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

 

 

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Wallace is a fun writer. He's amusing. He tries very hard to spin the ordinary with a barrage of sidebars, witticisms, and irony. How odd then that we expect so much more even as we enjoy the work. This is a tough question but one that his writing raises.

The first essay discusses his adolescent tennis playing and his lack of true talent (although in other places he drops other hints about his upbringing that seems to contradict what we read here. (I am unsure what I can really believe of his writing about his past.) Next follows an essay about television and fiction that relies heavily upon a number of studies. Most shocking is how he never discovered John Fiske whose work, Television Culture is one of the major works on the subject. Wallace discusses metafiction from the viewpoint of novelistic deconstruction and postmodernism yet his weaknesses of not having a visual studies background really shows. Thus he stumbles upon some "revelations" that have been pretty well documented by other writers. Eventually the lack of a clear structure in this essay undermines whatever point Wallace is attempting to make. Skip the David Lynch,(unless you are a David Lynch groupie)in which the writerly problems of structure and theme are completely lost.

The essay on tennis player Michael Joyce is packaged in a journalistic wrapping, but it's as though Wallace never really gets the feel of the person or the atmosphere. He bounces around with pen and pad taking down impressions that are superficial. For example, in covering the Montreal tournament he never questions what it is that makes tennis in Quebec so different from the US Open. We get a skimming essay, with the oh so expected Wallace ironical touch but without real digging.

Once Wallace is assigned by Harpers to cover the Illinois State Fair or a week on a cruise boat, we begin to expect he'll rise up and grab the subject by the horns. But he's found his formula, the pastiche of the Wallace style and it's as though he doesn't dare break out. So we get two essays that promise us the world and deliver more rambling impressions. I wouldn't call the experience grating but slightly disappointing. These are not "razor sharp" essays of laugh out loud humor. The humor is one of juxtapositions, of lists of names of food vendors at the fair, of comparing walking tourists to cattle. It's amusing, not rip roaring.

Still Wallace is at times a real word master, offering some absolutely terrific sentences. Check out the first paragraph of the first essay to be convinced, "...the weird topographical drain-swirl of a whole lot of ice-ironed land that sits and spins atop plates." It's great stuff in such instances.

Wallace is full of himself for sure. I felt that he was making it up some of the time when he needs more information, and then denying the reader information when it suits him by often saying "It's a long story." And often he glosses over details that would make the essay even better, as when at the fair he overeats (maybe) and goes to the hospital emergency room (maybe. Yet he skips over all this in order to provide us more random observations. Maybe that's who Wallace is, the guy who gets sidetracked listing the types of trees while forgetting the shape of the forest.

In a way his style is well conveyed by the picture on the cover in which a boys head is superimposed on another body, eyes rolling tongue sticking out,hand on gut, smoke flying out of ears. We get the point from the tongue and head, do we really need the smoke too? But I think Wallace does, he can't stop adding more and more even though the extra texture eventually detracts. Still, reading Wallace is a fun thing, and I'll do it again even though I tire of his formula.

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.

One of the most insightful collections of essays I've read in years, Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing explores contemporary life with fresh and vibrant language. Too many try to compare these non-fiction essays with his magnum opus, Infinite Jest; there's a directness, a desire to not beat around the bush, present in A Supposedly Fun Thing. I.J. is a massive metaphor for the issues and concerns discussed in A Supposedly Fun Thing and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (another fine Wallace book). I'd love to read Wallace's take on the post-Sept. 11th America and the Bush Administration. If you're reading this, Dave, consider this a suggestion for more exceptional essays. Thanks for the great book.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellence
What can you say about Wallace? Everything he writes has something thuoghtful and of value.

Published on Jan 23 2010 by Robert Hurlburt

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth it
This was a thorough and entertaining read. I laughed all the way through.

Published on Feb 5 2004 by F. Bernhardt

5.0 out of 5 stars Disclaimer: I've not read Wallace's fiction...
...but i really loved this essay collection.

Wallace is (IMO) a totally hilarious writer and the essays collected in this book are astute observations and analyses of a number... Read more

Published on Jun 24 2003 by Rachel E. Pollock

3.0 out of 5 stars A supposedly good author I'll never read again
Occasionally Wallace manages to craft a story or essay that holds interest throughout. More often, however, he uses language for no other purpose than to show his adeptness at... Read more

Published on May 6 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
More brief than his novels, just as inviting, conversational, thought-provoking, and funny. The addition of a self-effacing first person is really charming. Read more

Published on April 12 2003 by Alison J. Grinter

5.0 out of 5 stars 100 Page Essay About a Boat Cruise Is Worth Gold
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... Read more

Published on Nov 18 2002 by M. JEFFREY MCMAHON

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good
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. Read more

Published on Sep 18 2002 by J.F. Quackenbush

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, and variety
James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, entitled _Genius_, spent a while defending that choice of adjective. Read more

Published on May 23 2002 by Stephen R. Laniel

4.0 out of 5 stars mostly superb
Mr. Wallace isn't just funny (and he can be wickedly funny), he has a superb command of language, isn't afraid to use words, is beautifully observant, and has a great sense of... Read more

Published on May 22 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely enjoyable and funny
David Foster Wallace has a great way with words. His philosophical mindset and ironic attitude combine to present us with a deep, unexpected view of items we might not have... Read more

Published on April 12 2002 by Peter J. Storms

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