Fuck Yeah David Foster Wallace

Ross Reat’s name has popped up twice just in the beginning of the book — once in Orin Incandenza’s memory rush, once in Himself’s filmography as an actor. Kinda makes me thing Reat is sort of one of those important characters who just gets mentioned in passing. Or just another red herring because, well, Wallace.

Upon finishing Infinite Jest a week or so ago I was pretty certain I would be taking a break from any and all DFW-related stuff; but the novel was stuck in my head. Sure I wasn’t ready to start a whole other book of his quite yet, I chose DT Max’s biography instead, both because, as a biography, it’s easier reading, and I’ve needed easier reading to contrast against the reading I’ve been doing for class, and because I hoped the biography would help to explain and elaborate on criticisms I’d been reading of the author while I was reading IJ.

The biography paints a less than flattering portrait. That’s not to say it’s a vicious takedown—it’s probably about as even-handed as a biography about the author is going to be, and I can imagine books about him in the future being a lot less level-headed in either direction. Basically, DFW was an extremely troubled individual and probably not a very awesome person qua person. He was often misanthropic, violent, cruel (especially to women), and self-absorbed. But what’s great about the biography is how it allows these rather hideous characteristics to disgust as well as inform; knowing the uglier aspects of DFW’s personality is extremely enlightening with regard to his work. It seems to me that the writer was extremely aware of his immense character flaws and sought in his work (his novels and his non-fiction particularly) to overcome them, and in his work he was able to occupy a wholly different realm than he was in his actual life.

More than anything the biography is a testament to something even DFW himself would have said: do not build monuments to individuals. His genius is in his work, and in his case his work was both in writing and in acting; the DFW one sees and hears in interviews is DFW as spinner of fiction, not DFW as himself. One need not pretend David Foster Wallace was a god of sincerity and morality and self-awareness; his work does that well enough.

Despite his flaws, DFW’s death is still a great tragedy, not because people are without their god of post-post-post-postmodernism, but because his redemptive and humanistic work is now decidedly finite.

I’m still processing the whole thing and I’m certain there are aspects of the story that I missed, but I’m essentially just in awe. The enormous scope of the work combined with the amount of narrative detail, character exposition, and raw emotion is seriously staggering. I feel like I just finished playing in a grueling 5-set tennis match.

Dave Foster Wallace - The Pale King (via upsimba)

That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. 

That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused.

That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. 

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. 

That loneliness is not a function of solitude.

That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.

That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. 

That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.

That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. 

That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt.

That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. 

That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.

That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack.

That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. 

That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. 

That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven.

That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze.

That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.

That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. 

That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. 

That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.

That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish.

That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene.

That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. 

That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.

That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused.

That it is permissible to want. 

That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

That this isn’t necessarily perverse. 

David Foster Wallace (via aqua-de-la-luna)