SOUNDTRACK: CHRISTIAN SCOTT aTUNDE ADJUAH-Tiny Desk Concert #477 (October 9, 2015).
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah and his septet play what he calls stretch music: “the particular type of jazz fusion he’s up to: something more seamless than a simple collision of genre signifiers.”
They note that even his appearance stretches traditional jazz: “You may note that he showed up in a Joy Division sleeveless T-shirt and gold chain.” It’s sleek and clearly modern, awash in guitar riffs, but also bold and emotionally naked.
Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (not sure how to abbreviate that) is a trumpeter and he can hit some loud powerful and long –held notes. It’s funny that when he bends over the trumpet grows quieter—those ic really are direction-based.
For the first song “TWIN” he does some impressive soloing over a simple and cool beat—piano and delicate guitar riffs (there’s also an upright bass and drummer). After his lengthy solo there’s a flute solo that also works perfectly (if less dramatically) with the background music. (Christian plays tambourine during her solo). He says that this song is about being a twin. His brother, Kyle Scott is a film director and for whom Christians scores the music. Christian also explains that he comes from an African-American and Native-American background and that this song has rhythms as a sort of history of his family that touches on Mali, Senegal Gambia and The Ivory Coast and makes its way to the Caribbean, Cuba and into New Orleans.
He’s pleased to play the Tiny Desk Concert for an audience that appreciates “Music that has nutritional value.”
For the second song, “West of the West” he brings on a young alto-saxophonist who plays with his drummer in a different band. The song opens with a rocking electric guitar solo and then the jazzy band kicks in behind it. The instrumental features a couple of solos by the saxophonist, the pianist and the bassist.
“K.K.P.D.” is a dramatic song for which he gives a lengthy back story. Many years ago in his home of New Orleans, he was stopped by New Orleans police late at night for no reason other than to harass and intimidate him. he was coming back from a gig. He resisted and was in a serious situation and was seriously threatened—the story is long and very affecting, especially given how articulate (I know, terrible word, but true) and calm he is about retelling this horrifying story. His pride almost made him do something ill-advised, but instead he channeled that pent-up frustration into a piece of music whose long-form title is “Ku Klux Police Department.”
He adds that we see things on TV about inner cities or the ninth ward and we believe them to be true. Like that the neighborhood is happy that the police are clearing out the youth there. We begin to think that the narrative is true, although the people who live there can tell you otherwise. Despite the title and the origin, the is song is designed to reach a consensus to move forward –not to build derision or hate. He says that we have to start working on that now, because if it doesn’t start now then our children will continue to inherit this situation.
It opens with a noisy guitar wash and fast drums. It’s quite noisy and chaotic although it resolves very nicely into an almost sweet piano-based song with slow horns. The middle of the song ramps up with some intense soloing from Christian. I love how that segues into a very different section with an electronic drum and delicate piano. Chritsian’s next solo is much more optimistic. The final section is just wonderfully catchy.
When he introduces the band, he points out just how young some of his newest members are: Drummer Corey Fonville (another new member) used a djembe as a bass drum, and also brought a MIDI pad so he could emulate the sound of a drum machine; Lawrence Fields, piano; Kris Funn, bass; Dominic Minix , guitar (21 years old); Braxton Cook, saxophone (24 years-old) and Elena Pinderhughes, flute: 20 years old!
I don’t listen to a ton of jazz, but I really liked this Tiny Desk Concert a lot.
[READ: July-October 2016] The David Foster Wallace Reader
I’ve had this book since Sarah bought it for me for Christmas in 2014. I haven’t been in a huge hurry to read it because I have read almost everything in it already. And some of that I have even read recently. But this summer I decided to read some of my bigger books, so this was a good time as any.
One of the fascinating things about reading this book is the excerpting in the fiction section. I have never really read excerpts from DFWs longer books before. And once you decontextualize the parts, you can really appreciate them for themselves rather than as a means to the end of the story. This is especially true of the excerpts from Broom of the System and Infinite Jest. But also just reading some of these sections as a short story makes for an interesting experience.
It was also very interesting to read the non-fiction all together like that. These pieces come from difference anthologies, but they have thematic similarities So, placing them together like that allows for really comparing the stories.
And of course, the selling point for most DFW fans is the teaching materials in the center of the book–an opportunity to look into the man’s mind at work shaping younger minds.
I have written about virtually everything in this book already (title links refer back to previous posts), so mostly these are thoughts about the pieces themselves and not a part of a whole.
FICTION
“The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation to The Bad Thing”
The first time I read this piece was soon after Wallace killed himself and I found the story resonated too closely to what had just happened–it is, after all, about a person who is so depressed he wants to kill himself. But what I found while reading it now, several years later, is that the story does two things very well. It really lets a non-depressed person in on what depression can feel like (the description “imagine feeling really sick to your stomach…imagine your whole body being sick like that…imagine that every cell in your body, every single cell in your body is as sick as that nauseated stomach…with just no chance of throwing up.” Despite that, there is also a lot of humor–black humor, sure, but humor nonetheless, which takes some of the edge off. It makes the story not just a “woe is me” college short story. The narrator for instance uses calming casual phrasings like: “troubled little soldier,” “I’ve got this cute scar, here.” “Anyway, all this extremely delightful stuff was going on while I was doing well.” “I’m not incredibly glib, but I’ll tell what I think the Bad Thing is like.”
It’s also interesting that the narrator also meets someone else, a girl named May and he became friends with her. And that she proves to be a strange source of comfort which is eventually taken away from him.
This was Wallace’s first published piece (fr all intents and purposes) and its interesting that it, too, ends in mid-sentence, punctuated, much like The Broom of the System would.
~~~
Afterword by Kevin J. H. Dettmar.
THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM
Reading a short story is one thing, but how on earth do you excerpt a 450 page novel (that doesn’t exactly end) and covers so many different ideas. And more importantly, how do you do it without cutting out sections?
You have to make a decision about what to present, and for this book the choice is three set pieces, all of which focus on Lenore Beadsman. In other words there are huge swaths of plot that are ignored entirely.
And as I mentioned earlier, reading these pieces out of context lets you focus on these pieces as pieces–as little stories of their own. Which is pretty interesting and which led me to see connections that I hadn’t already noticed because the sections aren’t separated by so much else.
1.
The first excerpt is from 1981 when Lenore Beadsman is visiting her big sister at college. She is learning a lot about older girls from her sister’s roommates. Like the way they drink and casually do drugs. The music they listen to. There’s the one who walks around naked. And just how they socialize. The plot revolves around a dorm mixer. The girls don’t want to go downstairs to the mixer, but Lenore does–its her first one after all.
Their talk is interrupted by a knock at the door when two men who have come to the mixer have decided to go upstairs and meet some of the residents (which is strictly forbidden). The story suddenly grows very sinister as the boys dominate the room and the girls in the room. Lenore also sees how the different girls react to this intrusion and the boys’ questionable requests.
5. /a/
The excerpts jump to 1990 where we meet the future lover of Lenore, Rick Vigorous. He says that people would never believe that he is living in Cleveland between a
biologically dead and completely offensive-smelling lake and a billion-dollar man-made desert, that [he] would be divorced from my wife and physically distanced from the growth of my son, that [he] would be operating a firm in partnership with an invisible person, little more, it seems clear now, than a corporate entity interested in failure for tax purposes, the firm publishing things perhaps even slightly more laughable than nothing at all, and that perched high atop this mountain of the unthinkable would be the fact that [he] was in love, grossly and pathetically and fiercely and completely in love with a person eighteen count them eighteen years younger than [he], a woman from one of Cleveland’s first families, who lives in a city owned by her father but who works answering telephones for something like four dollars an hour, a woman whose uniform of white cotton dress and black Converse hightop sneakers is an unanalyzable and troubling constant, who takes somewhere, I suspect, between five and eight showers a day, who works in neurosis like a whaler in scrim shaw, who lives with a schizophrenically narcissistic bird and an almost certainly nymphomaniacal bitch of a roommate, and who finds in me, somewhere, who knows where, the complete lover
While this excerpt is from Rick’s operative it talks about how he and Lenore met–in Dr Jay’s psychiatric reception area (where the chairs are on automated tracks). He trailed her for ages before finally asking her out for a drink She said she doesn’t really drink “You don’t drink liquid of any sort?” which kind of won her over. And then he looks back on their first day via an interestingly told flashback in which he “sees” everything that happened to them.
11/c/
This excerpt shows Lenore and Rick on a flight. Rick is very nervous and Lenore tries to calm him by having him tell her a story. This story is from a pile of submissions to the journal that Rick manages. Lenore also finds the storytelling to be a suitable substitute for actual sexual congress.
This story is a set piece of the first order. It is all about a man who falls in love with every woman he sees–totally fully in love. Embarrassingly so. He gets psychiatric advice to curb this behavior. And he winds up meeting a woman who is unattractive and more than a little weird. He winds up befriending her and not falling in love–a huge step for him. But she has a secret (bizarre, to say the least) and that challenges his assumptions about love. It’s wonderfully told–with interruptions by Lenore that remind you you’re in another story altogether.
~~~
These three passages are it from this large book. Reading just these excerpts the story turns into a (bizarre) love story. An unimaginable amount is left out and yet the parts that are put in should be very compelling to anyone interested in reading the story.
Afterword by Gerald Howard, editor of the novel.
“Little Expressionless Animals”
This is one of my favorite short stories. It’s the story of a contestant who wins Jeopardy! She is so good at the game that they break the rules to let her stay on indefinitely (long before Ken Jennings). That part of the story (and all of the inner workings of TV–Merv Griffin and Alex Trebek and ratings and commercials) is really fascinating (did he just make all that up? if not, how did he get the details?). But beyond all of that is a love story between the contestant and an employee. Both have issues with their parents and both are trying to come out of the shadows of their families in one way or another (not even getting into the whole thing with the contestant’s brother). There’s so much going on and it’s all done under the gaze of watching TV. And it’s funny and fast paced and compelling, too.
“My Appearance”
This is another of my favorite short stories and this one also has to do with TV. It concerns an actress’ upcoming appearance on the David Letterman show. Her husband and a TV producer coach her all the way through trying to convince her that Letterman is the anti-show, that he is all about insincerity and that if she is sincere he will skewer her. This story is about so much more than Letterman, and TV, but it’s all done in this very amusing way (and gets Letterman down really well).
I also love how this whole story, this whole setup about this woman and her husband and the media and everything is basically a prelude to the main part of the story which we will never see. The final line sets up an unknown (but guessed at) portion of the story that has literally nothing to do with Letterman.
It’s interesting that his non-fiction piece “E Unibus Pluram” about the effects of irony and television (and which references Letterman) came out the next year–did writing this story make him want to inspect TV further or the other way around?
INFINITE JEST
As with Broom, only more so, how on earth do you except at 1000 page book? What are you going to focus on? It’s absurd to even think about it. But once again, these excerpts allow for the reader to take these set pieces as distinct little stories–little arcs that more or less resolve themselves and in which one will have to imagine how they fit into the larger story. At first I didn’t think they’d included the endnotes, which would have been a travesty. But they do–they start on page 362. And, cleverly, they only include the relevant endnotes (numbered as they originally were in the book, so there are vast numbers skipped).
So just how do you decide what to leave out of this massive book? If you want a reasonable amount of information (while skipping a lot of plot at the same time), what would you leave out? The entire Marathe-Steepely section is excised, which makes sense as it is dense and (intentionally) confusing. The amazing and awesome Eschaton scene is left out presumably because it is so detailed and complicated without actually talking too much about the main characters. The delightful Kyle sections are ignored, and, tellingly, we see nothing of Orin or the Canadian Separatists (although both are alluded to).
These excerpts are really about the Incandenza family (minus Orin) as well as Don Gately (and AA). It’s somewhat amazing how much is left out, and it gives the book a rather different feel from what it is in total). At the same time, it retain a workable book which successfully forms what’s left.
The “titles” are mostly just lines from the book rather than titles or chapter headings.
“Year of Glad” is the opening of the book. This sees Hal Incandenza at a college interview. And yet he incapable of speech–in fact his interviewers find his attempts at speech to be animatistic and seizure-like. The interview starts off well, with his uncle and coach talking to the interview committee on his behalf, but as soon as they leave and Hal is on his own, thinks turn south. This is a tour de force of observational writing and while it’s a confusing section without having read the book (and maybe even if you have), you can get lost in the language and the confusion of wondering just what the hell happened to Hal to make him like this. Especially since clearly not too long ago he was fully functioning and quite smart.
There’s also a flashback to when Hal was little and he ate a piece of mold in the basement of his house. His mother is paralyzed by fear (as his brother looks on) the memory is also actually that of his brother Orin since Hal was too young to remember it all). [That’s all we see of Orin].
“Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” is all about Erdedy (one of the residents of the Enfield Halfway House) and his attempts to quit smoking pot. This is a wonderful eleven-page section in which he simply waits for his dealer to show up. We learn all about his attempts to quit in the past and the extent he goes to in preparation once he falls back off the wagon. It is so focused and detail oriented that it is a pleasure to read and fully reconstruct the scene.
“In the eight…” is a short passage that shows Bruce Green who had fallen dreadfully in love with a hot classmate Mildred L. Bonk. They both more or less dropped out and moved in together and are currently in business dealing drugs.
“Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”
This excerpt is all about Hal smoking pot and the drug usage on the campus of the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal is 17 and he likes to hide in remote locations to smoke his one-hitter. He gets really baked and then leaves no trace. There’s an extensive discussion about drugs on campus and how high-performing athletes tend to use or not use certain drugs (complete with endnotes about said drugs).
There’s a brief coda about a medical attaché and his watching a video that is on recursive loop. It’s the only real mention of The Entertainment which is one of the main plots of the story.
“Autumn–Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland”
This section introduces us to Don Gately, a 27 year old narcotic addict and gifted burglar who was the size of a small dinosaur with a head that was almost completely square. This excerpt shows his arrest and subsequent revenge on the Assistant D.A. who put him away (a hilarious revenge). And then a funny but horrible story about Gately breaking into another house while the owner was home and the accidental way that he killed said homeowner. There’s a casual mention of some of the things that Gately and accomplice stole which, in terms of the whole story is significant, even if doesn’t seem like it.
“As of the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment” looks briefly at Hal’s now dead father (death by suicide) who founded the ETA and was also a filmmaker. There’s a hugely long endnote that details all of his films (said endnote is very important to the full book and should be read carefully), although here it is just kind of interesting.
“Winter B.S. 1960 — Tucson, AZ”
This excerpt looks at Jim Incandenza (Hal’s father) as a 10 year old boy. He is getting instructions from his father about tennis and life in general. The whole thing is told as a rambling drunken monologue and is an excellent piece of writing. Jim’s father is a failed actor who hates Marlon Brando for his slouching and uncareful existence. Hal’s father loves and appreciates tennis and the skill and full body dedication it takes to play well. Young Jim is a gangly boy with a big head and an interest in science (he is reading a science textbook and wearing a bow tie). Needless to say the instruction doesn’t go well.
“Tennis and the Feral Prodigy”
Narrated by Hal, this is an 11.5 minute digital entertainment cartridge in which Mario, Hal’s handicapped brother has apparently written a movie which sounds an awful lot Like Hal’s vocabulary. It’ all about how to become a tennis prodigy (with some personal information about his family as well).
“But there’s this” is a section of transcripts from Patricia Montesian, director of Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House (sic) in which we get our first look at Ennet House, the other primary location of the story. There are several quotes–none attributed to anyone although clues are given about who the people are and how they relate to each other. There’s a stabbing (with a fork) by someone irritated with the other person’s finger drumming. There’s a lawyer who wants to argue the definition of alcoholic. And then there’s a story from Bruce Green in which he mentions the kid with the harelip and the snakes (we learned about this earlier in his section) and then we learn that Mildred left him to move to a ranch in New Jersey.
“If by the…” is a lengthy section about one of the residents at Ennet House, Tiny Ewell, and his sudden fascination with tattoos. As with many of the sections of this book, the narrator takes on a casual tone but it’s almost like a documentary. The opening alone “if by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance recovery half way facility…” And the things “learned” are vast array of personal foibles–that minorities can be racists, that women can be vulgar. Or that “you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it.” And after paragraphs of knowledge, we get to the tattoos. Various members of the house talk with him, although “Nell Gunther refuses to discuss tattoos with Tiny Ewell in any way or form.” Tiny is afraid to talk to Don Gately about his jail house tattoos but it does eventually come out.
“The bathroom has…” is about the time that Joelle Van Dyne overdosed and up in Ennet House. She is already wearing the veil (what could that mean?) and we see a very detailed look at her cooking up her fix in the bathroom of Molly Notkin’s house. She is pretty excited to have Too Much Fun. We also learn of her nickname as the Prettiest Girl of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.).
“14 November Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment”
This excerpt details the sad decline of Poor Tony Krause. He had a seizure on the T. We learn about how he used to be quite the thing, wearing boas everywhere. But then he got in some serious trouble and had to go through withdrawal. He was in the bathroom of the public library for a few days before he had to get out. He thought he could ease his symptoms with some cough medicine, but that only made it worse, it turns out. There is more about Poor Tony in the book, and it’s kind of a shame that it is left out (although it would certainly introduce many more characters).
“8 November Independence Day Gaudeamus Igitur”
This lengthy section is all about Boston AA. And it is done as a kind of documentary following Don Gately around. The details in this section are many. They turn what could be dreadful into the strangely enjoyable. We learn that Gately has been through recovery for quite some time and while in no way an old-timer, he is now helping newcomers through the ordeal. This includes Joelle van Dyne who he’s strangely attracted to…possibly because of her voice which he seems to recognize. Although she is also way too smart for him, he knows.
“Winter BS, 1963 Sepulveda CA”
This section is told in the first person from the point of view of Jim as a young boy. His father is intent on fixing a squeaky mattress. And really that’s all this section is–a lengthy look at trying to fix a squeaky mattress and the strange family dynamic that revolves around these three: A drunken vulgar father; a silent, smoking mother and a nerdy (he’s wearing a bow tie in the house) science-obsessed kid. We also learn that the father is currently acting as the Man from Glad and is in full makeup and white clothes. During the mattress inspection, the father collapses over the bed spring and the mother and son basically ignore him. The son runs to his room thinking about math. And the weird section ends with “This was how I first became interested in the possibilities of annulation.”
“It is starting…”
This is a violent and disturbing section about Randy Lenz. Randy Lenz wears a wig and false mustache and a long coat. He has issues with Rage and Powerlessness. He learns that is he can snuff out the life of a living creature, he gets a sense of satisfaction. Especially if at the moment of death he can say “there.” The violence is ugly–beginning with cats (and a lengthy discourse of trash bags) and moving up to dogs. He also occasionally does a line of coke to take the edge off, even though he is in the House. This will all lead to a huge altercation a few sections later.
“As at all…”
This is a hugely important excerpt. It shows Don Gately in charge of the night shift at Ennet House. The beginning of the section is all about what he has to do and what rules need to be obeyed. It’s a lot of responsibility for a former junkie. And then we find out about Boston’s arcane parking laws–cars need to be moved at exactly midnight–alternative side of the street parking rules in full effect. And that includes residents of the House. Gately has to makes sure everyone moves their car or else he has to deal with all kinds of paperwork that he wants nothing to do with (other people in charge often let the residents feel the pain of getting towed just once). Once he finally gets everyone together to move their cars, a ruckus occurs outside.
The ruckus involves Lenz, and some very large angry Quebeckers. We can infer that Lenz offed their dog. The incident quickly grows violent and Gately is right in the middle of it (Gately is huge, lets not forget). He is not afraid to fight these guys, but he takes a bullet for his trouble. The residents are wreck at helping but Joelle is able to come to his aid and bring him inside before the local security can get involved. It is a an incredibly vibrant piece. Wonderfully cinematic in the way it includes every conceivable details of whats happening but beyond cinematic in the way it details what is going on inside Gately’s head.
“And re: Ennet”
Concerns depression. It is a serious look at depression (not unlike his early story was). This time it focuses on Kate Gompert who has serious depression, not the run of the mill anhedonia which makes you not feel anything, hers is much more intense. This depression she calls it “a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it.” She is considered “psychotically depressed” which she finds even more upsetting. She realizes that people commit suicide not because death seems appealing but like people who jump out of a burning building–the encroaching fire just seems much worse.
When reading this novel, Gompert’s depression seems reasonable and part of the story. When you read the excerpts like this and see just how much he was writing about depression, it really clues you into his frame of mind.
“Joelle used to”
This is a great look at Joelle van Dyne in a flashback. She is currently in the Ennet 5-room cleaning the whole room. But it flashes back to how she first started getting high and cleaning with Orin. (Now the cleaning is the substitute). When her relationship was strained with Orin, she would clean.
But the cleaning is not the important part of this section, the important part is Joelle’s observations about the Incandenza family. Orin had introduced her to his father’s films. She more or less tolerated Orin’s ramblings about his parents–his father was practically autistic in his inability to show affection to his kids. His mother was the center of Orin’s life. She realized that Orin hoped that Joelle could be a conduit between Orin and his father, the way his mother often was. And that was horrible, obviously.
She reflects on Jim’s (Himself’s) films–she studied them first. Indeed, she wanted to be a director herself. And then she spent some time with Himself as well. And she came to believe that he was not quite as insane as perhaps Orin insisted.
The best thing of this section is the first Thanksgiving dinner she attends. April is super pleasant and considerate and never seems fake at all, but Joelle feels like Avril could stab her in the heart at any second. Jim gets drunker and drunker and then leaves the table altogether. Hal is ten and Joelle instantly dislikes him for his know-it-all attitude and ceaseless talking about facts. Hal has some tennis buddies over and they’re all weird.
This section also has a couple of footnotes that do not correspond to anything in the book, oops (309 & 310).
“11 November”
This section is all about Mario, the third Incandenza child (who is the size of a fire hydrant). Mario loves film and lenses as much as his father did (but not because of his father). After an introductory scene that shows the intensity of Coach Schtitt’s room (soundproofed so he can blast German opera), Mario goes out among the dorms with his camera on to film the campus. The first person he encounters is Lamont Chu who asks him if she has heard anything about the Eschaton incident (an excerpt left out of this book). And then he goes in an has a talk with his Moms.
This scene with April is a fascinating one, in which little Mario, supported by a police lock because the camera equipment he is wearing makes it too heavy for him to stand, tries to have an intimate conversation with his mother about sadness. Avril is so analytical that she winds up talking over and around him but never seems to really make a connection. And while she suspects that the person he fears is sad is someone in the family, we never know exactly who (but presumably it is Hal).
For he then goes to see Hal and they talk about their Mom’s old dog S. Johnson who traveled everywhere with her. And how devastated she was when he was killed (by Orin, accidentally). We learn a little bit more about the Eschaton incident, but primarily its aftermath–that Hal and Pemulis (an otherwise unseen character here) will be drug tested in 30 days after the tournament. Because Pemulis proved to be a good liar. And Mario, such as he is, would have no way of knowing if someone lied to him.
“The ceiling was breathing”
This final excerpt is Don Gately in the hospital. And in yet another scene that is frustratingly devoid of specifics (Wallace deliberately avoids them, in this case), Gately cannot speak and he is hallucinating. But he also gets some visitors. Tiny Ewell reveals a lot of Truths and Gately is proud of him for opening up, but cannot comment. We learn about Gately’s childhood and his sleeping under a roof that has a hole in it covered by a tarp of sorts. And then we get to the core of the matter–is Gately in trouble for the incident mentioned earlier when he was shot? He thinks he saw a man outside his room with a hat–who looked like the ADA that wants to prosecute him. Did any of the Canadians die in the fight? Well, one did, but he had a high heel stabbed into his eye so the culprit is one of the two women kicking him. But when Calvin Thrust visits him, he tells Don the gun is missing–which is not good for Gately’s case. Thrust is a hilarious story-teller and really recaps quite well the event after the brawl–except for that important homicide detail. It’s such an enjoyable and frustrating scene.
~~~~
And that is the condensed version of Infinite Jest. Again, so much is left out, but these chapters provide an interesting story construct.
There’s an Afterword by Nam Le who talks mostly about Mario and his inability to communicate with his Mother.
BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN
“A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”
This story is six lines long. It never really leaves an impression on me.
There are two “interviews” selected for this book. I’m curious why these were chosen.
“B.I. #14”
The first one is the first one in the original book–a comic portrayal of a man who shouts Victory for the Forces of Democratic Freedom upon having an orgasm. Which the women don’t respond too well to, obviously.
“B.I. #40”
This one is much darker. It’s about a man whose arm is deformed and how he uses that deformity to score with women–he calls it the Asset. It is a twisted look in to the male psyche.
“Forever Overhead”
Each time I read this I feel like I get more out of it. The plot is basically that on his birthday a 13-year-old boy decided to dive off the high dive without telling his parents (or anyone). The whole story is simply he approach to the top of the platform. It details everything from the sights, sounds and smells to his internal thought process about how maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“The Depressed Person”
This story is a perfect example of the away Wallace illustrated what he’s talking about with his writing. This story is about a depressed person–a woman who is so utterly depressed that she needs a therapist-inspired support group of friends. And the depressed person calls them on a rotating basis and apologies for calling them so much and going on and on about her life. And the story really does much the same. It goes on and on, turning over different aspects of this person’s life and troubles. It’s brilliantly written. But it’s also really hard to get through. Because much like hearing the depressed person talk, it feel like the story is never going to end. But it is so well written you want to keep reading. And beyond that it really conveys the suffering of depression (in a more sophisticated way that “Planet Trillophon” did–once again without sounding maudlin or pathetic–it is a realistically detailed vision of what it is like to suffer depression.
And again, it shows just how much this topic was essential to DFW.
OBLIVION (just realized I’ve never posted about this collection–best get to re-reading it).
I have read all of DFW’s books twice, except for this one. I read it about ten years ago and I have intended to read it again but just haven’t gotten around to it As such these stories were practically like new to me
“Good Old Neon”
Wallace likes to put his stories out of chronological sequence. And so we learn pretty early on that the narrator of this story, a 29-year-old yuppie named Neal, is dead. But the details of his death are not provided until the end. In fact, the way it is causally mentioned, it’s easy to miss it at first. Or maybe to not believe it?
So Neal tells us from the start that all of his life he had been a fraud. And he goes through exquisite details about all of the things he’s done and said that proved his fraudulence. How he would do things one way when people ere watching just to make sure they were impressed by him. This included all of the various things he tried before therapy–religion (he was the most pious), or yoga (he worked extra hard to impress the teacher, which was totally not the point). And then finally his therapist whom he felt he knew everything about and that he could predict everything the man who would say, including when he had a “breakthrough.”
The narrator goes through his life as a fraud until he decides that he is going to kill himself–so he really is dead. But there are two incredible things that happen as the story ends–which I won’t spoil–that take the story from interesting, to wow, to holy cow! There’s some fascinating insight into living a real and authentic life as well, a motif that Wallace explored often. It’s a very powerful story and is open to different interpretations as well.
This one line really stuck with me: “The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all.”
“Incarnations of Burned Children”
I told myself I would never read this story again after I’d read again a few years back. It’s pretty excruciating. But then I read the afterword by Nick Maniatis and he talked about what great piece of fiction it is, so I decided to read it again. And it really is a good piece of fiction–spare and brutal and unflinching–which is why I didn’t want to read it again. It actually wasn’t as bad reading it his time as I remembered *(probably because when I read it last time my children were little and possibly susceptible to being scalded with hot water from a pot on a stove). It is the slow revelation of the details (while everyone is in a frenzy) that makes it so excruciating to read.
“The Suffering Channel”
Given what this story is all about I’m fairly astonished that I didn’t remember more of it while reading it this time. There is a lot going on in this story. The beginning of the story is about a journalist named Skip Atwater who is writing for Style magazine. He is meant to a report on a new network called The Suffering Channel, but is sidetracked by a story about a man who can excerpt fully formed and beautiful works of art wholesale from his bottom. He is trying to pitch this story to Style magazine and they are understandably hesitant about such a thing–who wants to read about shit?
The story has many components from Skip’s talk with the artist and the artist’s enormous and strangely alluring wife. To the potential tornado that is bearing down on them in this Midwestern town. To the horrifying clown painting that is in Skip’s hotel room.
Back at the magazine, we meet the female interns who work there. They are all gorgeous and wearing expensive clothes. Their office is on the 82nd floor of the World Trade Center in New York City. And this story is set in July of 2001. Wallace casually inserts on three or four occasions that the events of 9/11 will impact these people in just a few short months. But this story’s forward narrative never gets there.
What’s so interesting about this story is that the actual Suffering Channel part doesn’t come until almost half way into it. And what a channel it is. Created by the people who brought us All Ads All The Time, The Suffering Channel was quietly put on air depicting photos of suffering–real life incidents throughout history which showed people in pain or agony. Its intent is to eventually broadcast full audio and video of atrocities from around the world (a detailed list of examples is provided).
These two stories merge when the executive interns at Style decide to run the piece but only with the cooperation of the Suffering Channel (whose publishing arm is in concert with theirs). The amount of detail about publishing and office work is just staggering and Wallace absolutely brings this story to life. Even though it about 80 pages long, I could keep reading about everyone in it for 100 pages more. The story ends (as Wallace stories tend to) rather abruptly. And while I wouldn’t need it to go up to 9/11 or anything like that, I would love to see what else he imagined happening in this universe.
This is a stellar piece of writing (complete with poop and (one especially funny) fart jokes).
The Pale King is easier to excerpt because it was unfinished and many pieces are somewhat fragmentary anyhow. These excerpts don’t even attempt to show plot for the story. Rather, it includes several pieces that were published independently of the book and really only briefly looks at a few characters.
$1 This is sort of a prose poem, I’ve never entirely understood it in terms of the rest of the story or even really itself, but it is wonderfully descriptive.
$5 This excerpt focuses on a boy who works so hard to be considerate to others that everyone who knows him hates him. He saves for UNICEF, he throws the most amazing party (of course no one comes) and midway through the party he has already planned where the uneaten food will be sent. Even his parents aren’t sure what to do about him
$6 This is the first of two excerpts about Lane A. Dean Jr. In this first one, he and his girlfriend are sitting at a picnic table having a Talk. It transpires that despite their very religious upbringing, she has gotten pregnant. And while it seems like she might “let him off the hook,” he knows he can’t do that.
$8 This except is about a young girl whose mother is, well, not great. And whose father is long gone. Her mother is with new men all the time. There’s a following chapter about her which I think might have been a better choice.
$9 This is the author’s forward to the novel (set, yes, in chapter 9). The author, good old David Wallace, explains how everything in this book is true, honest to God. It even has the notes that Wallace is known for. It is very funny very thorough and a rather paranoid chapter in which he insists that everything is true (even tough simple biographical details will show that it is not ), and that the publishing companies don’t want this truth out for fear of being sued by the Feds.
$33 Lane Dean Jr is now with a child and is working at the IRS. His job exemplifies the boredom of the job and the book (Wallace wanted to write a book about boredom that wasn’t boring). We see just how tedious is a job of doing thing that are almost but not quite something you can do unconsciously. He is so bored that the ghost of a dead employee comes to visit him to talk about the etymology of the word bored.
$36 This is the chapter about a boy who works to touch every part of his body with his lips. I’ve read this several times and don’t need to read it again.
Afterword by Deborah Treisman who saw the first iteration of this story back in 1999 and was awed and sorrow-struck to see how Wallace had “reshaped his own process as a writer into his six-year-old hero’s obsessive, torturous pursuit of perfection.”
TEACHING MATERIALS
This was the only “new” section in the book. It consists of letters between DFW and his mom (grammarian Sally Foster Wallace who writes an introduction as well). The letters are charming and funny, showing a nerdiness that is unparalleled in familiar correspondence. They talk to each other about various grammar problems with Sally being the authority. She also seems very sweet (unlike say Avril Incandenza whom she is no doubt the basis for).
Then there are several teaching materials that DFW handed out to students. These are the kind of assignment details that make students drop a class unless they are particularly motivated or can look at the assignments and realize what a special teach er they have. He is very thorough and demands hard work. But he also works hard to make sure that people understand. I have to assume anyone taking a class with him would never forget it.
NONFICTION
Much of the nonfiction that appears here originally appeared in Harper’s magazine.
Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley (1990)
This first article, a mere 14 pages, is a fascinating look at what may or may not be a realistic portrait of Wallace’s childhood. The article is all about playing tennis and how although he was kind of a tennis prodigy, he wasn’t really very good. But he was scrappy and had stamina. He says that moving from the Northeast to the Midwest made him very aware of the flatness and angles of the Midwest. Math became second nature to him. And, unlike native-born kids, he was able to use the disadvantages of the court and unruly windy conditions to his advantage. So while better kids might get flustered by gusts of wind, Wallace was able to use it to make his hits go in unusual places. I’m not exactly clear how much of this is true, but it makes for good reading.
Afterword by Mark Costello in which he says that Wallace felt incapable of writing fiction. And he uses the loss of grace in tennis as a metaphor for loss of creation.
E Unibus Pluram (1990)
This is an interesting, but very long article. It’s also kind of dull. Typically, Wallace doesn’t write dull, but this feels more academic than his usual pieces. It appeased in the Review of Contemporary Fiction and there is a lot to agree with here. It’s also interesting to read it some 25 years after it was written because while the references are dated, it’s cool to see how prescient he was. The technology that he mocks–the TVs where everyone will create their own content–has sort of happened with the web, but even the web has not developed the way the True Believers said it would–with each person creating her own individual content and not consuming anything from a top down source.
The article begins by talking about fiction writers and how they base a lot of their stories on TV–which is able to hold a lens up to reality in a way that shy writers may not. Although his inner nag comes out when he talks (a lot) about how much TV we all watch. But he makes some excellent points and the rise of irony and postmodernism in television is his gateway into talking about writing capital T true and eschew the ease of irony in writing.
And this search for earnestness really permeates much of Wallace’s work from this point forward.
The end of the article talks about postmodern Image Fiction and good old David Letterman. As David Ulin notes in his afterword; the essay “leads us to consider real emotion, real expression not as some kind of game for saps, but rather as a the only thing that might redeem us, that might allow us to (re-)connect.
Afterword by David L. Ulin in which he notes that we now live in the world that Wallace envisioned.
Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All (1993)
This is his essay about going to the State Fair. I’ve read this maybe six times by now. And each time I get something different out of it. It is one of his first long-form personal essays in which he plays a kind of nebbish East Coast intellectual among the locals in Illinois. It’s a great example of his maximal writing–where he, like a cubist painter, is able to show everything from all sides (all the while taking slipshod notes, apparently). And he tries to see everything–ag tents with giant animals (he goes there with his friend Native Companion), food and more food, competitions, rides, everything. He is outraged for her when she goes on the zipper ride and the carnies hang her upside down so her dress falls over her head. He is the uptight New Yorker, she curses and laughs off the assholes.
One of the things that was fun to note this time through was the prices of things “An off-the-scale $2.50” for a mind-bendingly good milkshake. It’s also fun to see his reaction to Dippin’ Dots which were novel then and are pretty ubiquitous now. Indeed, I love when he refers to an item as “something called ______”
I really like his theory that Megaloplitan East Coasters vacation where they can get away from it all because they are surrounded by it all most of the time. But in the rural Midwest you’re pretty much Away From It All all the time so a fair like this is kind of vacation. He also summarizes nicely the three groups of people at a state fair: the ag people, non-farm civilians, and carnies.
The baton twirling section is just fantastic, as is the square dance competition with his interesting take on the lack of non-white people: “The atmosphere’s the same at a lot of rural Midwest public events. It’s not like if a black person came he’d be ill-treated, it’s more like it would just never occur to a black person to come in here.” He watches car racing (so loud) and teenagers boxing and it ends more or less where it began with the carnies and the horrifying Sky Coaster ride.
Anne Fadiman’s Afterword is my favorite in the book because she talks about using this essay in her classes. She focuses on just one section (the one about food) and asks them to really parse out its structure and content. She also says that one student got to write to DFW each semester and that he would answer their questions for him. His letters always ended with, “Tally Ho, David Wallace.” The main takeaway from Wallace was how an essay writer needs to beware of the Asshole problem–it’s death if the biggest sense the reader gets from a critical essay is that the narrators a very critical person, or from a comic essay that the narrator is cruel or snooty.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1995)
This is undoubtedly his most famous essay, also knows as the “cruise ship” essay. It gets better every time I read it. But it is especially interesting to read it right after the previous piece because you can see how much he has changed his style in just two years. It’s not a radical change or anything, but you can feel a difference in his narrator–he is still kind of wide-eyed, but in a very different way than he was at the State Fair. It also feels like he lets us in on a lot more personal things–his desire to not be out among other people–his serious faux pas about formal wear and his concern about the toilet (hilarious).
I paid a bit more attention this time to the facts and figures of the trip–not like the old men taking notes on the engine, but I was interested to read this as something of a promotion for the cruse line–the ostensible purpose of the trip, after all. We all know how much he dislikes so many aspects of the trip and the Managed Fun (including the way it makes him feel about himself), but he is also giving a full and detailed account of what it would be like to be on a cruise–neuroses aside. Even simple things like pricing and requests for interior or exterior cabins and of course the general sense of pampering that you get (even if no one admits to wanting it). I’d often taken way that I’d never go on one of these cruises but if you can get past the self-reflection (and allow yourself to not be so critical), it sounds like a wonderful time. Although I’d still never do it
I had forgotten about the Managed Fun with the ping-pong (I did not forget the skeet shooting which is hilarious) and the loathsome Cruise Director Scott Peterson. I loved reading the horrible joke about the vacuum toilet and Wallace getting sucked into the joke and then being bitter about it.
This time though I was a little disappointed by the ending. He gives us so much detail and so much everything that the fact that it ends before he disembarks almost feel like short shrift. The fact that he just kind of floats away in hypnotic state is apt, certainly, but kind of wraps up the essay too quickly–after so many pages of details. Of course really what I’m saying is that the essay is 80 pages long and still feels too short–no bad thing.
The Nature of the Fun (1998)
Returning to our friend Don DeLillo, Wallace cites DeLillo’s metaphor that creating stories is like having a horrible deformed child. In the past I’ve found this metaphor to be really strong, although this time I found it a little hurtful to anyone with a child like that. Not the point perhaps, and I believe that intellectually the metaphor works, but it still comes across as rather insensitive.
Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed (1999)
Every time I read this essay it makes me want to read more Kafka, although I still haven’t. It also shows just how hard it must be to write about Kafka’s humor if Wallace himself feels like he has a hard time doing it.
Authority and American Usage (1999)
This essay is a funny, but serious look at language usage and Standard Written English. He initially jokes that most people don’t even know there is a kind of war between the two types of language nerds; Prescriptivists (linguistic conservatives) and Descriptivists (linguistic liberals). “Did you know that US lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?” These two camps influence dictionaries which in terms influences the way people talk and even think.
We learn about Wallace’s family and their colloquialism SNOOT (Syntax Nudniks of Our Time or Sprachgefühl [intuitive feeling for the natural idiom of a language] Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance) and how their family were firm Prescriptivists. As an example they had a infamous familial bet in their house about the proper spelling of meringue and a high stakes bet that his father lost. While this essay is deadly serious about the nature of languages–Wallace doesn’t joke when grammar is on the line–his examples are often quite funny. The essay itself is a lot more fun than the TV one.
He has no truck with Descriptivists because of the absurdity of believing that there shouldn’t be rules for grammar (how could a language exist) or that you could possibly document all possible usages (Descriptivists believe that all instances of a language–all colloquialisms–are valid). He also gives us his potentially racially insensitive–but not intended as such–speech to young black students about how they will need to learn SWE (Standard Written English or in this case Standard White English) if they hope to do well in society (and his class). It’s interesting that at the same time he so denigrates PC English–especially now that PC language is so aggressively under attack. But the key seems to be that the Wallace hates PC jargon not the respect you are showing to certain members of society (the fact that he uses she/he or even just she for his reader shows that he was aware of how damaging languages can be). But he is right how much the PC police (which started as a liberal construct and quickly became very conservative) have really damaged the language by twisting it so far from actual meaning.
It’s an excellent essay and is possibly even more useful 16 years later than when he wrote it–even if it is technically a book review of a usage dictionary.
The View from Mrs. Thompson’s (2001)
This is Wallace’s intimate look at what it was like to be in Illinois when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Again he is an outsider, but this time he is part of a small community, one that welcomes him even in his outsider status. The best part, of course, is at the end when he reveals that these Midwestern women who don’t know the geography of NYC and seems so naive are in no way dumb: Mrs Thompson can read both Latin and Spanish, Mrs Voigtlander is a speech therapist, and one of the ladies told him that 11 Sept is the anniversary of the Camp David accord which “was certainly news to me” (and me). But he is allowed to throw in a bit of lightheartedness in the bad guy Duane who carries a beeper for no particular reason (whom everyone is allowed to despise)
Consider the Lobster (2004)
11 years after going to the State Fair, Wallace is back at another Fair, this time it’s the Maine Lobster Festival. In the State Fair essay he does talk about animals as meat (even though he had bacon for breakfast). But the “Lobster” article turns into a much more profound look at the ethics of eating animals (surprising for Gourmet magazine). As the afterword points out though, he takes his sweet time getting to that moral quandary. Like in the Fair essay, he spends a lot of his time–an all-seeing-eye type of time–looking at the festival. He talks about the history of lobsters when they were so plentiful they were served to prisoners. There’s also delightful talk about the local Knox County Airport “The terminal use to be somebody’s house, for example, and the lost-luggage reporting room was clearly once a pantry.” He talks to one of the local cab drivers, “He also talked nonstop the entire way, with a very distinctive speaking style that can be described only as manically laconic; the truth is hat I now know more about this man than I do about some members of my own family.” But make no mistake, Wallace is going to ask some hard questions about morality and eating lobster (and other meats). PETA is mentioned right from the start (even if it is by their absence). Wallace identifies as a carnivore, though, so it’s not exactly finger-pointing (it is also self-pointing) it is just asking very tough questions. And it does make wonder what the readership reaction was to it.
Jo Ann Beard writes the Afterword saying that once she read this article (she is a vegetarian) she was sold on Wallace.
Federer Both Flesh and Not (2006)
There’s a great note in the afterword that since Wallace knew tennis so well, he was a great person to write about Roger Federer. And he uses “the more kinetic and athletic register of his prose.” Sven Birkerts also jokes that Wallace reveals the climax of the match he is covering in a footnote.
This essay is particularly wonderful because he both lionizes and humanizes Federer. He talks about his inhuman playing but also his very human tics and gestures. But beyond the Federer talk is talk of tennis in general. How the game has hanged over the years with technology and conditioning. How recent past champions like McEnroe and Connors would not be able to compete with these new players. And how Wimbledon’s own prognosis of the death of subtlety in tennis is incorrect.
I never cared about tennis before reading this article the first time and it really made me want to watch more tennis–the way he describes the beauty of Federer was inspiring.
Afterowrd is by Sven Birkirts, a man who has written great things about Wallace.
~~~~~
And that is the book. A fantastic collection of highlights from a fabulous career. One hops that so much is left out that it makes readers want to go devour the whole pieces.
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