david foster wallace - is he a cunt?

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heh. I guess I'm differentiating between writers of fiction and writers of nonfiction. or more accurately, creators of art and critics of art. one can see why derrida would be eager to downplay the role of the author, because that leaves space for incredibly creative readings, i.e, the critic's power. while Wallace, as an author of the kind of work a critic might take up as an object, might naturally bristle at the notion that his own role in the work was minimal.

depressingly, I sometimes think this is all there is to competing theories of interpretation.

― horsehoe (horseshoe), Friday, 28 April 2006 04:52 (twenty years ago)

Of course, both Orwell and DFW have also been critics of art. And Derrida also wrote things that, as far as I can tell, are more art than "criticism". It depends on where you put your focus.

I put my focus for both DFW and Orwell on their nonfiction, which I think is far, far better than their fiction. It seems, based on this thread, that I might not be alone in this, at least for DFW.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 28 April 2006 05:36 (twenty years ago)

ok i googled his pomona page -

"Named to Usage Panel, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 4th Edition et seq., 1999"

- haha!

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 28 April 2006 11:50 (twenty years ago)

both Orwell and DFW have also been critics of art. yeah, obviously I oversimplify. but re: Derrida, to the extent that some of his work is "artistic" that kind of seems to me an outgrowth of the "death of the author" stance...it's a move that grants the critic the place of the artist. (I have some resentment of Derrida and his take on language that probably informs some of what I'm saying here.)

Tom, I've heard from Pomona students that DFW grades their essays really harshly on grammar and usage (like, really harshly: D papers with comments solely about (sometimes arcane) usage errors.)

― horsehoe (horseshoe), Friday, 28 April 2006 12:33 (twenty years ago)

he should! ESPECIALLY if he's teaching freshman comp! then it's not HARSH, it's HIS JOB.

(furthermore, imagine someone saying this in a police procedural voice.)

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 28 April 2006 17:36 (twenty years ago)

dude, if David Foster Wallace actually tackles freshman comp, he's my new hero.

― horsehoe (horseshoe), Friday, 28 April 2006 22:38 (twenty years ago)

ah'm.

Current Courses:
ENGL 64A Elements of Creative Writing: Fiction
ENGL 170R Selected Obscure/Eclectic Fictions for Writers
ENGL 183D Advanced Composition: The Literary Essay

(i think i am myself in favour: undergraduates need to be told to work on this shit.)

(going from my mere experience as one at a midlist UK university, obviously. it is possible that in the colonies things're different.)

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 28 April 2006 23:23 (twenty years ago)

What the? He's teaching REMEDIAL courses? Or do they use a funky numbering system?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 April 2006 03:26 (twenty years ago)

hah! "Obscure/Eclectic"

he does teach comp! I'm impressed.

(Chris, I don't think the letters signify level of difficulty, especially because Pomona is a fairly selective school. they probably just refer to time block or something.)

― horsehoe (horseshoe), Saturday, 29 April 2006 05:11 (twenty years ago)

(Not the letters, the numbers. Normally 1xx = freshman, 2xx = sophomore, etc., and 0xx = remedial. And letters usually mean something else. But I don't know if they use a different numbering system.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 29 April 2006 05:43 (twenty years ago)

wallace discusses his interest in teaching freshman comp in either an early essay, or that big-ass interview that's probably still available somewhere on the web; it dates from the time he was teaching in illinois.

― Josh (Josh), Sunday, 30 April 2006 18:15 (twenty years ago)

"I am a part-time yoga instructor, but I'm going to massage school."

- thing learnt from rereading 'A Supposedly Fun Thing ...' (by which quote marks i mean to say, the essay not the whole collection): he was once a lifeguard.

another thing: he mentions dealing with gunk as the only bad thing about lobster, which ah.

also: dude's like 44 now? good god.

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 1 May 2006 01:22 (twenty years ago)

- what on earth is "Catskills-style joke" meant to imply about the content of the joke?? oh heavens

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 1 May 2006 02:15 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

I have been thinking out here about odd bits of Brief Interviews which I'd overlooked at the time, amazed at how they stayed with me and kept giving chilly sparks in the five, six years since I read it last? Such an amazing, amazing writer.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Monday, 26 June 2006 03:04 (nineteen years ago)

I like his stuff quite a bit, especially Infinite Jest. I met him once and we talked about a writing prof. we had in common (Jonathan Penner.) If you're looking for a cunt, that guy fits the bill.

― ramon fernandez (ramon fernandez), Thursday, 29 June 2006 11:55 (nineteen years ago)

what makes you say that?

― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 3 July 2006 04:33 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

I've always been irritated by the way David Foster Wallace gets mentioned in the same breath with, say, Dave Eggers. Wallace is writing about the conditions that created Dave Eggers.

wallace's only got his own fawning jacket-blurb on AHWOSG to blame for that ...

― literalisp (literalisp), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 01:14 (nineteen years ago)

random thread revival eh.

my desire to reread girl... has passed, disappointingly.

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 11:29 (nineteen years ago)

I had another go at reading "A supposedly fun thing..." the other day, reasoning that I may find his journalism less objectionable than his fiction... but if anything it's even worse. I find the slapdash sprawl of his sentences almost tinfoil-on-filling painful!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:25 (nineteen years ago)

That's it, Trousers -- we're through.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 15:28 (nineteen years ago)

Slapdash, you think? They seem carefully constructed to be precarious. He had all kinds of good ideas on how to construct a sentence that flails, barely able to keep any balance.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 19:14 (nineteen years ago)

have people noticed the ny times article, linked to on ile?

― toby (tsg20), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 20:14 (nineteen years ago)

NO TELL MORE

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 21:42 (nineteen years ago)

slapdash is almost the polar opposite of my impression of his sentences

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 22:08 (nineteen years ago)

sprawl, though, they do

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 22:09 (nineteen years ago)

here is that nytimes link. he writes on roger federer. a lot less opaque and dense than i'm used to, more journalistic.

://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

― a little knowledge can go a long way (lfam2), Thursday, 24 August 2006 15:48 (nineteen years ago)

ooooooooooh.

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 24 August 2006 21:20 (nineteen years ago)

The NYTimes Federer piece ("Roger Federer as Religious Experience") is a nice essay, but if you've read all DFW's stuff, I don't think it offers too much. Between the Michael Joyce essay and Tracy Austin book review, this essay doesn't do too much. It's kinda like a watered-down combo of those two essays.

And damn I never realized so many people were down on DFW! I can't think of another living writer whom I look forward to reading more.

― Suzy Creemcheese (SuzyCreemcheese), Friday, 25 August 2006 03:07 (nineteen years ago)

People are reluctant to accept a writer who is so quirky. Is my guess. And quirky is probably not the best adjective. On one of his acknowledgement pages he thanks an Amy Wallace for reading/editing his stuff and it says something like this:

Amy "Just How Much Reader Annoyance Are You Going For Anyway" Wallace.

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Friday, 25 August 2006 13:04 (nineteen years ago)

i think the federer essay helps triangulate the total what-modern-sport-means effect that he's going for but won't ever go for. i mean. wallace is never going to come out with AND THIS IS MY FINAL WORD ON THIS SUBJECT, which is a thing i like him for, a lot. it is a way of writing, an attitude towards what you are writing, that is likeable, necessary, honest.

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 25 August 2006 14:09 (nineteen years ago)

sorry for fucking up that link

― a little knowledge can go a long way (lfam2), Friday, 25 August 2006 18:41 (nineteen years ago)

i'm revisiting his "e unibus pluram" essay for something i'm working on and am thinking as i always do when i read it that it is maybe one of the 5 or 10 smartest, most on-point things anybody has written in english in the last 20 years.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 26 August 2006 03:19 (nineteen years ago)

in other words, dfw otm.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 26 August 2006 03:20 (nineteen years ago)

Dear God, his Federer essay may be the most achingly tedious several thousand words about an interesting topic I have read this year. And "...pluram" is astonishingly bad!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 26 August 2006 13:03 (nineteen years ago)

care to talk about why?

― W i l l (common_person), Saturday, 26 August 2006 16:25 (nineteen years ago)

the english don't get irony is why

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 26 August 2006 17:58 (nineteen years ago)

i'd be interested to hear jtn's complaints about it too, but if it has to do with a u.k.-u.s. disconnect i'd guess it might be more the opposite: that the idea of irony as a problem -- a trap -- is what might be perplexing from a british perspective. irony seems like a more naturally british and/or european reflex then an american one, and the yearning for sincerity, etc., evinced by dfw seems stereotypically american.

i could be 100 percent wrong, of course. and i think the essay is too rough on '90s on pop culture -- dfw is too quick to dismiss a lot of interesting things, and he also misses some counterpoints that were already emerging at the time he wrote it. but as a reflection on/of the era, it's close to peerless.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 26 August 2006 18:07 (nineteen years ago)

my thoughts were along a similar line re: uk/us. i'd guess the british find the idea more lame than perplexing, since it makes an awful lot of their jokes go unappreciated.

i've been wanting to read this essay again all summer but my friend (who claims "e unibus" shattered a part of him) still has my copy of ASFTINDA

― W i l l (common_person), Saturday, 26 August 2006 19:00 (nineteen years ago)

i also think "e pluribus" is interesting as a critique of dfw's own fiction. my hang-up with his short stories and with infinite jest is that -- for all the smart writing and funny bits -- i can always feel him inside there, trying to get out of himself and his self-awareness as a writer writing a book. which is why i think he's a better essayist than fiction writer.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 26 August 2006 19:25 (nineteen years ago)

it is also something to do with the retarded socialist babies that are the BBC and the tv license scheme probably

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 27 August 2006 11:04 (nineteen years ago)

some shows that bear relevance to e unibus pluram (btw, can one of you educated people do the latin for me: i think i have it but i'm not sure) - sports night, the west wing, studio 60 .. ?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 27 August 2006 11:43 (nineteen years ago)

"Out of one, many", compared with the phrase you find on American currency, "e pluribus unam", "out of many, one".

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 August 2006 15:47 (nineteen years ago)

"from one, many"

(it's an inversion of e pluribus unum, one of our competing national mottos.)

(xpost)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 27 August 2006 15:54 (nineteen years ago)

Except: Before a vowel you use "ex" instead of "e", and the ablative of "unus" is "uno" (you can't really have plural one things, like "-ibus" would suggest, and "unus" is a different declension anyways). And "pluram" doesn't exist; it should be "plus" or, more likely, "plurium". So the Latin is entirely wrong: "Ex uno plurium" seems more likely. But then no would would "get" the reference to "E pluribus unam".

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 August 2006 15:56 (nineteen years ago)

Oof, yes, it's "unum", not "unam".

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 August 2006 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

don't worry chris i only got it right because i looked it up. i remember almost zero of my one year of latin.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 27 August 2006 15:59 (nineteen years ago)

But, DFW's attempt at faux Latin was probably quite sincerely meant and the fact that the results were a concatenation of pure ignorance, and therefore undermined his authority from the first words of his essay, was (no doubt) an unintentional irony on his part.

― Aimless (Aimless), Sunday, 27 August 2006 16:42 (nineteen years ago)

Oh, I don't know about that. Actually, I'd interpret it more like this: He treated the Latin words through the lens of English, and did what needed to be done to them to get English speakers to understand his meaning, because the Latinists would know what he was getting at and there's little gain in being pedantic about Latin. Which is to say, he was more interested in communicating with his readers than in being pedantically correct. I imagine he knew he was wrong (he's hardly not a nerd like that) and even if he didn't, he would have checked.

Unless I'm misreading your irony.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 27 August 2006 17:06 (nineteen years ago)

yeah he's a total language geek, he knew what he was doing. it's a jokey title, intended as such.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 27 August 2006 17:15 (nineteen years ago)

also he borrowed it from someone else and admits as much.

oh good, i was right. as far as it went. thanks for the latin lesson, though, and i mean that sincerely.

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 27 August 2006 19:02 (nineteen years ago)

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