David Foster Wallace book reviews

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my favorite authors--David Foster Wallace--killed himself this last September. This summer I read (or reread) all of his published books, and I thought I would share my reactions to them.

Nonfiction:

Wallace is a brilliant essayist, whose insights into American cultures in particular and humanity at large are staggering.The essay collections are by far my favorites of his works and are certainly among my favorite books. However, I am an academic at heart, and the essay format is not for everyone. These aren't dry, humorless works, though, so you should give them a shot even if you prefer your insights to come through fiction. I probably laughed thrice as often reading these essays than I did during his novels.

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: This is the first DFW book I read, back when I was in high school and had to read it with a dictionary in front of me (A word of warning: DFW's vocabulary can be intimidating, but is more than worth it. He is not simply showing off but rather is using precisely the right word in every situation, where every connotation of the word is considered and well used). The book is a collection of essays on various topics, from the connections he made as a child between tennis and calculus, to the film director David Lynch. Wallace had a gift for understanding and clearly explaining points that I at some level recognized and was affected by yet was unable to articulate. A prime example is our shared dislike of television as a medium, which I usually have trouble defending but that Wallace not only defends but uses that defense as a way of making sense of American culture, something which I am completely unable to do by myself. Wallace gives me an understanding of elements of American culture where I am clueless, which is impressive because I don't really even want to understand those people, I just want them to go away or change. "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All," an essay about the Illinoise State Fair, makes sense of behavior at state fairs that completely dumbfound those of us who are not from rural areas, such as all going to the food stands at the same time and having to wait in enormous lines instead of just coming back in a few hours when no one else is there. The short and witless version is that people from rural areas --unlike people who have lived in cities--rarely see even their closest neighbors and never are in crowds and lines, so while we would go to be secluded as a break from our ordinary lives, they go to be in a mass of people for a change of pace. Wallace is full of such insight (I am overusing this word, but my vocabulary is orders of magnitude more limited than DFW's and anything less sells him short), only with more humor and humanity than I know how to express. The book's title essay is my favorite. He was sent to go write about a cruise, and it sums up better than I ever could the disgust that I feel as a tourist and the shame at being with fellow Americans at their most gluttonous and materialistic (especially when traveling abroad). I highly recommend at least trying this book to any of my friends.

• Consider the Lobster: This book is another collection of essays quite similar to A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. The opening paragraphs of the opening essay, "Big Red Son," are reason enough to love Wallace. I won't even summarize it because I can't do it justice. In "The View from Mrs. Thompson's" he deals with being in a red state on September 11th, 2001, going to a neighbor's because he didn't own a TV. He deals with the red/blue divide in a way that illuminates both sides without hating either. "Up, Simba" is an account of his travels on the Straight Talk Express, back in 2000 when McCain seemed like a decent human being who loved his country and truly wanted to serve it. It is a must read for political junkies, and a good read for anyone else (the essay was recently republished alone as McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope in an effort by his publishers to make more money in light of McCain's 2008 run). The title piece was actually published in Gourmet magazine, which is hilarious because it is about how weird and gross it is to eat lobster. He was sent to cover a Lobster festival in Maine, and comes up with a piece similar to the one about the state fair. Basically, people in groups are weird, and DFW know how to capture why [why both as in in what manner and as in the motivating and causal factors] they are weird. One of my favorites, but one which is mostly appealing because I'm a huge philosophy nerd, is "Authority and American Usage." This essay is seriously a review of a dictionary, and it is one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. Basically, it shows how to be a language nazi in the face of postmodernism, and as an added bonus explains (the later) Wittgenstein in a few pages more clearly than Wittgenstein ever explained himself [this one is not for the faint of heart because it is longer and dryer than his usual essay, so if it doesn't grab your interest you might skip over it]. The final essay, "Host," shows just how disgusting a parasitic conservative radio personalities can be. It is also probably the weirdest layout I have seen other than certain sections of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Wallace does not write in a linear fashion. He always uses a lot of footnotes to talk about tangent (much the way I use parentheticals, except that footnotes don't interrupt the flow of the main text as much). In "Host," instead of littering it with footnotes he uses boxes of text with arrows drawn to them, which works surprisingly well. Anyway, the books of essays are my favorites of DFW and my first and highest recommendations.

• Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity: This isn't a book of essays. It is an explanation of the concept of trans-finite numbers (numbers bigger than infinity). As such, there is a lot of math in addition to a lot of history of math. If you don't care about what the hell trans-finite numbers are or about the utter weirdness of infinity, seriously don't read this. If you are interested and aren't a math major, this book is definitely for you. It is a book about math that is actually funny and entertaining and (relatively) easy to understand.

Fiction:

-Short story collections:

These, honestly aren't my favorites of David Foster Wallace. I still like them, but they don't have the life altering, paradigm shifting power of his novels or essays. However, you might like them more than I do if you are a fan of post-modern fiction (though not all of it is), literary criticism, or literature classes.

• Girl with Curious Hair: There is a lot of stuff in here (and in the other short story collections, but this book the most) about meta-fiction and postmodernism. I typically dislike postmodernist fiction (and despise postmodernism in many other topics [more on that in a later post]), but I love DFW's metafiction. For history/political buffs, there is a great historical fiction piece featuring Lyndon Johnson. "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" is amazing meta-fiction about a book of meta-fiction (which I haven't read), John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. It is also about McDonald's.

• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: The first time I read this book, it made me deeply self aware of my attitudes towards relationships and sexuality, and made me want to change them. The second time I spent less time worrying as to whether or not I was a hideous man (both because I have changed and because I'm not sure that I would care if I were) and more time enjoying the stories (in particular, "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" is a hilarious mix of commentary on the film/TV industry and Greek mythology, perfect for Reedies). "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon" expresses many of my fears and disgusts at the idea of having children. "Octet" is meta-meta fiction that is an amazingly open, unguarded, desperate, urgent attempt to connect with the reader. In addition to sexuality and having children, this book also deals with depression and the general disillusionment that comes with adulthood. It is my favorite of the short story collections, but depressing as hell [example of how depressing it is: there is a story titled "Suicide as a Sort of Present"].

• Oblivion: Stories: A lot of stuff here on consumerism and corporate culture. Disturbing, but interesting. Frankly, I read all the short story collections in one day, so they sort of blur together, especially since DFW has a very distinctive style that permeates all his work. Much of the generalities I made about the previous two books also apply here.

-Novels:

• The Broom of the System: There is a lot about Wittgenstein in this book (and it is even accurate!), and I am a Wittgenstinean, so of course I loved it. However, don't let that discourage you non-philosophy majors. This is most certainly not a philosophy book, it just happens to mention a particular philosopher and his theories a lot. Really, it is the most accessable and fastest read of anything by DFW. There aren't even footnotes. Lot's of good concepts explored here, like how we define ourselves and good body image/boundaries. Also, interesting characters.

• Infinite Jest: This book is about four times as long and four times as dense as The Broom of the System. This tome took me a month of solid reading to finish, which is saying something. It was more than worth it, but it took me a while to get into it. I tried to read it once before and only got about thirty pages in, realized that there were three times as many pages of footnotes as that, and wasn't really laughing yet. I didn't find the book as funny as some of the reviewers lead me to believe I would (though there were some definite laugh out-loud moments). However, the imagery and ideas and characters will stay with me forever. This is a deep, deeply moving, indescribably insightful look into consumerism, depression, addiction, and other aspects of American life. You might have to work your way up to it, but if you do this book will change your outlook on life. It is also very sad, mostly because DFW understands depression so well that you know he had to have suffered from it himself, and that he suffered from so-called psychotic depression, which is infinitely worse than the melancholic depression I sometimes get. He talks about suicide too, so we know how bad it was for him to have to kill himself. He has a suicidal character describe suicide through an analogy to jumping from a burning building (this was written pre-9/11). Jumping from a sky scraper isn't any less terrifying or any more appealing than it would be on some random Tuesday afternoon. It's just that the fire is worse. Jumping doesn't seem like the more appealing alternative, just the less appalling. It is a tragedy for anyone to feel like that, and an even greater one to lose one of the greatest and most creative minds of our times. David Foster Wallace, you will be missed.

Update (9/18/13):

•  "Deciderization 2007 — a Special Report" The introduction as guest editor to The Best American Essays 2007: Here Wallace introduces the concept of Total Noise: the overwhelming data available/pressed upon us in contemporary existence. He selected the essays in the book as examples of people able to draw out meaningful information from the total noise, and thinks they are exemplary for doing so. This is a short, easily digestible bit of insight that is definitely worth reading. Among the essays themselves, I was floored by the first one: Werner by Jo Anne Beard. It is so incredible that it reads like fiction, in part because Beard masterfully crafted the narrative to make the nearly unbelievable make sense, with every flashback adding in information that shows how the events of the main story line are possible. It packs a hell of an emotional punch, in addition to having the narrative structure that I will now forever be aiming for in my own writing. I read her other books: the novel In Zanesville and the collection of nonfiction autobiographical pieces The Boys of My Youth. They were both fairly good reads, but didn't come close to the absolute perfection of Werner (though holy shit did she have some intense experiences that I did not at all see coming). 

• The Pale King: Wallace's posthumous last novel is not quite complete, yet is up to his usual standard of excellence. It deals with boredom, mundane existence, and the author's place in narration, among other things. Told as if he were an employee at the IRS, it is in many ways the expansion of the Total Noise concept, paired with a new definition of heroism wherein the trues heroes of the modern age are those who endure mind-shattering boredom to turn masses of meaningless data into useful information. 

• Apparently there is a new collection of DFW essays entitled Both Flesh and Not! I need to acquire this book as soon as possible.