David Foster WallaceResenhas

I cannot remember reading a novel whose ending is placed at the focal point of a perspective fugue, way over the boundaries of the novel itself.
I do remember, of course, at least one fulgid example of a perfectly circular narrative whose very ending sentence folds into the beginning; and this is not the only instance in which my imagination was drawn to figure a set of literary coordinates, where Wallace's and Joyce's ways cross.
However, Infinite Jest is unique in this projection of its plot out of its own last page, before the epilogue makes it back to the opening scene, much like the way the back of your head is said to be visible in front of you, had you to cross the event horizon of a black hole; whereas Finnegans Wake flows like a river, quite literally, seeping out of its own pages yes, but in a more diffused manner, same as if a fine spray of its narrative imperceptibly soaked reality.
Well, the simple fact that Wallace keeps reminding me of Joyce should be a gauge of my admiration. His insane command of language and his deep sorrow for the human condition are what kept me glued to the page; well, apart from the plot. Many described this novel as plotless, uncentred, spinning out of its own author's control; well, nothing could be farthest from truth for the attentive reader. Let's not mistake stylistic choices for lyricism, here. Everything falls into place; just not inside the narrative. We readers need to become adults. We need to really care for the characters' fate, and only then, we will start noticing the clues about their destinies.
I guess this is where the greatness lies: Wallace was, famously, an advocate for emotional presence and sincerity as opposed to detached irony. He saw the use of irony and detachment in contemporary western culture as an instrument of denial and a crippling excuse against the acknowledgement of pain, leading to the inability to experience emotional growth: a symptom of mass immaturity of our society, elevated to universal norm. He equated it to the denial of the addict.
He made use of a great deal of humour to bring this point across, but please be careful not to mistake this humour with detached irony; Wallace deeply cared for human beings, and he cared for the pain felt by his characters. He wanted us to care, too, and he used his perfect prose as a maieutic teaching tool, to guide us towards understanding of pained self-awareness and soulless detachment as polar opposites. A hint: look for an abrupt change of style towards the end of the novel, when Hal starts thinking in first-person again. I'm not gonna spoil it for yous all, but that was the moment when I realised that there was true greatness under all that hilarious mess. That moment is proof that Wallace had perfect control over his novel. The superficial impression of centrelessness, the apparent lack of resolution, are all devices meant to mimic the overwhelming confusion of being alive; underneath flows a powerful and very simple narrative of love, loss, neglect, addiction, and the fundamental choice we are all faced at some stage between death and recovery. Even if recovery may not look like it at all, by the outside world enmeshed in ironic denial. Think of Hal.
There would be much more to say about literary richness of references to the great moralists like Dostojevsky and stuff like that; but it has already been said better than I possibly could.
I will only add that, if you make it to the end, you will enjoy a brief yet scorching roast of Harold Bloom's style. No wonder he blasted the novel with his signature arrogance and lack of class (and of literary insight). Let's say that being addressed as a turgid writer must have given him the howling fantods. Gotta love David Foster Wallace.

For several years now I have been saying I am due for a reread of Infinite Jest. It is true that I love IJ with everything I am, and it is equally true that the idea of rereading it is daunting. Most everyone with any interest in books knows it is long (over 1000 pages) but more importantly, it is a hard book to read. You need to be thinking at all times when reading it. It is relentless. Relentless in a good way, but relentless nonetheless. It is a superior opponent when it is up against my middlebrow sensibility and functional though not particularly notable intellect. About six months ago I came across this collection while browsing Hoopla and thought a few essays from DFW might prime the Infinite Jest pump, and so they did.

I have dipped in and out of this collection for months and just finished today. Some essays are better than others (the last essay on Federer and the essays on Michael Joyce and Tracy Austin are the best of the lot) but they are all insightful. fun and fascinating. Enjoyment of these articles does not in any way require a love of tennis. I am a very casual tennis fan. I generally watch a handful of matches a year and every piece worked for me. This is all about tennis, but also about many other things. DFW touches on divinity, the beauty of things that can not be algorithmically duplicated or explained, being an awkward teen desperate to find ways to define oneself, and about functioning in the world and observing it without feeling like one is meaningfully a part of it. You are likely to come away from this more interested in professional tennis than you were going in, but also thinking about God, focus, what comes after perfection, and about the tension between commerce and art. Just beautiful. He was the Federer of prose.½

Infinite Jest is not for the faint hearted. Because of both its lack of a unifying plot across its multiple storylines and the omission of significant facts (mainly pertaining to character relationships and background), the book requires a second reading to understand details presented before the reader has gained sufficient context to grasp their significance. Unfortunately, the book's length (nearly 1,000 pages, not including a plethora of often irrelevant footnotes) makes a second reading a tall ask, particularly when considering you still won't likely fully comprehend what happens because you also need to understand David Foster Wallace's intentions for writing the book.

At its core, Infinite Jest is the story of the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA) in Massachusetts, a school for elite junior tennis players. The Academy is run by the widow of its founder, James Incandenza, and her purported half-brother, Charles Tavis. Its second-best player is Hal Incandenza, son of the late founder and current Administrator, Avril.

It is also the story of Don Gately, a recovering drug addict who works at a halfway house for alcoholics and drug addicts. Gately is a mountain of a man who has a violent conflict with several non-residents seeking revenge for the killing of their dog by another resident of Ennet House. Gately's story could be pulled out of the novel and made its own story; both novels would be stronger for this separation.

Most significantly, Infinite Jest is the story of the eponymous movie (frequently referred to as an entertainment), the watching of which results in a fatal comatose state for the viewer, and the efforts of several governments and terrorist organizations to obtain the original, duplicatable master copy, which can then be used against the U.S. population. Equally significant is the fact that this movie was created by the same James Incandenza who founded the ETA.

There are several good websites offering explanations of the symbolic meaning of characters and speculation on the occurrence of "offscreen" events and the nefarious roles of several major characters associated with the ETA. I would suggest spending time on these sites after finishing the novel, rather than rereading it. The insights they provide made me feel like Jennie Fields of The World According to Garp fame, who has to have her son explain the meaning of his story "The Magic Gloves" to her. Once he does, she says, "[i]f that's what it means, I like it." Similar to Jennie, I see and appreciate that Infinite Jest is a treatise on how readers should actively engage with novels rather than viewing them as mere entertainment and how the ETA can be viewed as an allegorical MFA program, but getting to my pseudo-understanding was a long and at times tedious slog through a book that in my mind could have been significantly shorter without losing its meaning.½

Review soon.

Not only in light of DFW's suicide I don't think, but certainly in light of it, the despair that this collection of stories is shot through with is sobering. There is here a merciless, microlevel, and exacting existential critique both of our outward facing lives in contemporary society, centered in the banalities and inanities of work life, showing through the characters' very commitment to their jobs and roles the utter meaninglessness of them without having to stoop to any even tiny bit of triteness in making the point (instead depending heavily on, ahem, irony), and of our inner lives, or at least of his own inner life, I'm afraid, weighted down heavily with contradictory feelings of grandiosity and insignificance, of feeling like a genius and feeling like the worst fraud imaginable.

I don't know how exactly true to life the hilarious and pathetic workplace procedures and terminology and culture and such of the focus group and market testing company as portrayed in the opener, "Mister Squishy", are, as the characters revolve around a new snack cake confection, but the existential horror of finding oneself spending one's life in such an environment is effectively (and comprehensively... some might say too comprehensively!) portrayed.

"The Soul Is Not A Smithy" continues this theme of the horror of modern adult life in a story from the point of view of a grown man looking back to when he was a grade school student involved in an "incident" when he failed to notice his teacher having a mental breakdown at the blackboard, so occupied was he in his own creative imaginations that his soul could be said to be absent from the classroom his body is sat in. The adult narrator at one point remarks,

For my own part, I had begun having nightmares about the reality of adult life as early as perhaps age seven. I knew, even then, that the dreams involved my father’s life and job and the way he seemed when he returned home from work at the end of the day.

In "Good Old Neon" the narrator turns from the despair over one's outward-facing life to despair over one's core inner self. Essentially, the feeling that human nature is fundamentally bad, in some sense. He expresses this through a focus on how his connection to other people is inauthentic due to an inability to be honest about himself:

There was a basic logical paradox that I called the 'fraudulence paradox' that I had discovered more or less on my own while taking a mathematical logic course in school...The fraudulence paradox was that the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside - you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn't find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were.

I mean. Ouch.

I can imagine a "love it or hate it" reaction to the prose itself in this collection. I listened to it as an audiobook and thought it worked really well. I'm curious how I would have taken the prose if I was reading it in print instead.

Normally I think I wouldn't be a fan of something that comes off overall so, well, nihilistic. But it's not for effect, not to be transgressive, not fraudulent one might say. The voices here are at root sympathetically all too human, even good, it seems to me. They just can't see their way out into something more of the light.

“Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity” is a book by David Foster Wallace that explores the concept of infinity and its implications for mathematics, philosophy, and human understanding. A dramatic undertaking by a brilliant writer, the book covers the historical development of infinity, from the ancient Greeks to the modern era, explaining ideas and proofs in an accessible and engaging way, using examples, analogies, and humor. He also discusses the philosophical and theological implications of infinity, such as the paradoxes of the infinite and the nature of God. In it he reveals his own struggles with depression and anxiety, and how mathematics helped him cope with them—for a time—because now he’s dead. It’s difficult to read something like this and know what happens after. Nevertheless, I recommend “Everything and More” for anyone who is interested in mathematics, infinity, or Wallace’s writing.

For tennis players or fans, lots to chew on. For DFW fans, poignant, naturally. For most readers, meh.

Schitterende cmmencementspeach voor de afgestudeerden aan een Amerikaans college. Pleidooi voor empathisch, breed denken.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK!

I'm not sure how this book ended up in my To-Read list. I wouldn't have read it on holiday either, if I had known it was so long. In fact, I generally do not read extremely long books (> 600 pages) by authors until I've vetted a shorter work first. All this contributed to an extremely unpleasant read.

Infinite Jest is partly about a dangerous film of the same name: People that interact with this film cannot stop watching, until they die of corporeal neglect. Ironic that my experience of the book was the exact contrast, since I had to struggle against giving up on it at every turn. About 2 / 3 of the way into the book, probably around page 650, some of the story arcs appear to begin to approach one another. A few pages later, it was clear this was a feign and the book continues without direction or regard for the reader, ending with a random flashback.

Story: 2 / 10
Characters: 8
Setting: 7.5
Prose: 7.5

Tags: Sports secondary schools, training, addiction, revolutionary groups, politics, neuroticism, corruption, toxic waste, technology, family

- This won't make much sense if you haven't read the book.

- Who doesn't love the Eschaton story, Hal's mistaken visit to the all-male encounter group, a well-played (three-) set piece? Not me, I mean I don't not love them. I love the Steeply/Marathe in the desert dialogue too, unfolding like some Pynchonian panorama, two weird souls united by one dark sagegrass-smelling night, double-talking their way to some kind of (d')accord. But the connective tissue of this novel isn't so appetising, the coagulated vein and gristle of the Ennet House and ETA day-to-day, the Bostonian meanderings. The geographical scope of IJ is surprisingly restricted, its retrotech near-future (now past) setting, while interesting at first, less lustrous by the 200th Y.D.A.U. If I was being harsh I'd call it the Great American Novel for its time, a time and a generation that didn't want, or deserve, a G.A.M. An inward-looking, U.H.I.D.-veiled G.A.M., circling the cage of its own inhibitions, chewing its own tail in muffled agony.

- The only character with more depth than a Pemulis lob is Gately, and that's only thanks to 100+ pages of biography that appear in the last quarter or so of the novel, like a hastily-knocked out homework assignment, or like the author's grudging response to a demand from his editor to "show your workings". The rest of the cast — even Prince Hal — are cartoons, defined by their eccentricities. That doesn't make them unentertaining — I loved the hyper-annoying Pemulis, the Canadian cyborg John Wayne, the brilliantly named Ortho "The Darkness" Stice. But there's a vaporizing void where the human heart of this novel ought to be (you might say a Great Concavity), a black hole whose event horizon shreds readerly sympathy, rebuffs attempts to probe it, to know it. It's palpable — the abyss staring back at you — even affecting — but it's freezing cold, dispassionate, lonely as hell.

- Look, I know I'd get more out of this on a reread. The same is true of anything long and complicated. But I'm judging this on the first read and whereas my first read of reputationally comparable novels has stuffed me to the gills AND tantalized me with more gen and more discoverable internal correspondences, IJ the first time around while equally tantalizing stuffed me only to about the pyloric caeca or ventral aorta. The sidestory of Pemulis's rentboy brother, say, or those embarrassing ebonic excurses, am I glad I read those? There's a story here, something about a wraith and an Oedipus complex and whether mom or dad is the creative essence and what it means to eliminate your own map, and there's a fair schwack of fucking incendiary writing, but there's a whole lot of extraneous guff as well.

- And but so I like, like like DFW's register. I've even unconsciously adopted it, footnoting my own sentences — my thoughts concatenated with rambling subclauses and hanging hyphens — it's addictive! which but that doesn't mean it's good for me, or that it doesn't drive me bats when taken in excess the same as any other mind-altering substance. Like everyone and everything in the book it does one obsessive thing, far too well. Did DFW intend for his footnotes and toenotes — what I call the footnotes to the footnotes — to drive us bats? I read a first edition with end-, not foot-, notes, and the physical back and forth was like a way-too-long baseline rally... my poor forearms... or like the itch-scratching of addiction. I'll credit the author for this though and place him at Gibbon's right hand on the Dais of the Unnecessary, Marginally-Material, Kind Of Pointless Footnote (D.U.M.M.K.O.P.F.)

- And if I never hear an English sentence rendered with French syntax again it will be trop putain de fils.½

I want to give a big shout out to Jeff for giving me this book and a big shout out to David Foster Wallace for writing it. Not since Dave Eggers have I found such enjoyable non-fiction po-mo writing (though, while reading this book, I've been thinking that I might hate DFW if I had to hang out with him).

Since taking up CTL, I've tripled my Latin vocabulary and thought a good deal about the implications of porn, though my favorite of his essays is "Authority and American Usage." Warning, though: If you think Harper's is self-indulgent and annoying, you'll probably feel the same way about CTL.

It's long, disjointed, tedious, absurd, depressing, intentionally difficult, and anti-climactic. It's hilarious, thoughtful, realistic, challenging, and immersively detailed. It's changed how I approach and read books. I would recommend this to anyone who looking for a challenge.

Wow! There was so much with this case that I didn't know that I didn't know! And the way it's written is so digestible, it's like you're just chatting with friends and they're telling you an interesting story!

That being said, the content is harrowing and hard to stomach at times, so definitely not a light read, just as a heads up.

I really wish I could give this 4 and a half stars.

This was an extremely difficult collection of stories to work through. If you don't value the rewards of working through difficult prose, this book is not for you.

It's a powerful collection, filled with characters that I was often horrified to discover I related to. I was most struck by The Depressed Person, a powerful story that just won't leave my head. The last interview is also powerful, and it has made an indelible mark in my brain.

Hard as I tried, I just could not get into this book. All the great reviews led me to spend more time than I normally would have with it, but I gave up after a couple of hundred pages (and jumping around in the book a bit to see if it changed in character, which it didn't appear to do.).

Exceeded the hype.

I did not fully understand almost all of this book (or, I sort-of understood most of this book.) If you're prepared for that, you may find this to be more than a three star book. My previous D.F. Wallace experience consists solely of "Consider the Lobster", which I greatly enjoyed.

Part of why I found this so hard to understand (and to enjoy) is that it really is a meta-meta-book, fiction-that-is-not-fiction-that-is. And I think Wallace was well aware of that; but it is hard to take, all the same. The book is rooted in, and a protest against/mocking of, a literary culture (or long fad?) that is now, at least in part, sailing into the past. And good riddance...

But, if you do enjoy postmodern (or is this post-post-modern) lit, then again, this might be more to your liking.

Only got to read like 20% of it. I can see why it's so highly appraised. It's funny, smart, some chapters are incredibly engaging. But then it also seemed to me extremely verbose at times, and it felt like too much work to continue. Not being a native English speaker makes it harder for sure.

I guess I'll give it another chance in a year or ten.

This book was just too much damn work! Never knowing what order in which things are happening, collecting the clues that he sprinkles like crumbs in order to follow the plot (is there actually a plot? I still can't tell), and not finding a single character to connect with - it is all just exhausting. I'm reading this for fun during my relaxation time, Mr. Wallace (RIP), and this book is neither the former nor the latter.

I made it to page 371, and now it's time for me and this book to part ways.

It's not often that I read a collection of essays. But I must say, I was immersed in this collection almost immediately. What caused this, was rather than preaching to me, piling on facts, trying to convince me his thoughts were correct, Wallace engaged me in a dialogue. There's no questioning his intelligence, and no doubt that Wallace sees things from a very different perspective. But time after time after making what seemed a valid point. He would ask a question. What about this ? How about that ? Could this be the case? Hours after I'd put this book down I'd find myself not just reflecting on the points Wallace made, but pondering upon the questions he asked. The more you think about a book the more it stays with you. This one will stay with me for a long time.

Poor David Foster Wallace. If it can be argued that someone can be too smart for their own good. Wallace is exhibit A. We liberal arts folks have been trained in the art of criticism, which then gets applied to our worldview - nothing escapes the urge to make meaning of our experiences.

These essays are long, digressive, and lousy with Wallace's trademark footnotes. He writes both in the self-conscious new journalism mode, placing himself as a character in the essays, but also has some poststructuralist moves, dissecting cultural phenomena like state fairs, cruise ships, and tennis tournaments as if they were deeply revealing cultural texts.

It's come out in the years since is death that Wallace was a deeply flawed person in the way he treated others, especially the women in his life. There's a bit of the objectifying male gaze happening here, and the kind of elitism that comes from descending from the ivory tower to walk among the soiled masses.

But ultimately it is honesty, or more specifically intellectual candor, that makes Wallace so appealing as a writer and thinker. He has his pet obsessions (David Lynch, Roger Federer, junk food) and a tendency to head straight for the moral and cultural ambiguity in any situation. I was expecting a hagiography in his Lynch essay - instead, he acknowledged the darkness and horror that Lynch is constantly poking at in his films, and how there is something dark and horrifying about the director himself.

One other point - this is perhaps the worst book cover by a major author that I have ever seen. Is it supposed to be Lynchian? It's just confusing and aesthetically nauseous.

As a clue to DFW's ambition, at the end of the novel, he makes a pointed reference to The Brothers Karamazov, specifically Ivan and Alyosha's conversation about religion and Ivan's parable of the Grand Inquisitor. Infinite Jest has the same kind of swing for the fences, novel of the century feel as Dostoevsky. The central story is about a brilliantly dysfunctional family, the Incandenzas, who represent the struggle for sanity in an age of easy and senseless pleasures. The moral center of the novel, however, is an ex-addict named Don Gately, whose sacrifices and self-denial are presented as an ideal, along with the basic, simple decency of the deformed youngest Incandenza brother Mario.

It took me months to read this novel. You should not try to read this while you are tired, or distracted, at the beach or the airport. The prose is not difficult, but it is extremely dense and it requires the entire mind's attention.

Kenyon College Commencement Speech, 2005

This book by David Foster Wallace is spotty. Some essays are excellent and portray tortured relationships, personalities and society. Others are long-winded without a clear direction and meander.

I may attempt to reread the book after a few years.

Dit is water. Door: David Foster Wallace.

Op 21 mei 2005 hield David Foster Wallace een toespraak voor de afstudeerceremonie van het Kenyon College (mooie traditie, die speeches). Hij schreef een leidraad om te leven, echt te leven. Zijn woorden gingen al snel viraal. Eerst via internet, daarna in kranten en later, na zijn dood, in boekvorm.

Jaren geleden las ik dit boek voor het eerst, geleend uit de bibliotheek. En ik weet nog dat het me direct aangreep. Vooral ook omdat de schrijver van die indrukwekkend, wijze, ware woorden 3 jaar na zijn speech zelfmoord pleegde. Terwijl Dit is water, volgens hemzelf, gaat over ‘… hoe je de dertig haalt, en misschien zelfs de vijftig, zonder een kogel door je hoofd te willen jagen.’ Hij hing zichzelf op. Maar toch.

Dit is water is poëzie, is een vorm van bidden, een broekzakboek om in geval van nood altijd bij de hand te hebben. Het biedt troost terwijl het je hart vermorzelt en je keel doet samenknijpen. Het is wijs, zo wijs. Waar, zo waar. Het is belangrijk, zo belangrijk.

Misschien valt een empathische blik, een trefzekere pen, eerlijke zelfkennis, een drang om echt te leven en niet al op voorhand dood te zijn niet te rijmen met ‘en hij leefde nog lang en gelukkig’?

Dit is water was belangrijk, is belangrijk én blijft belangrijk. Ik ben zo blij dat Koppernik het opnieuw uitgaf, in een o zo mooie versie. Koop dit pareltje, deel het, koester het, lees het en herlees het. (Het ideale geschenk voor iedereen die binnenkort afstudeert.) Diepe buiging voor David Foster Wallace.