My Obsession with David Foster Wallace

So, a few posts back I promised to discuss my current obsession with David Foster Wallace. Here it is:

The Start

I first read Wallace in 2006, when my friend Jon sent me a link to an article in Harper's where Wallace reviewed Bryan Garner's Modern American Usage (I'm a usage geek and big Garner fan). [n.1] I read a little bit of it and decided I wanted to read the full thing (the Harper’s article was cut significantly), so I went out and bought Wallace’s book Consider the Lobster, which contains the full essay. I loved the essay, very much. I read the rest of the lobster book in a couple days and decided Wallace was wicked smart and he wrote about interesting things, but I wasn’t sure that I really liked Wallace’s style.

Wallace is known for his long digressions, use of numerous explicatory footnotes, and footnoting footnotes. This was totally new to me outside of law/academic stuff. As I read Consider the Lobster, I considered reading Infinite Jest, Wallace’s massive magnum opus, but decided I couldn't handle 1100 wild pages with 400 endnotes. I don't read very fast (purposefully), so the idea of going to that book to try a little more Wallace did not appeal to me at the time.

I didn’t read anything else by Wallace until after his suicide in September of 2008. I read an excerpt published in The New Yorker of his unfinished last novel, and I enjoyed it. Then, near the end of the summer of 2009, I finally tackled Infinite Jest thanks to the motivation provided by a large “group read” called Infinite Summer. And I'm so very, very glad I did.

Infinite Jest

Reading Infinite Jest was almost certainly the most profound reading experience I’ve ever had, but I’m not exactly sure why. What touched me so was undoubtedly what it was about, what it dealt with, but I think that was also aided significantly by my reading it as part of Infinite Summer.

First: Infinite Jest is widely considered to be a very hard book. And it is. Not only is it long, but its narrative structure is also challenging. The first 17 pages are the last things that happen chronologically. There are two main plots and a third somewhat lesser plot, all of which intersect, to some degree, by the end, and the book jumps around from one to the other, seemingly randomly [n.2]. There is an endnote that’s 8.5 pages (of six point type) that is nothing more than a filmography of one of the characters who is a sort of Avant-garde filmmaker (that you really can't get away without reading). There is another endnote that’s 15 pages (of six point type), an endnote that’s dropped in the middle of a ten-line sentence in the middle of the main narrative. There’s a four-page paragraph in a section that is narrated by an illiterate drug addict who can’t spell. And so on.

My wife, who hasn’t read anything by Wallace [n.3], does not like Wallace’s writing. Her opinion of his work, as best as I can remember, is something like this: he hates his readers and likes to show off. My opinion of Wallace’s work was much more favorable than Anne’s even before I started Infinite Jest, but, even still, Infinite Summer helped me keep such thoughts at bay. Some of the first things I learned from the folks at Infinite Summer were: (1) lots of people start this book and stop before they finish; and (2) if you get past the first 200 or 300 pages [n.4] you’ll be glad you stuck around. This was welcome encouragement to “keep coming back.” [n.5] And it’s true. That’s not to say the first 300 pages are torture, but once you begin to see it coming together all the work and prior confusion feels validated. Infinite Summer had several official “guides” who would write about each weekly section of the book and they also had guest writers who would write about all sorts of things, from Wallace as a person, individual parts of the book, to the book as a whole. All of this was extremely helpful. I understood the book better because they’d point out things I missed, and at times I could feel less alone in my confusion.

Second: The back cover of my copy says this about the book: “A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the pursuit of happiness in America.” This is maybe somewhat accurate. The book has plenty of very funny parts, but it is by no means a comedy in my mind (or Wallace’s, he intended to write a very sad book). It’s kind of about the pursuit of happiness in America, but that’s not how I’d put it. The two main plot lines involve: (1) an elite tennis academy in Boston, particularly a student named Hal, his friends, and members of his family; and (2) a halfway house located just down the hill from the tennis academy, particularly a staff member and former resident named Don. The third, somewhat lesser, plotline involves two “secret agent men” who are begrudgingly working together to locate a video (of sorts) that is so entertaining it basically turns everyone who sees it into mindless, useless vegetables (a film that just happens to be made by Hal’s father, the founder of the tennis academy, and stars Hal’s brother’s ex-girlfriend who later becomes a resident of the halfway house).

The larger summary on the back of my copy says:

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring one of the most endearingly screwed-up families in contemporary fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our lives, about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people, and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

Again, I would never call it any kind of “comedy” much less a “screwball comedy,” but otherwise that summary is reasonably accurate, especially considering it’s a hard book to summarize in a few words.

The book deals with pursuits: filmmaking; academic and athletic excellence; interfamily communication; understanding; love and acceptance; a way to get by; and a high. The look into the world of addicts and AA was particularly interesting and enlightening to me.

While the book is hard, it is loaded with beauty and insight. There were plenty of times I was exasperated, but that was the point. I haven’t read much “post-modern” or “post-post-modern” fiction [n.6], and one of the things I really enjoyed about Infinite Jest was that it showed me there was a reason behind some of the “tricks” or “theatrics.” The book is hard for a reason. There are nearly 400 endnotes (rather than footnotes) for a reason. There are four-page paragraphs for a reason. And when you make it through it all, it is so, so worth it. [n.7]

The Aftermath

So after reading Infinite Jest, my respect for Wallace turned more into a love. And, being by nature a very obsessive person generally, I became mildly obsessed. I have since watched, listened to, and read every interview Wallace did that I can find on the Internet—I’ve watched/listened to/read several of them more than once. I’ve also read more of his stuff, from articles he published in periodicals to his other books. And that experience has deepened my love and respect. It would be easy for the casual observer to think that Wallace was unsympathetic, that he was making fun of certain people or sorts, that he was a snob, but the more I learn the more I come to understand that he wasn’t any of those things. While his eye was unblinking, and he never pulled a punch, he was as sincere and as compassionate as they come.

Note 1: My first exposure to Wallace was actually from Bryan Garner. Garner has these videos on his website where he talks to judges, lawyers, professors, and writers about language and usage. One of the videos is of Wallace, and, frankly, he kind of comes across as a disheveled nutjob (though I totally agree with his opinion that “before” is vastly superior to “prior to”):

Note 2: The structure of the book was not random. He wanted it to be like a Sierpinski gasket, a sort of fractal (if you don’t want to follow the hyperlink, think of it as a triangle full of smaller triangles, and smaller triangles, and even smaller triangles, et cetera).

Note 3: I don’t hold this against her. I know she would absolutely hate it, or at least most of it, and life is too short to read stuff you hate.

Note 4: There are some people who say 200, others say 300, others say something else.

Note 5: An AA catch phrase of sorts, at least in Infinite Jest.

Note 6: I hate to use such labels but I didn’t know how else to put it.

Note 7: Though I would never recommend Infinite Jest to someone unless I knew a great deal about their reading history and habits. It is a not a book most casual readers will enjoy. I will take the opportunity here to give a shout-out to my mom who read it at about same time I did. I was reading it when I went to visit her, she saw it, read the beginning, and decided to get her own copy. She made it through the book (much faster than I did) without having any prior experience reading Wallace, and without the Infinite Summer sort of encouragement and help—it’s a great testament to her prowess as a reader.