatient, media-saturated, medicated generation in history.

DFW, on the other hand, despite all his obvious talents, hasn't. And this book lays out why he never will.

All of which makes for a fun read. Buy it.