I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FUN BOY THREE-“Our Lips Are Sealed” (1983).

In an interview with David Foster Wallace’s sister, she says that David spent an entire summer listening to this song.  Most of us know the Go-Go’s version which is bubbly and playful (even though the lyrics–which are the same–are quite dark).

I’ve had this song on some compilation or other for years and I’ve alway thought of it as a kind of novelty.  And yet the more I listened to it, the more I liked it (and the more I liked it more than the Go-Go’s version).

Terry Hall, the singer of Fun Boy Three (and The Specials), co-wrote the song with Jane Wiedlin.  And it’s funny to hear how very different the two cowriters made their versions.

There’s definitely a new romantics vibe to the Fun Boy Three version, but the great bass backing vocals bring a coolly mysterious element to the song.  And if you check out the live version, you can see the polar opposite stage manner from Belinda Carlisle.  Terry Hall makes Robert Smith seems gregarious and silly.  And yet, for all of the darkness of the song, it’s still hard not to bop along to.  It’s pretty wonderful.

[READ: November 7, 2010] Consider David Foster Wallace

A group read of Consider David Foster Wallace is currently underway.  I had planned to read along and contribute weekly posts here.  I read the first two articles and, as it turns out, I have literally nothing useful to say about them.  And I certainly don’t have enough to contribute a weekly opinion about them.

It’s not that they are bad, not at all.  The onus is mine.  I am out of academia for something like a decade now.  I am totally out of practice for coming up with clever arguments and rebuttals to well researched pieces.  I have also seen a few people’s comments and critiques of these pieces and I realize that I am just not in the right mindset to be a productive member of the academic community.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to read it and write a post when I’m done (I’ll likely follow along with the discussions, so this book won’t get posted for quite some time).

In the meantime, I wanted to say a few words about the preface and introduction. 

DAVID HERING-Editor’s Preface
This sets the tone of the book.  Hering explains that it’s not merely a collection of essays, rather it is a collection of essays that were presented at the July 2009 DFW Conference in Liverpool.  And, as we’ll also see in the introduction, Hering is excited at the prospect of seeing more scholarship being done about DFW’s canon.

For me, the telling quote which really sets the tone for the book is; “one of the things I hope this collection will achieve is to communicate the vast number of contexts within which Wallace’s work can be read” (10).   So, this is not going to be a book about drugs in Infinite Jest or why Wallace’s books don’t end the way people expect.  These essays are going to be much much more.

And, despite my assertion above that I am out of academia too long, I don’t want to give the impression that these essays are “too difficult” for the average fan of DFW’s work.  Indeed, the other telling quote from the Preface is that “the essays within this book are all examples of how to construct a rigorous and well-argued analysis without sinking into turgidity of language or jargon.”  And based on the first two articles, I agree completely.

The Preface concludes by saying that the articles are presented in chronological order of DFW’s output (more or less).  An excellent choice.

GREG CARLISLE-Introduction: Consider David Foster Wallace
I’m the kind of geeky person who reads introductions to just about everything. So, yes, I have read a lot of them.  And this introduction is easily the most passionate one I have ever read.  Carlisle is more than a fan, more than a scholar, he is a kind of booster for David Foster Wallace studies.

It’s often the case that an introduction to a volume about an author is full of hyperbole and hagiography.  And at first, I thought that that ‘s what was going on here.   I mean, when the first sentence is “What is extraordinary about David Foster Wallace is that his commitment to his readers exceeded even his incomparable intellectual gifts” (12), well, you might be forgiven for thinking this was just going to be another piece of lavish praise.

But in fact, Carlisle is doing something subtly different from the standard introduction.  Carlisle is, after all, a man who has read and re-read and, literally written the definitive book about Infinite Jest.   As he says, “after finishing Infinite Jest, I thought, ‘I want to read this again, right now'” (15). Which he did, and that began his labor of love known as Elegant Complexity.

Carlisle is passionate about the power and import of DFW’s works. And he conveys this passion not with simple praise, but with a plea that people share the joy that is had in DFW’s words, both in an academic and a more casual setting.

For even though this book and Carlisle’s joy is intended for everyone, it’s clear that his audience here is academics.  And that makes his passion all the more remarkable.  I’ve never read an introduction that so earnestly asked for further study in classrooms, for the need of further scholarship, for the importance of spreading the works of an author to more people.

The ending sums it up perfectly: “This community is vital to continuing and expanding the conversations Wallace started with his readers.  Let’s keep talking” (23).

I actually felt a bit guilty because I know that I will not be contributing any scholarship to the DFW academic world.  But it did make me feel good that I’m keeping the conversation going with these posts.  And it rather makes me wish I could go back to school again to enroll in one of these classes.

I can’t say, yet, whether this book will be enjoyable for fans of IJ or A Supposedly Fun Thing… but I can’t wait to find out.