David Foster Wallace and "Too Much"
Man, I'm bummed. I'm bummed about the news of David Foster Wallace's suicide. I'd be hard pressed to make a case for myself as an actual "writer." Throwing together blogs or doing quick profiles/reviews for a local magazine hardly qualifies me to even be classified as such (maybe typer is better?) but if you happened to plow through my rambling, long-winded (but hopefully entertaining) entry in the Revolution On Canvas Vol 1 book about the day to day concerns of a neurotic vocalist on tour - you will find heaping bushelfulls of nods, inspirations, and maybe even straight up rips of David Foster Wallace. If I remember correctly, I may have even put in a bunch of footnotes and eventually scrap them... thinking it was too much.
But that's what made DFW so great. "Too much" just didn't exist for him as a writer. Jesus, I dragged around Infinite Jest for several tours - eventually ditching it for something slimmer and lighter... a cinder block, perhaps. It's not that it wasn't fascinating. As my friend Zach noted - you need to read it with 3 bookmarks - one to mark your place, one to mark your place in the footnotes, and one to mark the hilarious parts you want to show others. But they'd never get it just from a paragraph, or a line, or even one of the oddly sequenced chapters. I once pointed out character James Incandenza's extensive filmography (one footnote) to a friend, saying it was just about the funniest thing I'd read in awhile. I don't remember it garnering much of a reaction. Maybe I'm just a fan of fun, nonsensical lists. (Side note! The Rye Coalition had a song named after one of Incandenza's films: "Blood Sister: One Tough Nun")
While Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews, Consider The Lobster, the amazing 9/11 essay in Rolling Stone were just fascinating, it was his writing style that I was just so ready, willing, and able to champion! It wasn't Kerouac-ian stream of consciousness or some randomly written journal entry. It took a LOT of thought, a LOT of research, and a LOT of experience. "Too much" even. It was so much information that - hell, if it took a page-long run-on sentence, or a novella worth of footnotes, or insanely esoteric language (the radio show passage is killer) - it didn't matter - as long as it got out of the head and onto the page. Conventional writing structure (and probably several editors) be damned!
After a few unsuccessful stabs at reading Infinite Jest on tour, I just said fuck it, I'm going to do this. So, during a month at home, I dug in. I took notes on all of the characters, I chronologically figured out what takes place when, I kept track of all of the plots and subplots... and I did it. You know, it's almost like a dare. I'm glad I took it on, though. It was so eye-opening and so envelope-pushing... I have many favorite parts but there's no way I'd be able to find them in that haystack. I'm just going to have to read the thing again.
DFW didn't publish much the last few years, but I bet he was writing... a lot. I wonder what, if anything, will come of it. Whether it's amazing or disappointing, it will most certainly be tragic because something became "too much."
And leave it to a tragedy to get one writing again.
But that's what made DFW so great. "Too much" just didn't exist for him as a writer. Jesus, I dragged around Infinite Jest for several tours - eventually ditching it for something slimmer and lighter... a cinder block, perhaps. It's not that it wasn't fascinating. As my friend Zach noted - you need to read it with 3 bookmarks - one to mark your place, one to mark your place in the footnotes, and one to mark the hilarious parts you want to show others. But they'd never get it just from a paragraph, or a line, or even one of the oddly sequenced chapters. I once pointed out character James Incandenza's extensive filmography (one footnote) to a friend, saying it was just about the funniest thing I'd read in awhile. I don't remember it garnering much of a reaction. Maybe I'm just a fan of fun, nonsensical lists. (Side note! The Rye Coalition had a song named after one of Incandenza's films: "Blood Sister: One Tough Nun")
While Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews, Consider The Lobster, the amazing 9/11 essay in Rolling Stone were just fascinating, it was his writing style that I was just so ready, willing, and able to champion! It wasn't Kerouac-ian stream of consciousness or some randomly written journal entry. It took a LOT of thought, a LOT of research, and a LOT of experience. "Too much" even. It was so much information that - hell, if it took a page-long run-on sentence, or a novella worth of footnotes, or insanely esoteric language (the radio show passage is killer) - it didn't matter - as long as it got out of the head and onto the page. Conventional writing structure (and probably several editors) be damned!
After a few unsuccessful stabs at reading Infinite Jest on tour, I just said fuck it, I'm going to do this. So, during a month at home, I dug in. I took notes on all of the characters, I chronologically figured out what takes place when, I kept track of all of the plots and subplots... and I did it. You know, it's almost like a dare. I'm glad I took it on, though. It was so eye-opening and so envelope-pushing... I have many favorite parts but there's no way I'd be able to find them in that haystack. I'm just going to have to read the thing again.
DFW didn't publish much the last few years, but I bet he was writing... a lot. I wonder what, if anything, will come of it. Whether it's amazing or disappointing, it will most certainly be tragic because something became "too much."
And leave it to a tragedy to get one writing again.
posted by Robert at
11:11 AM
6 Comments:
This is from one of my favorite college football bloggers (I know, strange source):
http://mgoblog.com/content/dfw
I feel like the two posts (yours and his) speak to each other pretty well.
I tried reading Infinite Jest 7 times. I eventually left my copy in Nairobi, on purpose, just so it would quit taunting me. I wish I could give it another chance.
Hey Bob, I just heard some Braid on Slacker radio. You are wicked-awesome. I am looking to get more "mathy" (the word wikipedia used) stuff! Good to see you're healthy.
I'm glad you appreciate DFW as much as I do, in fact, I'm glad you appreciate a lot of the same things as much as I do. That's why I love this blog. Keep it up.
I just finished 'Infinite Jest' after a four month (to the day, I believe) trek of dragging the book on my daily commute, reading it at odd hours and whatnot... and it's just been fascinating. As someone who likes to write, I appreciated his style from the beginning... the way he takes on each character's voice is enchanting, and his particular style was basically like listening to someone talk, as each little narrative had various twists and arcs and went completely off the path of where it started, just like so many conversations I've had on a daily basis... it was quite inspirational from the beginning. And in the end, I appreciated that he did not wish to beat the reader over the head with his messages and narrative and leave it up to interpretation, which may be the best gift after putting legitimate work into reading such a dense book.
And even though it's unfinished, I'll definitely grab a copy of "The Pale King" when that's published... I can only imagine what that will be like.
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