My understanding is that David Foster Wallace wrote this about Elizabeth Wurtzel and it was meant to be a kind of slam of her as not being depressed but merely narcissistic.
I have no idea what is the context of this or who this woman is, but narcissism is a mental disorder as well so I'm not sure why anyone would try to belittle someone for being narcissistic.
This whole "my disorder is better than your disorder" doesn't impress me, neither does the universal adoration of DFW.
It seems like he's also making some similarly unkind statements about therapy in the story. Most of the character's issues seem to derive from her being given all these dimensions to constantly measure herself on (being a narcissist helps to amplify the effect here of course), so that she can't just be natural with others—and yet she has also been given all these goals by her therapist which presumably would just happen organically by interacting with others, if she didn't always have this agenda of being maximally empathetic and non-toxic etc. And then there are the issues she's dealing with in therapy explicitly stated to derive from therapy in the story.
Every time I read "Infinite Jest", i wonder how much of it is basically autobiographical with a thin veneer of difference and a heap of really, really tight prose.
The recursive spiral of recursion is really hard to avoid with DFW to the point you think it is the point, which, of course, is itself recursive.
I took a whack at IJ and got bogged down after ten pages or so. This is from TDP, not IJ, but it's illustrative:
"And the depressed person always took care, when as an adult she attempted to describe to a supportive friend the venomous struggle over the cost of her orthodonture and that struggle's legacy of emotional pain for her, to concede that it may well truly have appeared to each parent to have been, in fact, a matter of "principle," though unfortunately not a "principle" that took into account their daughter's feelings at receiving the emotional message that scoring petty points off each other was more important to her parents than her own maxillofacial health and thus constituted, if considered from a certain perspective, a form of neglect or abandonment or even outright abuse, an abuse clearly connected-here she nearly always inserted that her therapist concurred with this assessment-to the bottomless, chronic adult despair she suffered every day and felt hopelessly trapped in."
That was one sentence. There are many favorable adjectives one could reasonably apply to it, but IMHO "tight" is not one of them.
(BTW, that sentence is not an isolated example. Here's the very next sentence:
"The approximately half-dozen friends whom her therapist-who had earned both a terminal graduate degree and a medical degree-referred to as the depressed person's Support System tended to be either female acquaintances from childhood or else girls she had roomed with at various stages of her school career, nurturing and comparatively undamaged women who now lived in all manner of different cities and whom the depressed person often had not laid eyes on in years and years, and whom she called late in the evening, long-distance, for badly needed sharing and support and just a few well-chosen words to help her get some realistic perspective on the day's despair and get centered and gather together the strength to fight through the emotional agony of the next day, and to whom, when she telephoned, the depressed person always apologized for dragging them down or coming off as boring or self-pitying or repellent or taking them away from their active, vibrant, largely pain-free long-distance lives.")
This essay, especially the part detailing the I.-C.-F.E.T. retreat, reminds me of his brilliant description of AA meetings in Infinite Jest and the bizarre rituals that people undergo to help one another behind closed doors. Reading thru this essay, you definitely get a sense of how tight his prose is - what would be egregiously long and cumbersome run-on sentences for any other writer are fluid and make perfect sense as spiraling thoughts.
I'd recommend "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story," D.T. Max's biography of DFW. It gives a good outline of his life without straying too far into speculation/psychoanalysis. I usually try to approach books without any knowledge of the author but I feel like knowing DFW's history enhanced my enjoyment of his writing (especially non-fiction).
I've been hunting for someone that has read IJ without reading the footnotes for a long time. My hypothesis is that the story has a completely different plot without the footnotes. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I read the footnotes, and don't think I can really hold the two plots in my head during a re-read.
i believe a lot of it is lifted from AA meetings he attended. i remember reading an interview with a few of the fellow attendees who seemed a little miffed that he'd taken their stories.
but beware! that's what happens when you're around a writer.
IJ is by far my all-time favorite book. just amazing.
(though the tech and math parts are cringe-worthy!)
I think Wallace disliked the idea of trying to read into an author as a person from their work. His writing on suicide/addiction/depression in this book doesn't necessarily give you insight into his personal struggles
DFW's writing comes up from time to time, and I always react by venting the frustration I feel with his work, which I promptly destroy because it seems wrong to criticize a (relatively recently) dead man.
But I'll say it: his writing style is incredibly self-indulgent and dreadfully dull. I guess it's a matter of taste, but it takes a unique talent to attend a pornography award show and afterparty, and churn out something as soulless, humorless, and completely devoid of a point-of-view as "Big Red Son."
I'll probably delete this soon -- I feel like an awful person for writing it, although I'm not entirely sure why.
I thought "Big Red Son" was hilarious. Humor comes from the clash of high culture with low culture. I'm not sure what the point of view was but I'd guess it's "we're all human here" which is a common POV of Wallace's work.
It's quite acceptable to criticize a dead person's writing. In fact, almost all literary criticism does it. So, definitely don't feel bad.
But, I disagree with the opinion of the work. It's hard to take Wallace's style and content without considering the 90s and its historical and social context. A lot of what you don't like about his writing is actually his point.
I don't think you should feel guilty about writing that criticism. I feel almost completely the opposite as you do about DFW's writing style, but I recognize it's very much a subjective matter of taste. He gets a lot of hype, so that he has a lot of detractors only seems fair and balanced.
as others say, totally legit to criticize the writing of a dead or living writer, they take on that risk when they decide to publish.
mostly here to say: all of DFW's writing is basically a pain in the ass to read, and many folks (including myself) consider that to be very much on purpose - he wrote (posthumously so maybe wrote is the wrong thing to say..) a 550 page book (the Pale King) about the IRS, tax code and boredom (yes, that explicit ha) and honestly, it’s one of my favorite books of all time, though sometimes really boring ha (a choice quote, from an accounting professor to class: “To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”).
the fact that you were able to make it through Big Red Son at all (even though you didn’t specifically enjoy it) makes me want to recommend more DFW to you, because not everyone has the will/patience to get through a piece like that in the first place. To that end, I think for a HN audience there are definitely more interesting pieces like:
“Television and US Fiction”
https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf
(interesting take on TV, advertising and its effect on society, consciousness and fiction - it was written pre social media and even pre ubiquitous internet, so can feel dated but towards the end feels prescient, esp. as it focuses a lot on one of DFW’s favorite themes: “what we pay attention to and why and how that affects our consciousness”, etc.)
plenty more, but i think those are both good places to start.
(PS: if you like David Lynch or Dostoevsky, DFW has AMAZING essays on each of them too, highly recommend)
Aaron Swartz's explanation of Infinite Jest's ending comes highly recommended-not to mention their convergent trajectories. Their deaths greatly impoverished the public intellect.
I am an advocate of ditching books you don't enjoy BUT
After the first ~300 pages, I began to understand how all the stories fit together and the book went from feeling like work to being a page turner I just had to devour.
I started reading the physical copy and switched to kindle after a few hundred pages. I know it's not the "pure" way to read it but it improved my experience considerably. Not only does it make the book very mobile, but flipping back and forth between the footnotes is way easier.
It's a massive book, but it really is very entertaining as well. Give the first chapter a go, and if you're totally sucked in and laughing, you might be just glad that the book is as big as it is. If you aren't enjoying it on a page-by-page basis, it's probably almost impossible to power through. It's one of my favorite books, but it doesn't contain the meaning of life, or anything.
Tear/cut it into 3 pieces. The footnotes are one section and then cut the main part of the book in half. Connect the footnotes to the part you are currently reading
Taking on Infinite Jest as your introduction to David Foster Wallace is a little like getting started in rock climbing by tackling Mount Everest.
A much friendlier/more accessible place to start is A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (https://www.amazon.com/Supposedly-Fun-Thing-Never-Again/dp/0...), a collection of his essays. They're shorter, tighter and generally much better commute reading.
I don't think I'm the first person to say this, but I've found it to be true: Most people give up in the first two hundred pages. But of those who don't, everybody finishes the book.
It takes a while to sink its teeth into you. But once it does, you won't want to leave the world he's built. As horrifying as it may sometimes be.
I love Infinite Jest, but its not for everybody. If you do want to read it, I wouldn't recommend reading it on a commute. Its very dense and requires a lot of attention, and I don't feel like it would work well if you are in a place with a lot of distractions and hard cutoff times to stop reading.
To gain insight into minds like the Depressed Person's - not just as described dryly, but actually experienced first-hand as a result of the way it is written.
[+] [-] fullshark|9 years ago|reply
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/six-things-you-didn...
There's probably a better source but that's the first one I found on google.
[+] [-] sharkjacobs|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/50515/
[+] [-] partinggroan|9 years ago|reply
This whole "my disorder is better than your disorder" doesn't impress me, neither does the universal adoration of DFW.
[+] [-] westoncb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praveer13|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hprotagonist|9 years ago|reply
The recursive spiral of recursion is really hard to avoid with DFW to the point you think it is the point, which, of course, is itself recursive.
[+] [-] lisper|9 years ago|reply
"And the depressed person always took care, when as an adult she attempted to describe to a supportive friend the venomous struggle over the cost of her orthodonture and that struggle's legacy of emotional pain for her, to concede that it may well truly have appeared to each parent to have been, in fact, a matter of "principle," though unfortunately not a "principle" that took into account their daughter's feelings at receiving the emotional message that scoring petty points off each other was more important to her parents than her own maxillofacial health and thus constituted, if considered from a certain perspective, a form of neglect or abandonment or even outright abuse, an abuse clearly connected-here she nearly always inserted that her therapist concurred with this assessment-to the bottomless, chronic adult despair she suffered every day and felt hopelessly trapped in."
That was one sentence. There are many favorable adjectives one could reasonably apply to it, but IMHO "tight" is not one of them.
(BTW, that sentence is not an isolated example. Here's the very next sentence:
"The approximately half-dozen friends whom her therapist-who had earned both a terminal graduate degree and a medical degree-referred to as the depressed person's Support System tended to be either female acquaintances from childhood or else girls she had roomed with at various stages of her school career, nurturing and comparatively undamaged women who now lived in all manner of different cities and whom the depressed person often had not laid eyes on in years and years, and whom she called late in the evening, long-distance, for badly needed sharing and support and just a few well-chosen words to help her get some realistic perspective on the day's despair and get centered and gather together the strength to fight through the emotional agony of the next day, and to whom, when she telephoned, the depressed person always apologized for dragging them down or coming off as boring or self-pitying or repellent or taking them away from their active, vibrant, largely pain-free long-distance lives.")
[+] [-] roymurdock|9 years ago|reply
I'd recommend "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story," D.T. Max's biography of DFW. It gives a good outline of his life without straying too far into speculation/psychoanalysis. I usually try to approach books without any knowledge of the author but I feel like knowing DFW's history enhanced my enjoyment of his writing (especially non-fiction).
[+] [-] platz|9 years ago|reply
Infinite Jest was acclaimed academically because it was a fresh return to un-ironic content and narrative.
I think IJ is more layers than recursive loops.
[+] [-] vessenes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilap|9 years ago|reply
but beware! that's what happens when you're around a writer.
IJ is by far my all-time favorite book. just amazing.
(though the tech and math parts are cringe-worthy!)
[+] [-] niels_olson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipgap98|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nartsbtaa|9 years ago|reply
But I'll say it: his writing style is incredibly self-indulgent and dreadfully dull. I guess it's a matter of taste, but it takes a unique talent to attend a pornography award show and afterparty, and churn out something as soulless, humorless, and completely devoid of a point-of-view as "Big Red Son."
I'll probably delete this soon -- I feel like an awful person for writing it, although I'm not entirely sure why.
[+] [-] fullshark|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoBrad|9 years ago|reply
However, his commencement speech 'This is water' is amazing, and I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
[+] [-] ap22213|9 years ago|reply
But, I disagree with the opinion of the work. It's hard to take Wallace's style and content without considering the 90s and its historical and social context. A lot of what you don't like about his writing is actually his point.
[+] [-] savanaly|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshjkim|9 years ago|reply
mostly here to say: all of DFW's writing is basically a pain in the ass to read, and many folks (including myself) consider that to be very much on purpose - he wrote (posthumously so maybe wrote is the wrong thing to say..) a 550 page book (the Pale King) about the IRS, tax code and boredom (yes, that explicit ha) and honestly, it’s one of my favorite books of all time, though sometimes really boring ha (a choice quote, from an accounting professor to class: “To be, in a word, unborable.... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish”).
the fact that you were able to make it through Big Red Son at all (even though you didn’t specifically enjoy it) makes me want to recommend more DFW to you, because not everyone has the will/patience to get through a piece like that in the first place. To that end, I think for a HN audience there are definitely more interesting pieces like:
“Tense Present” http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0... (an exhaustive and IMO awesome essay on the “seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography” specifically with regard to the actual usage vs. institutional tradition in language)
“Television and US Fiction” https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (interesting take on TV, advertising and its effect on society, consciousness and fiction - it was written pre social media and even pre ubiquitous internet, so can feel dated but towards the end feels prescient, esp. as it focuses a lot on one of DFW’s favorite themes: “what we pay attention to and why and how that affects our consciousness”, etc.)
plenty more, but i think those are both good places to start.
(PS: if you like David Lynch or Dostoevsky, DFW has AMAZING essays on each of them too, highly recommend)
[+] [-] elliotec|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] networthless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericzawo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phillmv|9 years ago|reply
After the first ~300 pages, I began to understand how all the stories fit together and the book went from feeling like work to being a page turner I just had to devour.
[+] [-] ryanfreeborn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lliiffee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipgap98|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smacktoward|9 years ago|reply
A much friendlier/more accessible place to start is A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (https://www.amazon.com/Supposedly-Fun-Thing-Never-Again/dp/0...), a collection of his essays. They're shorter, tighter and generally much better commute reading.
[+] [-] frankhorrigan|9 years ago|reply
It takes a while to sink its teeth into you. But once it does, you won't want to leave the world he's built. As horrifying as it may sometimes be.
[+] [-] Fricken|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unholiness|9 years ago|reply
I independently highly recommend both.
[+] [-] plg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjdal2001|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackaspen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmyr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moshe_Silnorin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zc75|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|9 years ago|reply
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/20/cat-bites-depression...
[+] [-] tnorthcutt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roflc0ptic|9 years ago|reply
pdftotext depressedwallace.pdf > depressedwallace.txt
[+] [-] hughes|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] NumberCruncher|9 years ago|reply
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