Customer Reviews

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

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3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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 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 profoundly gifted writer, particularly of nonfiction. Yet backtracking to this "early" anthology of his work was an experience that left me surprisingly disappointed. Admittedly, part of the problem is that his early-to-mid 1990's musings on television and pro tennis (which comprise a substantial portion of this book) are now simply out-of-date.

But additionally, Wallace lacked the focus needed to make his points clearly when he wrote these pieces. While I think it can be fascinating to watch a brilliant mind wander about on the page (Tom Wolfe's nonfiction comes to mind), Wallace is not wandering. He's willfully zigzagging, in the writer's equivalent of "Look Ma, no hands!"

And this obfuscatory style often undermines his own material. A funny line about how tennis pro Michael Chang has "as unhappy a face as I've ever seen outside a Graduate Writing Program" is hopelessly outnumbered by bits like "I was disabled because I was unable to accommodate the absence of disabilities to accommodate." Right. Wallace's word play and tangential trains of thought CAN be amusing and even delightful... but in A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING..., they are more frequently just a chore to read.

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is a collection of seven essays originally published between 1992 and 1996. They range over a variety of topics and, while somewhat uneven in quality, demonstrate that David Foster Wallace is one of contemporary America's most intelligent and imaginative writers.

The best of the essays are two that were originally published in Harper's magazine, "Getting Away from Being Pretty Much Away from It All" and the title essay, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again".

In "Getting Away from Being Pretty Much Away from It All", Wallace relates a visit to the Illinois State Fair in 1993 in a style that alternates between intellectual ponderousness and hilariously obsessive description and commentary on the minutest details of his experience. Approaching his task with the wonder of a child, Wallace, in a passage illustrative of his style (or at least one aspect of it), reflects: "One of the few things I still miss from my Midwest childhood was this weird, deluded but unshakable conviction that everything around me existed all and only For Me. Am I the only one who had this queer deep sense as a kid?-that everything exterior to me existed only insofar as it affected me somehow?-that all things were somehow, via some occult adult activity, specially arranged for my benefit? . . . The child leaves a room, and now everything in that room, once he's no longer there to see it, melts away into some void of potential or else (my personal childhood theory) is trundled away by occult adults and stored until the child's reentry into the room recalls it all back into animate service."

Similarly, in the title essay, Wallace spends nearly a hundred pages describing a seven-night Caribbean cruise on a Celebrity Cruise Lines megaship. Wallace ponders the fantasy the Celebrity brochures are selling, wanting to believe "that maybe this Ultimate Fantasy Vacation will be enough pampering, that this time the luxury and pleasure will be so completely and faultlessly administered that my Infantile part will be sated." But it will not be, for, as Wallace relates in another ponderous/humorous philosophical musing: "But the Infantile part of me is insatiable-in fact its whole essence or dasein or whatever lies in its a priori insatiability. In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the Insatiable Infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction." It's like watching a show like "The Love Boat" filtered through a humorous Heideggerian lens.

In both essays, Wallace brilliantly and humorously captures his experience, writing obsessive and, at times, gut wrenchingly funny commentary on everything from the baton twirling competition at the Illinois State Fair (which had me laughing out loud while riding the exercise bike at the YMCA, drawing querulous stares) to the dangers of the vacuum sewage system on board the Celebrity cruise ship. And the humor is magnified, again and again, by footnote after digressive footnote, each microscopically elaborating Wallace's observations, commentaries and deductions.

Another outstanding essay is Wallace's piece on director David Lynch ("David Lynch Keeps His Head"). Originally published in Premiere magazine, it is an incisive examination of Lynch's films commingled with a typically zany journalistic relation of Wallace's visit to the shooting of Lynch's "Lost Highway" in 1995.

For anyone who has read Wallace's doorstop of a novel, "Infinite Jest", there is another essay here that is worth reading, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction". Here, Wallace provides an analytical view of how fiction has changed in the U.S. over the past forty years and how fiction has been influenced by pervasive cultural presence of television. It is an essay full of thoughtful musings, although I found it, at times, too long and disjointed to keep my full attention. If any piece in this collection deserves editing, this is it.

The other essays include a fascinating essay on Wallace's visit to a professional tennis tournament (and, in particular, Michael Joyce, "whose realness and approachability and candor are a big reason why he's whom I end up spending the most time watching and talking to"), a piece on Wallace's adolescent days playing competitive tennis in Illinois (and the way play was affected by the winds and geometry and so forth), and a short book review that delves into the long-standing topic of "the death of the author".

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is ultimately the best introduction to the writing of David Foster Wallace, a collection I strongly recommend to anyone interested in contemporary American fiction and this brilliant young writer.

The title essay, about a hundred pages, is a sort of spy mission where the author, a man who makes it clear that he loathes the philistinism of conspicuous consumerism, poses as a boat cruise passenger and chronicles the depression and uneasiness that results from a luxury boat cruise. Wallace's depression is our joy because he is extremely funny in the way he shows how the Pampering Industry, that is, the boat cruise staff, is in fact a bunch of bullies who force us to "have a good time" as we luxuriate on a cruiser, which Wallace envisions as a sort of huge, warm womb where consciousness is lost and where the tourists experience a sort of death. Funny, profound, disturbing, Wallace hits a home run in an essay that was originally published in Harper's magazine around 1995. I believe this version is slightly different, longer, but curiously, missing some juicy parts that I remember enjoying in the magazine version.

James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, entitled _Genius_, spent a while defending that choice of adjective. The word ``genius" gets tossed around so much these days that it's been stripped of almost all its value. I tried to come up with a suitable subjective definition of genius, and my provisional one is something like the following: a genius is someone whose work changes the future direction that his particular speciality takes; after he's published his work, his speciality will never be the same again. By this definition - and by any others that I can think of - David Foster Wallace is a genius.

His genius comes from a few directions. First is his astonishing ability to meld diverse thoughts into a coherent whole. I think this is revealed most clearly in ``E Unibus Plurum," Wallace's essay within _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_ about the effect that television - particularly television's habit of swallowing irony - has on fiction. He diverges briefly into thoughts about what this means for our society in general. What happens when we spend our time conversing ironically - that is, commenting sardonically, but not actually fixing anything?

But at the same time that he can be incisive and intelligent, he's incredibly funny. The title essay from this collection describes Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise liner for Harper's Magazine, and the strange sort of death-transcendence (his term, not mine) that defines cruise lines. It's both funny enough that I had a hard time breathing at certain points, and almost heartbreaking.

I guess I don't always think of Wallace's genius until days like today when I'm sick at home and pull his essays off the shelf. I learn a little bit more about his arguments each time; laugh a little bit more; and find myself in the presence of an old friend who's incredibly candidly honest with me: ``[The mirrored staircases are] wickedly great because via the mirrors you can check out female bottoms ... without appearing to be one of those icky types who check out female bottoms on staircases." This is a man who's laying it all out on the line for you: his sense of humor, his erudition, and his very human perversions. He seems like the kind of guy with whom I could have a great conversation over coffee.

Imagine this essay collection as a conversation with an incredibly brilliant friend. It will be some of the best few hours you ever spend with a book.

There is exactly one reason why this book is eminently recommendable: it shows in elegant detail why DFW is, above all, a beautiful person. This book draws you in, and not just because DFW's expository skills put you right alongside the action. The real draw is that DFW is unafraid to experience and evenhandedly relate joy and wonder in details. We are allowed to know of his distaste for Andre Agassi and Balthazar Getty, but we're also treated to his clear affection for Pete Sampras and the older ladies at the cruise ship dinner table. We're also exposed to the natural and endearing compulsion to pour the au jus bucket overboard, if only to attract sharks.

Bottom line: you want to hear details when they're from people you would like and trust. DFW is likable and trustworthy, and his essays will convince you.

For those new to DFW, perhaps aware of him due to the tragic news of his recent death, this is a great place to start. This book collects essays he wrote for Harper's, Premier Magazine, and others. After DFW made his fiction bones, some genius editor (Lewis Lapham maybe?) guessed that he would make a very interesting journalist, which was an inspired call. The first, best known, reporting effort by Mr. Wallace is also the title essay, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" which recounts his experience and observations during a week spent on a cruise.

Not to be missed though, is the article DFW wrote on assignment for Premier magazine involving 3 days spent on location with David Lynch during the shooting of "Lost Highway". DFW does his usual genius take, hilarious but totally without snark, on the experience of being on a big budget movie, but also, along the way, he dissects, with brilliance, David Lynch's entire body of work, and slowly reveals how crucial one Lynch film, "Blue Velvet" was to his own artistic development. It is a genuine classic, one artist describing the clear debt of gratitude he owes to another. This book is not to missed.

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, 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). Do yourself a favor. Read this book.

The wit just doesn't quit in Chapters 3 (the Illinois State Fair) and 7 (a seven-night cruise aboard the m.v. Zenith, which the author renames the Nadir).

Don't think I've ever seen travel or destination writing that so perfectly captured the idiocy of luxury travel, the streaked-glass humidity in Miami, the quirks of one's dining companions at a cruise ship table, the sullen expressions on the vendors in Cozumel, the snarkiness of carnies at a state fair, the exultant spirit of the Prairie State Cloggers busting moves to Aretha, and pretty much every other detail that captures Wallace's eye.

Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 went right over my head, but if you are into tennis, post-modernism or mathematics, you might do fine. Here Wallace thinks about various topics as opposed to experiencing them.

And even if you only like chapters 3 and 7, that's a good 200 pages of wild reading.

The author has a little habit of inserting footnotes* that make his story fold in on itself.

* that run across multiple pages and sometimes there are footnotes ** to the footnotes
** which can be confusing ***.
*** but the guy's writing is so incredibly fun. He won't say "an all-male audience listened to the ship's captain," Instead it's, "Of the 40 or so Naderites at this lecture, the total number of women is: 0." Note to self: steal some of this writer's technique.

Yes, Wallace is a writer's writer, puckish and observant, who engaging lets his silences (like the pauses in jazz, or empty spaces in a Japanese rock garden) speak volumes. Once you get in the Wallace groove, he gets funnier and funnier. See for example the delicious understatement in passage about the dessert competitions at the state fair on page 111 ... followed by some pained hints about hospitals, and transverse colon rupture. It's like reading the winners of the Bulwer Lytton contest, you smile a little, and then it just gets punchier and punchier.