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David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

newyorker.com

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Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#31

Post by hammock »

xefer wrote: post #26
npilk wrote: post #3

Though unfinished, I highly recommend the Pale King. It's not as consistently great as some of DFW's other works, but the highs are as high as anything else he wrote and IMO it's a little more accessible than Infinite Jest. (For a new reader, I would start with some of his essays, e.g. Consider the Lobster: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf )

...

Not to mention the pulleys and joists reasonably belong to the flagpole, not the flag or the rope (not to mention the rope doesn't belong to the flag, either)

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#32

Post by mistersquid »

npilk wrote: post #3

Though unfinished, I highly recommend the Pale King. It's not as consistently great as some of DFW's other works, but the highs are as high as anything else he wrote and IMO it's a little more accessible than Infinite Jest. (For a new reader, I would start with some of his essays, e.g. Consider the Lobster: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf )

DFW's early short story "Forever Overhead" gives a sense of his potential and lyricism. [0]

It's one of my favorites.

[0] http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/FILM20P.W11/readi...

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#33

Post by redtexture »

Arubis wrote: post #8

I wish I could still love DFW's work the way I used to, but it's colored by [allegations of significant relational abuse]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace#Personal_... ).

From the article.

> Subsequent first-person accounts came from Wallace’s friends...

>...They also produced a fairly consistent picture of a selfish friend, a manipulative—and likely abusive—boyfriend, and a jealous and self-mythologizing writer. Even were we to desire to do so, there is no way to read Wallace today without knowing these things about him.

> It’s worth noting, though, that for attentive readers of Wallace’s fiction, little of the news about his personal life could come as a surprise. Wallace’s great subject was the morass of selfishness, self-rationalization, and intellectualized narcissism into which his cohort of educated, relatively privileged Americans would sink—and were sinking—unless they could find something to love more than they loved themselves. A difference between Wallace and many of his contemporaries—one that sometimes opened him to charges of hypocrisy and self-delusion, not to mention cringeworthy sentimentalism—was his commitment to doing more than merely cataloguing the traps of modern alienation. This did not mean that he claimed to have escaped those traps himself. It did mean, as reflected by his attraction to conversion narratives like Fogle’s, that he hoped he could spring his readers free.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#34

Post by rintakumpu »

boucher wrote: post #13
rintakumpu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

I cannot imagine reading this book and skipping the footnotes.

I was so immersed in the book on my first read-through I ended up skipping the footnotes because I found jumping between them and the main text a bit jarring. At that point I was certain I’d read this one again so it was also fun to have something saved up for later!

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#35

Post by ethanbond »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #12
themisto wrote: post #2

I haven't read any books by David Foster Wallace, though every time he comes up I feel obliged to share a fantastic speech of his about finding joy in the monotony of life. I heard it years ago and it's always stuck with me. Video[1], transcript[2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI [2] https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/this-is-water-by-david...

A great speech but this is the first I hear it interpreted as an ode to monotony. I've always thought of it as an essay on the value of questioning our default way of thinking in the day-to-day, on the implicit biases we carry with us into the world and how they can trap us in loneliness. Not ashamed to say I've cried more than once listening to it. It's a lifesaver.

The Pale King, his last novel (unfinished at the time of his death) is a really gorgeous elaboration on the same topics as This Is Water. It is not so much about rejecting the day to day monotony of the modern world, but rejecting the default reaction to the monotony of the modern world. We have complete control over our reaction, and almost none over the reality. One line I’ll paraphrase that sticks with me still: “In the modern world, if you can bear extreme boredom, there is literally nothing you can’t accomplish.”

The general theme is that regardless of the monotonous reality, there’s still plenty of beauty and intrigue to find within it if you look closely enough.

To make this point, The Pale King is about an IRS agent and it includes long, meditative descriptions of turning the pages of extremely long tax forms. I don’t know what philosophical ideas DFW ran into explicitly, i.e. whether he was reframing or actually deriving them, but he was absolutely rubbing up against what we now call mindfulness.

Edit to add one of my favorite scenes in literature ever, with no spoiler or even narrative substance: There's a scene where two characters are talking to one another and one party becomes so engrossed by the conversation that he begins to literally levitate out of his chair. I find this such a simple description of a truly profound experience (~~flow state).

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#36

Post by zerbin »

rockostrich wrote: post #16
rintakumpu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

Yea, I don't really get the take that it's inaccessible. The footnotes are sometimes annoying, but usually they're hilarious. I haven't read it in ~10 years but I think it's even more relevant, poignant, and hilarious today as it was then since we're just seeing more and more of his predictions about consumerism and self-image come to life.

I agree, quite accessible, despite its length. I personally would not recommend skipping the footnotes. Though they are a pain, they frequently add so much color and deeply-nested, parenthetical humor to the book. Occasionally you need to look up a word (which is always worth it, because he really knows how to pick the right word), occasionally you get bored in the middle of one of "those" chapters (likely an inevitability that you get some ups and some downs in a 1,000+ page book).

But I totally agree that it just gets more and more relevant and poignant. And completely hilarious. I think that part of the book (and his writing in general0 is undersold. Some of the passages are amusing because of their literary references and wordplay, some are laugh-out-loud funny, the type of stuff that you'll have to read back to someone else immediately because of the extreme mirth you just experienced reading it.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#37

Post by rintakumpu »

rockostrich wrote: post #16
rintakumpu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

Yea, I don't really get the take that it's inaccessible. The footnotes are sometimes annoying, but usually they're hilarious. I haven't read it in ~10 years but I think it's even more relevant, poignant, and hilarious today as it was then since we're just seeing more and more of his predictions about consumerism and self-image come to life.

Entertainment, addiction, corporate-sponsored years and tennis. It’s still pretty relevant!

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#38

Post by JonathanMerklin »

jbmny wrote: post #30
boucher wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot imagine reading this book and skipping the footnotes.

I've been roughly halfway through the book for years, so take this for what it's worth, but if they were actually footnotes I might have read them. Instead they are endnotes , meaning you have to pick up a solid pound of book and flip to the end each time you encounter one. And there are many. I just found that dehumanizing. Lol

The endnotes are fundamental to the experience. There are some key plot points divulged or hinted at there first (and sometimes there exclusively, IIRC). Pemulis' funniest moments are back there. I still find my mind drifting to the description of Cage III: Free Show from J.O.I.'s filmography from time to time.

If nothing else, I once read a comment somewhere online that noted that the constant back-and-forth from text to endnotes and back is physically analogous to a back-and-forth in a tennis match. If thematic consistency in the third dimension was actually something DFW was going for, it's a shame you're only seeing half of the court.

Re: David Foster Wallace’s final attempt to make art moral

#39

Post by ethanbond »

rockostrich wrote: post #16
rintakumpu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I read Infinite Jest I was expecting something as inaccessible as Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow but ended up finding the book pretty readable and a total delight. And but so I would highly recommend it, just take the off-beat sci-fi setting at face value and skip the footnotes if you feel like you want to focus on the story. You can always return to those later.

Yea, I don't really get the take that it's inaccessible. The footnotes are sometimes annoying, but usually they're hilarious. I haven't read it in ~10 years but I think it's even more relevant, poignant, and hilarious today as it was then since we're just seeing more and more of his predictions about consumerism and self-image come to life.

Predicting the rise of video calling and the backlash against having to look like you’re paying attention and of being prettied up, solved by the face filters then people completely replacing themselves with virtual avatars?

Incredibly prescient.

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