“Consider David Foster Wallace” Conference – part IV

Julius, the moderator, asked the panelists about the recurring themes of adolescence and adulthood in Wallace’s works.  Laura brought up the obvious connections between Hamlet and Infinite Jest, focusing particularly on those between Prince Hamlet and Hal Incandenza as both try to escape the legacies of their parents’ generations.

On this topic of adolescence, Jonathan brought up the interesting biological idea of neoteny.  Neoteny is an evolutionary principle in which adult members of a species retain certain infantile or adolescent or even ancestral traits that give the organism a survival advantage.  He applied this idea both to Wallace’s characters and to Wallace himself as a writer.  Many of his characters – and again most of this portion of the discussion focused on IJ – rely on childlike behavior to cope and to survive.  Additionally, Infinite Jest is full on childish, sometimes infantile, jokes and silliness.[1]  Others of his stories can also be seen as childlike and immature.[2]

As a writer, Wallace placed great value on the things of childhood.  As one of the panelists said (I believe it was still Jonathan talking), great art comes from childish behavior, and the act of playing matters even in the adult world.  He went on to explain how Wallace exalts in his writing things[3] that most other writers “grow out of.”

Daniel chimed in during this part of the discussion to highlight the fact that most of Wallace’s writing has a certain self-conscious, juvenile affect to it, until we get to The Pale King.  His last, unfinished novel stands out in that it is much more “grown-up” than his other works.  The characters, themes, and conflicts are all much more mature than those in his earlier works.

The last topic of conversation brought up by Julius was the power of language.  The question was asked, what is art – in whatever form it takes – for?  The panelists discussed how Wallace might answer such a question.  They talked about how he didn’t seem to hold much of an “art for art’s sake” attitude, but rather that art – and especially fiction – ought to serve a purpose.  And in Wallace’s writing, much of that purpose was to explore and address real moral issues and problems.  His writing was very philosophical, engaging in dialogue with the likes of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard,[4] among others.  Good fiction ought to have a positive value.

Before opening it up for questions from the floor, Julius asked each of the panelists for a non-Infinite-Jest-related reading recommendation.  Daniel’s two recommendations were The Pale King and the short story “Good Old Neon” from Oblivion.  Jonathan’s recommendations were “Westward the Course of Empire Takes It’s Way” from Girl with Curious Hair and “Brief Interview #20,” the “Granola Cruncher” story from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.  Laura had several recommendations: the entirety of Girl with Curious Hair, the Dostoyevsky review in Consider the Lobster, and the previously mentioned “E Unibus Pluram” from A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.[5]

Julius thanked the panelists for their lively discussion and wonderful insights into both the writing and person of David Foster Wallace while the audience enthusiastically applauded.  A majority of the crowd left at that point, but a few people stuck around to ask questions of the panel.

As the crowd died down, I made my way up to the front to ask a question of DT Max.  I waited my turn as others asked him questions, and finally had my chance.  I shook his hand, introduced myself, and asked him what he thought of the role religion and spirituality played in Wallace’s life and writing.  He thought it an interesting question that he hadn’t seen any obvious answers to.  We discussed several examples from his fiction, primarily from The Pale King.  I mentioned how “Good People” was probably the more real and authentic depiction of a Christian faith I’ve ever read.  I asked about the references to church in his nonfiction, such as “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” and the end of AOCYEUBY.  Daniel said that some of the “church” references in his nonfiction were a cover for AA groups.

We talked about these various examples and through out questions for each other to consider for a good five minutes.  We didn’t arrive at any definitive answers – none probably exist – but concluded that Wallace saw the importance of faith and religious community in an individual’s life.  And both Wallace’s fiction and nonfiction writings have a very moral and didactic bent to them.  If anything, I think I left my short conversation with DT Max with more questions than I had before I introduced myself and with a greater desire to pursue this line of thought.

I left the Ballroom and walked across the darkened campus to my car.  Four pages of notes and too many thoughts and questions to even begin to count.  I tried to begin processing it all on my drive home, but it had been hours since I last ate.  Fortunately I had spotted what looked to be a good Mexican food restaurant on my way to the College.  So I topped off my wonderful evening with a delicious carne asada burrito.

It had been a good day.

---

[1] I haven’t gotten more than about 60 pages into the behemoth of a book.  But I have engaged in and listened in on plenty of conversations about the book, and I’ve see plenty of quotes from the book online, so I’ve come across many of these jokes.[back]

[2] “Forever Overhead” comes instantly to mind, as does “Little Expressionless Animals.”  The first is a coming of age story of a thirteen-year-old boy; the second has an ensemble cast of physically mature adults all trapped in juvenile and immature relationships with others.[back]

[3] I don’t recall what any of those “things” are, or if he even gave specific examples.  But the YouTube video should be able to fill in any gaps here.[back]

[4] These are philosophers whose writings are on my “to-read” list as I proceed with my reading and research into the spiritual and religious themes in Wallace’s works.[back]

[5] A number of these I have not yet read, but based on their descriptions, I think I will be diving into “Good Old Neon” next.  Though rather dark sounding,* it seems like it would be a fascinating character study.

* It is a first-person narration of someone who has just committed suicide, explaining all his reasons for doing so.[back]

“Consider David Foster Wallace” Conference – part III

“Fiction is about what it means to be a f***ing human being.”

The panelists – DT Max, Jonathan Letham, and Laura Miller – went on to describe how unique and different Wallace was from his contemporaries.  His novels and short stories were not the self-indulgent metafiction that dominated the literary fiction of the 1980’s.  And while other writers and much of academia focused on the international literary scene, Wallace’s fiction had a distinctly American feel to it.  He wrestled with what it meant to be an American in the late Twentieth Century, in all its glory and all its vices.  In his consummate nonfiction piece, “E Unibus Pluram,” he explains and describes many of the problems that exist in Twentieth Century American life, and these themes are then illustrated throughout his fiction as well.

Not only was Wallace unique in his style and subject matter, the panelists went on to say, but also in his purpose and approach to literature.  I believe it was Laura who first brought it up, and the others echoed the point, that Wallace was a very moral and even didactic writer.[1]  He wrote about very real – and very difficult – aspects of our humanity.  In the midst of this discussion, Daniel quoted what is perhaps Wallace’s most famous line,[2] that “fiction is about what it means to be a f***ing human being.”  It is through the reading and writing of fiction that we wrestle with our own humanity, that we try to make sense of the absurd and nonsensical.  Daniel went on to say that, in his estimation, there has not been such a moral writer since Dostoyevsky.

Part of this moral didacticism was Wallace’s tackling of two of the biggest – and most intertwined – problems in American society: entertainment and addiction, the two primary themes in his magnum opus Infinite Jest.  Daniel explained that the original title for the book was A Failed Entertainment[3] and that the book itself functions similarly to other addictive substances.  By beginning the book at or near the end of the story, the reader is left feeling unsatisfied and must go back and begin reading it again to satisfy those unfulfilled feelings.

In Infinite Jest, Wallace explores the role of faith and 12-Step programs in the recovery process of addiction.  As the panelists explained, these AA-type programs depend on clichés and platitudes to be successful.  Despite their banality, these clichés are real and effective and meaningful, and recovering addicts must put their faith in the truth of these statements in order to break free from their addictions.[4]  It is a humbling experience to put one’s faith in something that seems so simple, to realize that one is not too smart for words that are so trite and banal, to know that one cannot simply outsmart his addiction.

In addition to being a very morally didactic writer, Wallace was also a very personal one.  One of the panelists[5] pointed out that most of his characters are trying to break free from their own solipsism and believe that other characters in their world exist; they are trying to see inside the other.  They want to know they are not alone.  In the same way, Wallace used his writing to bridge the gap between selfs and connect on a very personal level with his readers.[6]  It is this personalness that draws such a loyal following of readers, and it is this sense of connection between writer and reader that drew a packed house to the Pomona College campus that Saturday evening in February.

 

---

[1] I don’t use these descriptors – nor did the panelists use them – in the “Aesop’s Fables” sense of the words.  But rather, he dealt with very moral issues and asked very moral questions, but unlike the fables of old he never answered the questions or concluded with a “slow and steady wins the race” sort of thing.  He just threw the idea out there to let us – the readers – wallow in it for awhile and try to figure it out on our own.[back]

[2] It was inevitable.  Someone had to repeat the quote.*  If none of the panelists did, I would have felt obliged to take the microphone during the Q & A just so that the line would be spoken.

*I began my paper for the Antwerp conference with the line, and I believe at least three other presenters quoted it in their papers as well.[back]

[3] I believe this is also brought up in Lipsky’s book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.[back]

[4] Although it wasn’t specifically mentioned during the discussion, this is the central message of Wallace’s Kenyon College speech: the life and death importance of the totally ordinary and banal.[back]

[5] At this point, nearly a month after the event as I look at my notes, I don’t recall which one.  This is what I get for waiting so long* to write about the conference.

*It hasn’t been out of laziness or procrastination that I have waited this long.  Moving into second semester and now just a few months before AP exams, my grading load has increased exponentially over the last few weeks.  Plus I have other writing projects I am working on.

I have plenty of excuses, but very few of them are good ones.[back]

[6] My friend Maria Bustillos wrote a wonderful piece last year about her trip to the Wallace archives, during which she was particularly drawn to his own collection of self-help books.  In that piece, she describes in much better detail than I do here Wallace’s desire to connect with others through his writing.[back]

“Consider David Foster Wallace” Conference – Part II

Blogger here.  Below is a reflection on the discussion that took place between the moderator and three guest panelists based on my copious notes and now two-week-old memories of the evening.  In order to create a blog post that is cohesive and coherent that attempts to recapture the experience of being there, I will write about the topics in a more thematic format rather than a sequential or chronological order.  And my apologies to the panelists and anyone else who might be offended if I attribute a statement to the wrong speaker or if I misquote any of them; I’ve done my best to try to remember who said what and my hand could only write so fast as I took notes, so hopefully I get those important details mostly correct.

 

“We’re not here because of his public legacy as a writer, but because of the personal connection to Wallace that so many of his readers felt in reading his works.”

The discussion’s moderator – Julius was his name – led the guests to the stage and all four sat down.  Julius opened the proceedings with a few remarks about the purpose of the evening’s conference: to discuss not just Wallace’s writing, but to discuss Wallace the writer.  Who he was and what he attempted to do through his writing.  As DT Max later put it, to consider what it was that draws readers to Wallace the man, not just to his handiwork; for there hasn’t been a writer in recent memory who has attracted so much attention to his personal life like Wallace has.  His fans don’t simply enjoy his writing, but through his writing feel a real connection to him as a person.

Julius introduced the evening’s guests:

DT Max, writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of Wallace’s soon-to-be released biography, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.[1]

Laura Miller, author and writer for Salon magazine and The New York Times Book Review.[2]

Jonathan Letham, novelist, essayist, and Roy E. Disney Professor of Creative Writing and English at Pomona College.[3]

The first question posed to the panel was how each of them had been introduced to Wallace and how writing.

DT Max – or Daniel – spoke of reading Broom of the System for the first time.  Into the minimalism that dominated 1980’s literature came this novel from nowhere written by a little-known Amherst grad.  Broom was so different from anything being written at the time, which instantly grabbed Daniel’s attention.  Although the two never met, watching Broom burst onto the literary scene the way it did left an indelible mark on Daniel, leading him to continue to follow Wallace throughout his career.

Laura’s first glimpse of Wallace came through her first reading of the “Cruise Ship Essay” in Harper’s magazine.[4]  Like Daniel, she commented on how “different” his writing was at the time of its publication.  She went on to review a number of his books for The New York Times Book Review and interviewed Wallace several times for Salon magazine.

Jonathan, just a few years younger than Wallace, remembered having several friends in common while in college, although they never actually met.  They were “almost colleagues,” as he put it.  Like Daniel, he was impressed and even a bit intimidated by the “different-ness” and “maximalism” of BOTS.  Jonathan also commented on Wallace’s reputation as a “brilliant teacher.”  Being both a writer and teacher himself, he noted that a person is often very good at one of these skills, but very rarely good at both.

After discussing some of the common themes in both Wallace’s life and writing – which I will come back to later – the panelists continued discussing the literary and cultural context in which Wallace emerged as a writer.  Politically and economically, Reagan’s policies ruled the land,[5] but there was also a countercultural undercurrent that was very present.[6]

As Daniel spoke of earlier, there was the dominance of minimalist fiction in the 1980’s that pushed aside the maximalist work of the 60’s and 70’s.  Daniel later commented that this difference in literary tastes was reflective in the drug use in each era: the maximalism of the 60’s and 70’s being similar to the laid-back pot smokers of those decades, and the minimalism of the 80’s being like the anxious cocaine addicts of the 80’s.  The verbose, grandiloquent prose of Wallace’s fiction certainly broke away from the minimalism of his contemporaries and hearkened back to the maximalism that preceded them.

In addition to this anxiety-ridden minimalism, literature was branching out into a number of interesting directions.  Part of the countercultural movement mentioned above was a new interest in multiculturalism.  Readers and scholars wanted to hear more than just the voices of the “Dead White Guys.”  The flavors and styles of international writers were influencing many of the writers here in the States.

Another direction in which fiction writers were taking their craft was into the – as one panelist put it – “vanity of metafiction.”  Fiction became very self-referential and experimental as authors toyed with narrative voice and plot structure.  Literature had lost much of its artistic purpose, other than to simply be artistic.

Then along came David Foster Wallace.

---

[1] The title is taken from §25 of The Pale King, a short, but intriguing description of the mind-numbingly boring activities of the wigglers in the IRS processing center.  This enigmatic line is nestled in the midst of a whole lot of page turning.  I plan to write about it soon in a future post… once I fully understand what it means.[back]

[2] She interviewed Wallace several times and reviewed a number of his books.  She was the only one of the three guests who actually met Wallace.[back]

[3] This is the professorship that Wallace held before he passed away.[back]

[4] “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” was also my first exposure to Wallace’s writing, and from my many conversations with other readers of Wallace, this seems to be the one piece that “hooks” many new readers.  It is so beautifully written, and at the same time so funny.  Such a joy to read and such a great way to introduce a new reader to Wallace.[back]

[5] These policies and their potential long-term repercussions are the topic of discussion in the “civics lesson” chapter in The Pale King (§ 19) and and underlying theme throughout most of the unfinished novel.  I plan to write about that section very soon in an upcoming Letter.[back]

[6] The panelists did not go into a lot of detail about the politics and social climate of the 1980’s, but did mention their importance in a rather vague way.  And since I was busy watching The Smurfs and playing with Legos, I can’t really offer any additional commentary.[back]