David Foster Wallace

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“This David Foster Wallace Is Completely Erased”

August 12, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Film | Permalink

David Foster Wallace overdid it in many ways, and his journalism seemed to conveniently descend into fiction when need be, but he was genuinely brilliant, certainly far superior to Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote, oy gevalt, Less Than Zero. That ersatz-J.D. Salinger-makes-a-snuff-film literary stain is so deeply ingrained on the sheets that you have throw away the whole bed.

Ellis uses a new Medium essay to yet again disapprove of his late contemporary and also to take aim at the new Wallace biopic, The End of the Tour. He is correct that such films almost universally reduce their subjects with hagiography, meaning to make them more likable but instead robbing them of their humanity. An excerpt:

The David in this movie is the voice of reason, a sage, and the movie succumbs to the cult of stressing likability. But the real David scolded people and probably craved fame — what writer isn’t both suspicious of literary fame and yet curious in seeing how that game is played out? It’s not that rare and — hey — it sells books. He was cranky and could be very mean and caustic and opportunistic, but this David Foster Wallace is completely erased and that’s why the movie is so resolutely one-note and earnest. There’s so much handwringing about doing one dumb book tour and being “terrified” by a magazine profile — and this is looked on as a sign of pure integrity in the movie — that at some point you may want to tell the screen: “Just don’t finish the tour, dude, if it hurts so much, and shut up about it. Don’t talk to freakin’ Rolling Stone. Get over it. Chill.”

This is not the David Foster Wallace who voted for Reagan and supported Ross Perot, the David who wrote a scathing and deliciously cruel put-down of late-period Updike, the David who posed for glamour-puss photos in Interview magazine (years before Infinite Jest) and appeared on Charlie Rose numerous times — all of which the movie strongly suggests was probably absolute agony for David who keeps naively fretting about his real self being co-opted by a fake self, as if a man as intelligent as Wallace would really care one way or the other, but the movie insists this was the case which perversely reveals Wallace to be the world-class narcissist so many people (even Jonathan Franzen, a close friend, and Mary Karr, an ex) always assumed he was.•

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“They Were Told They Had Managed To Offend The Audience At The Annual Adult-Film Awards”

April 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

David Foster Wallace wrote a great description of the nicotine-and-sandpaper comedian Bobby Slayton, who once descended on Las Vegas to host the Adult Film Awards, the Oscars of oral: “A gravelly-voiced Dice Clay knockoff who kept introducing every female performer as ‘the woman I’m going to cut my dick off for,’ and who astounded all the marginal print journalists in attendance with both his unfunniness and his resemblance to every apartment-complex coke dealer we’d ever met.”

As disreputable as Slayton may have seemed, he was one-upped by the toilet-mouthed ventriloquist act, Otto and George, when it headlined the grindhouse gala, actually managing to upset a roomful of people best known for performing deep throats and double penetrations. Otto Petersen, the fleshy half of the act, just passed away. His New York Times obituary was written by Margalit Fox, whose copy is steadfastly one of the great joys of reading the publication. An excerpt:

Popular with audiences and widely admired by other comics, Mr. Petersen was often described as soft-spoken in private life. But he was no match, he often said, for the strong-willed, forked-tongue George, whose caustic, profanity-laced outbursts rained down on a spate of targets, not least of all Mr. Petersen himself.

No subject was sacred, and George’s myriad observations could range over matters sexual, scatological, urological, gastroenterological, racial, bestial, theological and homicidal. None will be quoted here.

Mr. Petersen’s act was so scurrilous that it once proved too much for a historically thick-skinned crowd.

“They were told they had managed to offend the audience at the annual adult-film awards — the porno-world equivalent to the Academy Awards — in Las Vegas,” The Montreal Gazette reported in 2010. “Otto and George had twice served as hosts, but weren’t asked back by the insulted and suddenly squeamish organizers.•

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“Could You Explain The Ending To American Psycho To Me Like I’m A 5 Year Old?”

May 15, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Film | Permalink

Bret Easton Ellis, who fucked Blair who fucked Trent before they all fucked Clay, just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. He’s a godawful writer but if you want to look at his works as presaging the overt violence and sexuality of our virtual world, you can. Of course, that would be giving him far too much credit. A few exchanges from the AMA follow.

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Question:

I read in a German magazine you once were so drunk (or stoned) you confused texting and tweeting and asked for drugs on Twitter. Is that a true story?

Bret Easton Ellis:

Yeah. That’s a true story. I still left the drunken tweet on my Twitter feed, hoping one day it becomes a catch phrase.

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Question:

Favorite author? Besides yourself, of course. 

Bret Easton Ellis:

Gustave Flaubert.

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Question:

What did you think of American Psycho 2?

Bret Easton Ellis:

It was a breathtaking masterpiece.

_____________________

Question:

Could you explain the ending to American Psycho to me like I’m a 5 year old?

Bret Easton Ellis:

Not really, babe.

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Question:

A lot of people were deeply shocked by the comments you made about David Foster Wallace, even after he had tragically committed suicide, particularly when you said he was “the most tedious, overrated, tortured, pretentious writer of my generation.”

What happened to create this feud? Were you surprised at the backlash your comments received?

Bret Easton Ellis:

There wasn’t a feud. David and I had never met. But I never responded to his work. Simple as that. I was reading the new bio and it was pissing me off–the kid gloves approach. And that I thought he had a literary fraudulence about him that manifested itself in his fiction. You could say the same about me. I was not surprised by the backlash to those tweets. There are a lot of little snowflakes who somehow really respond to this faux-earnestness of DFW that I just don’t think is realistic.

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Question:

Has there ever been a critique you’ve taken to heart that had some impact on your work? 

Bret Easton Ellis:

No.

_____________________

Gustave Flaubert: Also fucked Blair and Trent.

Gustave Flaubert: Also fucked Blair and Trent.

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5 American Novels David Foster Wallace Loved

September 24, 2012 in Books | Permalink

It still bothers me greatly that David Foster Wallace fabricated huge sections of his so-called non-fiction pieces. I don’t think his great talent made that okay. But it’s difficult to discuss such things sensitively considering the unhappiness of his life and the sadness of his death.

I just came across a 1999 article Wallace wrote for Salon about the five most unappreciated American novels since 1960. I’ve read the titles on his list, so I thought I would give my take on them.

•Omensetter’s Luck (William H. Gass, 1966): I’ve never really connected to Gass’ work, even his short fiction, but this one, his first novel, is his best. That said, I didn’t really enjoy this Faulkner-esque story, which concerns a preacher obsessed with the good fortune of a seemingly undeserving man, until the final third. What’s amusing is that my edition contains an essay by the author about how his OL manuscript was stolen by a colleague. It’s straightforward, filled with rich metaphor and emotion. After reading it, I though that perhaps Gass has been trying his whole career to write with someone else’s strengths instead of his own.

•Steps (Jerzy Kosinski, 1968): Not so much a novel as a collection of nightmarish stories linked by theme and tone. Like Kafka, but with the lurid eroticism and violence above the surface. Kosinski’s sexual politics could be gross, but this is a very brisk read and some of the stories will remain lodged in your brain, unforgettable for their paranoia and horror.

•Angels (Denis Johnson, 1983): Bruising, heartbreaking novel about a single mom toting her at-risk family through the underbelly of America. It does not have the lightness of tone that Jesus’ Son has. Not at all. But it’s the second-best fiction Johnson has written after JS.

•Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Cormac McCarthy, 1985): This insane, brilliant and unsentimental novel set in the Old West is one of my absolute favorites. A story about innocence devoured in the belly of the beast, it’s the book that Herman Melville tried and failed to create in Moby Dick. 

•Wittgenstein’s Mistress (David Markson, 1988): The best of the author’s typically avant-garde anti-novels, it follows the (repetitive) thought process of a woman who may be the last person on Earth. Philosophical and challenging, you will love it or quickly put it down.•

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Open Societies After Mass Terrorism: Comments By Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg And David Foster Wallace

July 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Prime Minister of Norway refuses to overreact to shocking politicized violence. From the New York Times: 

“‘It’s absolutely possible to have an open, democratic, inclusive society, and at the same time have security measures and not be naive,’ Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo. ‘I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22,’ he said. ‘But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before.’”

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David Foster Wallace, completely unburdened by political office, took things a step further in response to 9/11. From the Atlantic in 2007:

“Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, ‘sacrifices on the altar of freedom’? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?”

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“Television, From The Surface On Down, Is About Desire”

June 30, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Let’s hope the following statement about TV from the 1993 David Foster Wallace essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” isn’t true anymore. Perhaps the marginalization of TV in a multi-platform media world has made programmers more desperate, more willing to give us bread and circuses in a desperate attempt to attract viewers. But what if it still is true? What then?

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“If we want to know what American normality is – what Americans want to regard as normal – we can trust television. For television’s whole raison is reflecting what people want to see. It’s a mirror. Not the Stendhalian mirror reflecting the blue sky and mud puddle. More like the overlit bathroom mirror before which the teenager monitors his biceps and determines his better profile. This kind of window on nervous American self-perception is just invaluable, fictionwise. And writers can have faith in television. There is a lot of money at stake, after all; and television retains the best demographers applied social science has to offer, and these researchers can determine precisely what Americans in 1990 are, want, see: what we as Audience want to see ourselves as. Television, from the surface on down, is about desire. Fictionally speaking, desire is the sugar in human food.”

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“They Want Your Money And Maybe To Look Up Your Skirt”

June 16, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Ticket to the Fair,” David Foster Wallace’s great 1994 Harper’s piece about the mixed pleasures of the Illinois State Fair, which seems to have been his entrée into magazine journalism:

“Sitting on the bench, I watch the carnies way below. They mix with no one, never seem to leave Happy Hollow. Late tonight, I’ll watch them drop flaps to turn their booths into tents. They’ll smoke cheap dope and drink peppermint schnapps and pee out onto the midway’s dirt. I guess they’re the gypsies of the rural United States–itinerant, insular, swarthy, unclean, not to be trusted. You are in no way drawn to them. They all have the same blank hard eyes as people in the bathrooms of East Coast bus terminals. They want your money and maybe to look up your skirt; beyond that you’re just blocking the view. Next week they’ll dismantle and pack and haul up to the Wisconsin State Fair, where they’ll never set foot off the midway they pee on. While I’m watching from the bench, an old withered man in an lllinois Poultry Association cap careers past on one of those weird three-wheeled carts, like a turbocharged wheelchair, and runs nearly over my sneaker. This ends up being my one unassisted interview of the day, and it’s brief. The man keeps revving his cart’s engine like a biker. ‘Traish,‘ he calls the carnies. ‘Lowlifes.’ He gestures down at the twirling rides. ‘Wouldn’t let my own kids go off down there on a goddamn bet.’ He raising pullets down near Olney. He has something in his cheek. ‘Steal you blind. Drug-addicted and such. Swindle you nekked them games. Traish. Me, I ever year we drive up, I carry my wallet like this here.’ He points to his hip. His wallet’s on a big steel clip attached to a wire on his belt; the whole thing looks vaguely electrified. Q: ‘But do they want to? Your kids? Hit the Hollow?’ He spits brownly. ‘Hail no. We all come for the shows.’ He means the livestock competitions. ‘See some folks, talk stock. Drink a beer. Work all year round raising ’em for show birds. It’s for pride. And to see folks. Shows’re over Tuesday, why, we go on home.’ He looks like a bird himself. His face is mostly nose, his skin loose and pebbly like poultry’s. His eyes are the color of denim. ‘Rest of this here’s for city people.’ Spits. He means Springfield, Decatur, Normal. ‘Walk around, stand in line, eat junk, buy soovneers. Give their wallet to the traish. Don’t even know there’s folks come here to work up here.’ He gestures up at the barns, then spits again, leaning way out over the cart to do it. ‘We come up to work, see some folks. Drink a beer. Bring our own goddamn food. Mother packs a hamper. Hail, what we’d want to go on down there for! No folks we know down there.’ He laughs. Asks my name. ‘It is good to see folks,’ he says before leaving me and peeling out in his chair, heading for the chicken din. ‘We all stayin’ up to the motel. Watch your wallet, boy.'”

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Calling hogs at the 2010 Illinois State Fair:

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“The First Time I Lay Actual Eyes On The Real David Lynch On The Set Of His Movie, He’s Peeing On A Tree”

June 12, 2011 in Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Premiere magazine, which published from 1987-2007, offered first-rate reporting about the movie industry for a good, long time, until corporate interference reduced it and destroyed it. One of its last gasps of greatness was “David Lynch Keeps His Head,” David Foster Wallace’s 1996 on set-reportage about the mystifying filmmaker as he made the equally inscrutable Lost Highway. An excerpt:

“The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he’s peeing on a tree. This is on 8 January in L.A.’s Griffith Park, where some of Lost Highway’s exteriors and driving scenes are being shot. He is standing in the bristly underbrush off the dirt road between the base camp’s trailers and the set, peeing on a stunted pine. Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often, and neither he nor the production can afford the time it’d take to run down the base camp’s long line of trailers to the trailer where the bathrooms are every time he needs to pee. So my first (and generally representative) sight of Lynch is from the back, and (understandably) from a distance. Lost Highway’s cast and crew pretty much ignore Lynch’s urinating in public, (though I never did see anybody else relieving themselves on the set again, Lynch really was exponentially busier than everybody else.) and they ignore it in a relaxed rather than a tense or uncomfortable way, sort of the way you’d ignore a child’s alfresco peeing.”

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Trailer for Lost Highway:

More David Foster Wallace posts:

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“[I Have] Watched A Woman In Silver Lamé Projectile-Vomit Inside A Glass Elevator”

June 10, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The perfect opening of “Shipping Out,” David Foster Wallace’s 2004 Harper’s reportage about the enforced happiness of the luxury-cruise industry, which was subsequently retitled, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”:

“I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as ‘Mon’ in three different nations. I have seen 500 upscale Americans dancing the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line.

I have seen a lot of really big white ships. I have seen schools of little fish with fins that glow. I have seen and smelled all 145 cats inside the Ernest Hemingway residence in Key west, Florida. I now know the difference between straight bingo and Prize-O. I have seen fluorescent luggage and fluorescent sunglasses and fluorescent pince-nez and over twenty different makes of rubber thong. I have heard steel drums and eaten conch fritters and watched a woman in silver lamé projectile-vomit inside a glass elevator. I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated pointing to the ceiling to in 1977.

I have learned that there are actually intensities of blue beyond very bright blue. I have eaten more and classier food than I’ve ever eaten, and done this during a week when I’ve also learned the difference between ‘rolling’ in heavy seas and ‘pitching’ in heavy seas. I have heard a professional cruise-ship comedian tell folks, without irony, ‘But seriously.’ I have seen fuchsia pantsuits and pink sport coats and maroon-and-purple warm-ups and white loafers worn without socks. I have seen professional blackjack dealers so lovely they make you want to clutch your chest. I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the ship’s Guest Relations Desk whether snorkeling necessitates getting wet, whether the trapshooting will be held outside, whether the crew sleeps on board, and what time the Midnight Buffet is.”

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In 1986, Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner discuss literature in the Information Age with that handsome, world-weary robot Charlie Rose:

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What Are The Best Magazine Articles Ever?

July 30, 2010 in Excerpts, Misc. | Permalink

The late David Foster Wallace has seven articles on Kelly's Top 100 list. (Image by Steve Rhodes.)

All-around brilliant guy Kevin Kelly is trying to decide which (English-language) magazine articles are the greatest ever. He’s come up with a list of 100 suggestions for the best and is asking readers to suggest their own and vote for their faves. Titles below are the leaders thus far. View the whole list.

• David Foster Wallace, “Federer As Religious Experience.” The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006.

• David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster.” Gourmet, Aug 2004.

• Neal Stephenson, “Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet.” Wired, December 1996. On laying trans-oceanic fiber optic cable.

• Gay Talese, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Esquire, April 1966.

•Ron Rosenbaum, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box.” Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe.

• Jon Krakauer, “Death of an Innocent: How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds.” Outside, January 1993. Article that became Into the Wild.

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The Amazing Annals Of Glossy Greatness

April 30, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

Writer Ève Curie (daughter of Madame Curie) graced the cover of “Time” in 1940, as she did her part to fight the scourge of Nazism. Ève did tons of work for UNICEF and lived to 102.

As the magazine industry founders in the face of a media paradigm shift, Molly Lambert and Alex Carnevale at This Recording have published a smart piece called “15 Best Print Magazine Runs of All Time.” They pinpoint spans of time when a magazine thrived creatively and transcended all the other rags on the rack.

It’s a really great list, though I have some nits to pick. The heyday of Premiere isn’t represented at all. And some of the time spans seem stingy (Life wasn’t great just from 1940-1965 but until the end of its original run in 1972; Mad was amazing for a lot longer than 1958-1963). But I quibble. Below is an example of some of the entries.

*****

12. Might (1991-1995)

Dave Eggers’s San Francisco magazine was known for rambling essays on provocative topics. Some have cited their “Are Black People Cooler Than White People?” as the first recorded LOL. They also did an issue that was entirely about cheese, and let David Foster Wallace make the argument that AIDS was going to make sexual pursuit better and more rewarding by making it more difficult. If you write about all the things you find interesting it is possible that somebody else will also be interested, or better yet become interested just because it’s written well.

*****

 

Patti Smith performs in Copenhagen in 1976. In between gigs, she contributed articles to “Creem.”

6. Creem (1971-1980)

Cooler than Rolling Stone, Creem featured articles from a dream roster of counterculture writers like Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Nick Tosches, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, and Cameron Crowe, all of whom made or embossed their names here (plus countless other staffers who did all the work). The original arrogant confrontational blog, indier than thou when it still meant something, Creem articles expose all other music criticism as falsity. Our favorite kind of snobs, Creem touted the MC5 and ABBA equally.

*****

2. Time (1939-1945)

Before Time became the absolute mess it is now, two men made this venerable institution the most well-written compendium of critical thought ever to enter the public sphere at the time. Whittaker Chambers joined Time in 1939; soon enough he and James Agee were the primary composers of the arts section of the magazine. Chambers ascended to the magazine’s editorial board, and kept writing. It only got better from there.

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