"Both Flesh and Not:" David Foster Wallace and the Posthumous Legacy

It's been over four years since David Foster Wallace's suicide, and shockingly/curiously/strangely enough, last year's publication of Both Flesh and Not: Essays is only his third posthumous release (2010: This Is Water; 2011: The Pale King). Posthumous releases have always been a slippery slope for me. I genuinely believe that the Wallace releases have not been done to capitalize on his legacy, but to add to it. The Pale King, even in its uneven, unfinished state, is a terrific read. I still haven't read This Is Water, but I know many people have been touched by its message. Three books in four years isn't that much. For example, as much as I admire the writings of Roberto Bolano, I long ago gave up on maintaining any consistency in his posthumous releases. They keep piling up, and even thought they're not throwaway or haphazard novels, the sheer number of titles have been overwhelming, and I feel I've read an excellent portion of his bibliography. I'm not saying I'm going to stop reading his works, but it's going to be done on a more casual schedule. Returning to Wallace, I'm down to two unread books: the aforementioned This Is Water and his debut novel, The Broom Of the System. I read Both Flesh and Not almost on a whim, because, while I made note of it, I thought I'd be reading it in the middle or end of this year. But while making my way through some other works, I checked it out and found it to be a very fast read. However, the layout and selections gave me the feeling that it was a rushed production, and while I'm (again) shying away from thinking it was put out solely for the 2012 holiday book season, there was the occasional pause.

But don't get me wrong: there is beauty and intelligence in these selections. The book opens with a piece I've been anxious to read for quite some time, even though I'm a very, very casual tennis fan. "Federer Both Flesh and Not," Wallace's 2006 profile of the athlete, is a terrific opener, combining the best traits of his essay and non-fiction writings. The piece, set at Wimbledon, examines Federer as a person and as an athlete, and the physics/philosophy behind the game. Some examples of Wallace's writings, both fiction and essay, are studies in a mind that takes in everything, sometimes to the point of being daunting. However, for all of the information packed into this opening selection, nothing is out of place or too much. Wallace has so many angles to cover, and he seamlessly goes back and forth between great, standard journalism and smart ruminations on the sociology of athletics and being a spectator.

"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we're talking about here is a beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What is seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body.
Of course, in men's sports no one ever talks about beauty, or grace, or the body. Men may profess their 'love' of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive stats and technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc. For reasons that are not well understood, war's codes are safer for most of us than love's (Wallace 8-9)."

This leads to a description of the physical and stylistic differences between Federer and his main rival, Spanish player Rafael Nadal, and, taking the game further, to a mathematical analysis of how tennis is played. To anyone unfamiliar with Wallace, this would make a fascinating essay, but to readers at least vaguely familiar with Wallace's penchant for mathematics and tennis, "Federer Both Flesh and Not" goes into virtually all of Wallace's obsessions.

"There are also the issues of how close you're allowing the ball to get to your body, what grip you're using, the extent to which your knees are bent and/or weight's moving forward, and whether you're able simultaneously to watch the ball and to see what your opponent's doing after he serves. These all matter, too. Plus there's the fact that you're not putting a static object into motion here but rather reversing the flight and (to a varying extent) spin of a projectile coming toward you--coming, in the case of pro tennis, at speeds that make conscious thought impossible. Mario Ancic's first serve, for instance, often comes in around 130 m.p.h. Since it's seventy-eight feet from Ancic's baseline to yours, that means it takes 0.41 seconds for his serve to reach you. This is less than the time it takes to blink quickly, twice (Wallace 22-23)."

Having this as the opening essay in the book leads to questions of formatting. A few essays later, we're treated to "Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open," a 1996 work that focuses more on the people watching and organization of a professional tennis tournament. Having two essays on tennis in this book is fine; nobody would question the inclusion of the multiple literary essays and reviews also featured in Both Flesh and Not. However, these would have been best served back-to-back. They come from different decades as well as different points of view. At times, "Democracy and Commerce" makes tennis an afterthought. The marketing and concessions are just as fascinating, if not more so, than the games happening in the stadium. Sports and capitalism have always gone hand in hand, yet Wallace highlights the seemingly obvious and makes this idea seem novel.

"The first thing you see when you come inside the Main Gate is teams of extremely attractive young people giving away free foil packets of Colombian Coffee from really big plastic barrels with outlines of Juan Valdez & devoted burro on them. The young people, none of whom are of Colombian extraction, are cheery and outgoing but don't seem terribly alert, because they keep giving me new free samples every time I go out and then come in again, so that my bookbag is now stuffed with them and I'm not going to have to buy coffee for months. The next thing you see is a barker on a raised dais urging you to purchase a Daily Drawsheet for $2.00 and a Program+Drawsheet for a bargain $8.00. Right near the barker is a gorgeous spanking-new Infiniti automobile on a complicated stand that places the car at a kind of dramatic plunging angle. It's not clear what the relation between a fine new automobile and professional tennis is supposed to be, but the visual conjunction of car and plunging angle is extremely impressive and compelling, and there's always a dense ring of spectators around the Infiniti, looking at it but not touching it. Then, over the Daily Drawsheet pitchman's right shoulder and situated suspiciously close to the Advance Ticket Window, is what has to be one of the largest free-standing autotellers in the Western world, with its own shade-awning and three separate cash stations with controls of NASA-like sophistication and complexity and enormous signs that say the autoteller's provided through the generosity of CHASE and that it is equipped to disgorge cash via the NYCE, PLUS, VISA, CIRRUS, and MASTERCARD networks of auto-withdrawal (Wallace 149-150)."

The aforementioned literary essays compose the bulk of this collection, and the first one is a fascinating exploration of late 1980s writers and the implications/drawbacks of creative writing programs (this interested me even more than it normally would, given that I'm in the process of applying to writing programs myself). "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young," published in 1988, explores the yuppie/nihilistic fiction of the likes of Bret Easton Ellis (wickedly described by Wallace as "Neiman-Marcus nihilism, declaimed via six-figure Uppies and their salon-tanned, morally vacant offspring, none of whom seem to be able to make it from limo door to analyst's couch without several grams of chemical encouragement (39-40)"), and the influence of television and mass culture on the world of fiction. This essay works as a still-fresh look at the writing styles of that era, without feeling dated or "time-capsule"-like. Quite a few of these themes are still explored in today's fiction, and Wallace himself was no stranger to examining how mass entertainment serves as a sort of drug and distraction from the act of reading and other areas of life in general (see, obviously: Infinite Jest). Wallace does this examination very compellingly, to the point that I hope to see a future volume consisting of his literary criticism alone.

"For instance, it's not hard to see that the trendy Ultraminimalism favored by too many C.Y. [conspicuously young] writers is deeply influenced by the aesthetic norms of mass entertainment. Indeed, this fiction depends on what's little more than a crude inversion of these norms. Where television, especially its advertising, presents everything in hyperbole, Ultraminimalism is deliberately flat, understated, 'undersold.' Where TV seeks everywhere to render its action either dramatic or melodramatic, to move the viewer by displaying constant movement, the Minimalist describes an event as one would an object, a geometric form in stasis; and he always does so from an emotional remove of light-years. Where television does and must aim always to please, the Catatonic writer hefts something of a finger at subject and reader alike: one has only to read a Bret Ellis sex scene (pick a page, any page) to realize that here pleasure is neither a subject nor an aim. My own aversion to Ultraminimalism, I think, stems from its naive pretension. The Catatonic Bunch seem to feel that simply by inverting the values imposed on us by television, commercial film, advertising, etc., they can automatically achieve the aesthetic depth popular entertainment so conspicuously lacks (Wallace 47-48)."

I won't get into any analyses of Wallace's book reviews, since I haven't read any of the works he discusses. However, his reviews are wonderful in their enthusiasm and their constructive criticisms. Nothing gets past Wallace as a critical reader, and his reviews are truly illuminating; at the very least, one of the essays makes me ache to read David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress. Another inclusion that I question is Wallace's introduction to the 2007 edition of the Best American Essay series. The writing is excellent, yes, but taking it apart from the collection makes it seem slightly pointless. For someone with such a vast history of publications, I'm sure there could/should have been other pieces besides this one. It feels like a page-filler, a case of "well, we might as well toss in this one." Picking a highlight of Both Flesh and Not is difficult (and, really, pointless), but I absolutely adored "Twenty-Four Word Notes," a list and explanation of misused phrases, full of mistakes writers (especially young ones) make in an effort to sound more "intelligent." In these examinations, Wallace is serving as a teacher to the reader, and one can only imagine what it was like to be in one of his classes. The opening word is "utilize," and I'm sure I've used it myself more than I'd care to admit.

"Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn't do, its extra letters and syllables don't make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she'll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What's worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: 'formal writing' does not mean gratuitously fancy writing: it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing (Wallace 261)."

Dividing up the chapters are words and definitions compiled by Wallace, found on his computer after his death. I've never viewed dictionary entries as moving, but knowing that Wallace was so fascinated by language and felt the need to compile these words for future use (or just general reference) does make for a nice tribute and insight into his work. Of course, I haven't touched upon every essay or example featured in this latest volume. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. I believe these essay collections are more rounded and insightful. Not that Both Flesh and Not is bad, but I feel it needed just a bit more selection and diversity. Of course, admirers of Wallace will read anything they can get their hands on. If Wallace's estate eventually publishes the remainder of his essays, this will be a good start. But if years pass with no future essay collections, it would be in the best interest to start with the collections published in his lifetime. But overall, this is irresistible and, while leaving me wanting more complexity, it gives excellent access to some of his smaller, more heralded publications.

Work Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. Both Flesh and Not: Essays. Copyright 2012 by David Foster Wallace Literary Trust.

The Man, Not the Legend: D.T. Max's "Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life Of David Foster Wallace"

I planned to read D.T. Max's Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story ever since it came out, and thanks to a friend tipping me off and accompanying me, I had the fortune of seeing him discuss his work at Chicago's Book Cellar. Max gave an excellent, humorous discussion, read selected passages and provided fantastic context and back stories, and was extremely personable and gracious to the crowd when he signed copies of the book. However, as I waited in line to meet him, I felt a pang of empathy. I realized that everyone was there, myself included, not specifically for Max, but for his subject. One of the obvious questions posed to him was "Did you ever meet David Foster Wallace?" He hadn't, except for seeing him from afar at a party (which is documented at the end of the work). Granted, one can't write a book about a still revered literary figure and not expect to be asked about said subject, but the signing felt like a way to get close to the late Wallace, even if deep down, there's much appreciation for Max and his dedicated, complete examination of Wallace. Bits and pieces of Wallace's life are well-known (his Midwestern childhood, his lifelong battle with depression), yet when I first learned about this biography, I realized how necessary it was. Now, upon completion of the work, I also realize how necessary it was to have Max as the biographer.

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story follows a chronological path, beginning with the aforementioned Midwestern childhood (Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, and his family moved to Illinois when he was a toddler). Max establishes details of life in the Wallace household, with touching details about their interactions. Wallace's parents were academics, and the combination of regular family routines, intellectual debates, and Wallace's precociousness led to a unique upbringing. His relationship with his mother went through some tense and sometimes alienated years, but Max's sketch of the early times are well crafted, combining factual details with a style that lets the reader imagine the scenarios.

"For Sally [David's mother], grammar was more than just a tool. It gave membership in the club of educated persons. The intimation that so much was at stake in each utterance thrilled David, and added to the excitement of having a gifted mother. As did her sensitivity--Sally hated to shout. If she was upset by something she would write a note. And if David or Amy [his sister] had a response, they would slip it back under her door in turn. Even as a little boy, Wallace was attuned to the delicate drama of personality. He wrote when he was around five years old--and one hears in the words the sigh of the woman who prompted it:

My mother works so hard
And for bread she needs some lard
She bakes the bread. And makes the bed.
And when she's threw
She feels she's dayd (Max 3)."

A good portion of the work is devoted to Wallace's college years. It led to his heavy drinking and drug use, which in turn led to his stints in rehab and attempts at a clean life; he struggled with his identity, attempted suicide, and made the decision to switch from philosophy to fiction writing. The combination of these factors mark the foundation of the public Wallace, and the private Wallace is a complex, sometimes broken person alternating between needing support and alienating those around him. His enrollment in the graduate program at the University of Arizona coincides with the writing and publication of his first novel, The Broom Of the System, as well as early stories, some of which find their way into his first collection, Girl With Curious Hair. As the book progresses, Wallace's stints in rehab, a halfway house, and his relationship with his mother are continual hints to the experiences that would lead to Infinite Jest. While this might seem like a hurried recap of Wallace's life, these are the more logical, famous notes. Max ends up sharing many more minute details, including Wallace's penchant for letter writing. There are excerpts from his correspondences with the likes of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, and other writers, editors, and friends. It never feels like Max is invading anyone's privacy; the words are necessary in shaping a full look at the public and (more relevant) private Wallace:

"Franzen offered to get together that April when he was in Boston, despite Wallace's changed circumstances. Wallace said fine but stood him up after they made plans. But because one tenet of recovery is to make amends to those you have wronged, he sent a quick note to his friend explaining his behavior. 'The bald fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,' he wrote. He begged to be allowed to bow out of their embryonic competition, to declare a truce against this writer who was so 'irked by my stuff,' because Wallace was no longer a 'worthy opponent in some kind of theoretical chess-by-mail game from which we can both profit by combat (Max 143).'"

When I mentioned the necessity of having Max as the first true biographer, that wasn't a throwaway line. Given Wallace's talents and the unique devotion and love that his writing inspired, other writers wouldn't be faulted for painting his life in a grandiose fashion. Max respects Wallace's intellect, explores his life with great sympathy, yet doesn't shy away from the negative aspects of his personality. Yes, Wallace was a genius, and yes, he was constantly troubled by depression and substance abuse, but Max never shies away from the bigger picture. Like anyone, Wallace could be mean and difficult. He pursued a doomed relationship with poet Mary Karr, which provides a backdrop for some of his less savory actions.

"As the fall turned into a remarkably snowy winter, Wallace's relationship with Karr deteriorated further. The two fought bitterly. Karr, Wallace wrote Franzen, was prone to 'terrible temper-outbursts.' She found him spoiled, a mama's boy using rehab as an excuse for self-absorption. Her needs were more concrete--food, money, child care for her son. He still wrote her constantly, even though he was just around the corner. He printed out in huge letters on a computer the words 'MARRY ME' and added, 'No shit, Mary Karr, do not doubt my seriousness on this. Or the fact that I'm a gila-jawed bulldog once I've finally made a commitment, a promise. My expectation is not that it would be easy, or all the time pleasant. My expectation is that it would be real, and illuminated.' Karr knew it would not work out, she remembers, when one day she asked Wallace to pick up [her son] from school and Wallace said he needed his car to go the gym instead (Max 170)."

And when Max discusses Wallace's writing and creative process, it's equally wonderful. He doesn't revert to hyperbole, as any admirer can do at times (lord knows I've done that myself in some of my Wallace critiques). The balance between descriptions of Wallace's solitary writing habits and the business side of editing and publishing are fascinating. Many terrific examples come from the back and forth between Wallace and editor Michael Pietsch as they debate, edit, and come to agreements on the changes, cuts, and publication of Infinite Jest:

"In April 1995 Infinite Jest was back on Wallace's desk--Pietsch had had the novel set in sample type again and realized the book was still too many pages. He sent a list of possible new cuts. To DeLillo, whom he increasingly turned to as his authority on literary matters, Wallace voiced a growing worry:

I am uncomfortable about making cuts for commercial reasons--it seems slutty--but on the other hand [Little, Brown, and Co.] is taking a big gamble publishing something this long and this hard and I feel some obligation not to be a p.-donna and fuck them over. Maybe I'm writing because I want your general aestheto-ethical input on this. I don't know (Max 205)."

Writer Tom Bissell's blurb for Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story is actually totally accurate: "This book should be handed to anyone who wants to write." There aren't any wistful totems of literary wisdom; Wallace was more talented than most writers of this generation, but he still struggled with doubt about his work and consistency. But generally, the book presents the case of a man who sits down and devotes the time to his craft. He experienced a lot of early setbacks (both personally and creatively) and used those knocks to fuel his stories and essays. The book rightfully breaks down the Wallace mystique. His vision was singular, but came about through time and hard work.

Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Wallace knows how the story ends, so to speak. His successful marriage to artist Karen Green gives him stability and happiness as he works on The Pale King, which likely would have been even bigger and deeper than Infinite Jest. With so many essays and remembrances that came out following Wallace's suicide, Max takes a decidedly neutral tone as he gets to the sad conclusion. It might feel like a cold summary of the end of a life, but there's no judgement or hypothesizing. Wallace's lifelong struggles tie into his end, but Max leaves the opinions to other people. The biography's ending is blunt, much like the end of its source material.

Reviewing a biography is not unlike reviewing a collection of critical essays--one can agree or disagree with the opinions, but the focus should be on the writing and tone. In this sense, D.T. Max has done an amazing job with this work. There's no doubt that he admires Wallace's work, but he is steadfast in presenting an honest, varied account. I've read quite a few reviews that merely pick and choose interesting factoids that can be learned in the book, of which there are many (there's an amusing anecdote about Ethan Hawke attending one of Wallace's readings). By doing impeccable research and conducting dozens of interviews, Max succeeds in giving readers a definitive look at a writer most people know only through oft-repeated stories and, of course, the books he left behind. By knowing more about what went into those amazing works, Max manages to increase the admiration people feel when digging into Wallace's fiction and essays. A lot of Wallace's friends and associates have written their own remembrances, the majority of them illuminating, respectful, and fascinating. However, as a generally detached biographer, Max manages to cut through the "legend," without sacrificing his own status as a fan and reader--were he not a lover of Wallace's works, he wouldn't have undertaken this book. Wallace is more real to me now that I've learned more about him, and I would venture a guess that this is what Max had in mind.

Work Cited:
Max, D.T. Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. Copyright 2012 by D.T. Max.

People and Spaces: "Oblivion" by David Foster Wallace

On February 21st of this year, David Foster Wallace would have been fifty years old. This milestone date was met with an unexpected outpouring of support via social media, with readers and admirers sharing a variety of quotes, video links, and seemingly "forgotten" articles by and about Wallace. Not that any fan of Wallace needs any real push to immerse him/herself in his writings, I realized I'm within range of completing his complete published bibliography within the next few years, and I decided to read Oblivion, his 2004 story collection. Among his story/essay collections and novels, no single title has ever received "bad" reviews, but there seems to be a definite hierarchy to their respective receptions (and, as I've heard via anecdote, Wallace himself despised his debut novel The Broom Of the System). Oblivion doesn't get mentioned a lot, and I found that to be a good thing, since it made for a rare opportunity to go into the pieces with no subconscious influences other than Wallace's other stories.

Recently, I read the perfect description of Wallace's writings, the deceptively simple term "maximalist." In Oblivion, this seems to be heightened, especially in the exploration and juxtaposition of minute and more universal details (again, this could easily apply to his entire canon). And it bears mentioning that any single piece of his short fiction can be examined with a full essay, so a single review of a collection will not touch on every detail or plot point. "Mister Squishy," the opening story, explores the mix of corporate and personal lives, with a focus group testing a new snack cake, while an employee pines for his coworker. A "human fly" appears as well, seeming both random and necessary for the story's arc. For an opening story, it thrusts the reader right into Wallace's expansive details, and manages to be both explicitly funny as well as finding odd humor in even the most casual observations:

"Precisely 50% of the room's men wore coats and ties or had suitcoats or blazers hanging from the back of their chairs, three of which coats were part of an actual three-piece business wardrobe; another three men wore combinations of knit shirts, slacks, and various crew- and turtleneck sweaters classifiable as Business Casual. Schmidt lived alone in a condominium he had recently refinanced. The remaining four men wore bluejeans and sweatshirts with the logo of either a university or the garment's manufacturer; one was the Nike Swoosh icon that to Schmidt always looked somewhat Arabic. Three of the four men in conspicuously casual/sloppy attire were the Focus Group's youngest members, two of whom were among the three making rather a show of not attending closely (Wallace 9)."

Just as precisely, Wallace can use the same details for uncomfortable, painful effects (as seems to be the prevailing theme in the collection as a whole):

"...which was another reason why Schmidt had stopped looking at the sky or going out at night or even usually ever opening the lightproof curtains of his condominium's picture window when he got home at night and instead sat with his satellite TV's channel-changer in his left hand switching rapidly from channel to channel to channel out of fear that something better was going to come on suddenly on another of the cable provider's 220 regular and premium channels and that he was about to miss it, spending three nightly hours this way before it was time to stare with drumming heart at the telephone that wholly unbeknownst to her had Darlene Lilley's home number on Speed Dial so that it would take only one moment of courage to risk looking prurient or creepy to use just one finger to push just one gray button to invite her for one cocktail or even just a soft drink over which he could take off his public mask and open his heart to her...(Wallace 33)."

"The Soul Is Not a Smithy" is my favorite piece in the book, since it manages to upend nostalgic sketches of childhood with scenes of domestic terror and a stunningly rendered portrait of a schoolteacher who snaps into a schizophrenic coma. The buildup to the teacher's collapse is done slowly and carefully, and unfolds almost like a scene in a thriller novel, since the reader is led to expect the worst climax.

"Meanwhile, the Xth Amendment (the first I-IX are what compromise the familiar Bill of Rights, although the Xth Amendment was adopted simultaneously in 1791) contains the phrase The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, and so forth, which Mr. Johnson, while at the board, according to Ellen Morrison and every other pupil taking notes, wrote The powers not delegated KILL to the United States THEM by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it KILL THEM to the States, at which time there was again, evidently, another long classroom silence, during which the pupils all began looking at one another while Mr. Johnson stood with his back to the room at the board with his hand with the yellow chalk hanging at his side and his head again cocked to the side as if he were having trouble hearing or understanding something, without turning around or saying anything, before picking up the board's eraser once again and trying to continue the lesson on Amendments X and XIII as though nothing unusual had taken place (Wallace 87)."



It is too tempting to read too much into a story, given Wallace's 2008 suicide, but it's impossible not to be disheartened and moved by the story "Good Old Neon." In this piece, a young man explores the ways in which his life has been a fraud and a layered misunderstanding, all told from the beyond following his suicide. He details his attempts at therapy and the psychological manners in which he manipulates others. Despite the memory of Wallace's death hanging over my reading, I was touched by the story's dignity and psychological explorations; it's another example of Wallace's ability to inhabit any subject as an artist and as an expert researcher. Even if suicide wasn't acknowledged in the piece, it would still read as a personal story, given his lifelong battle with depression and emotional instability.

"Once again, I'm aware that it's clumsy to put it all this way, but the point is that all of this and more was flashing through my head just in the interval of the small, dramatic pause Dr. Gustafson allowed himself before delivering his big reductio ad absurdum argument that I couldn't be a total fraud if I had just come out and admitted my fraudulence to him just now. I know that you know as well as I do how fast thoughts and associations can fly through your head. You can be in the middle of a creative meeting at your job or something, and enough material can rush through your head just in the little silences when people are looking over their notes and waiting for the next presentation that it would take exponentially longer than the whole meeting just to try and put a few seconds' silence's flood of thoughts into words. This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person's life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn't even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by...(Wallace 150-151)."

"Oblivion" is the painstaking title story, dealing with an older married couple beset by a husband's snoring, and the battle between his insistence that he is awake when his wife accuses him of doing so, and her insistence that it's a problem that he is unwilling to address. Wallace is just as keen to domestic scenarios as he is to anything else, and the fights and repetitious struggles faced by the couple are set up to be unique takes on the oft-told story of suburban family strife. The final story, "The Suffering Channel," manages to be hilarious yet slightly faulty. A newspaper editor for a People-like publication is writing a story about an artist who defecates perfectly formed, dynamic sculptures (Wallace is the only writer who can detail waste in hilarious yet appropriately sickening details). My view of the story's fault is a minor one: for someone as vastly talented as Wallace was, it seems as if he was going for obvious metaphors (art, creation, waste, and reception), and the piece works much better when taken at face value as a hilariously offbeat fable.

I haven't mentioned all of the stories in Oblivion, but the samples I've provided give a rounded summary of the styles and themes. Why isn't this book as consistently well-regarded in the Wallace bibliography? Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is generally assumed to be his best collection of stories, and perhaps it is due to the titles stories linking together to make it feel like one thematically tight piece of writing. Oblivion works as a true "collection," and the similar tones are divided by drastically different subject matters. Has Oblivion been more read by Wallace completists? I feel it's just as important as his other works, and I was very pleased by the sense of discovery as I continue to make my way through his published pieces. It's not "classic" Wallace, since all of his writings are connected by his voice, research, and details, but rather "expected" Wallace, which is not all meant derisively. For anyone looking for further readings, or even as a starting point for his writing, this is just as good a place as any to pick up or dive in.

Work Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. Copyright 2004 by David Foster Wallace.

"The Pale King:" Taxation Representations

In the introduction to Paul Auster's Collected Poems, writer Norman Finkelstein offers a telling passage: "Yes, this a writer not only with readers but with fans (italics mine)." This is equal parts true and a reason for pause, since it seems to suggest that literary writers are "above" enthusiasm that isn't scholarly or critical. Of course, there's absolutely no reason why certain writers cannot have avid fan bases in addition to more studious admirers. The best of both sides of this parallel is mirrored in the fans/readers of the late David Foster Wallace. In addition to his works being commonplace on university reading lists and being generally revered by the literary community, his followers can also be a giddy, fan club-like bunch. In the months and weeks leading up to the posthumous publication of The Pale King, my friends and I dutifully shared links and news reports about the book. Of course, given that he committed suicide in 2008, any of his publications (both books and articles) that have come out are always bittersweet as well. With some deceased authors, a posthumous release can sometimes be viewed as a way to cash in; with Wallace, even his unfinished works have lasting value, and are worthy for an audience still dismayed over his passing.

The Pale King was pieced together by his editor, Michael Pietsch, and his widow, Karen Green. As it's been recounted in numerous articles, the latest novel was a collection of notebooks, computer files, and discs, with notes that hinted to possible trajectories the novel might have taken had Wallace lived to complete it. It's worth noting that, while rightfully extolling the novel's excellence, Piestch is explicit in explaining that The Pale King is an unfinished novel; it's even the book's subtitle. That's not to disrespect the semi-finished product, but a way to make the reader know that Wallace, sometimes a perfectionist to a fault, undoubtedly would have changed and edited some of the pages and passages that made their way into the "finished" product. While it's much different in scope from his previous novel, Infinite Jest, it's a novel that demands attention to minute details, has a penchant for hilarious comedy, and ultimately demands more than one reading.

The Pale King follows a group of characters in 1985, IRS examiners who work in Peoria, Illinois, following vastly different paths to come to that time and place. Their back stories are detailed, and give hints to their personality makeups that may hint to their reasons for being drawn to a career in a tedious, psychologically challenging bureaucracy. In any other profession, these characters would have the same lives and the same inner turmoils; however, the nature of tax work seems to highlight their personalities, sometimes explicitly and sometimes metaphysically. Leonard Stecyk spends his childhood as an impossible model of goodness, selfless to the point of making adults hate him, and being ostracized by his peers to the point of extreme violence; Lane Dean is a Christian who grapples with questions of faith and a pregnant girlfriend whom he doesn't love; Toni Ware, a woman with a troubling history of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her mother's boyfriend; and David Foster Wallace, the character/author who provides legal/liability disclosures on providing IRS information, as well as his personal history of unethical behavior as a college student. The novel also has paranormal elements. In the throes of intense concentration, some of the IRS workers see ghosts that haunt the office. There is also the hint of an algorithm that can put someone in a state of immediate, almost spiritual concentration with no distractions, a mysterious entity that echoes the coma-inducing entertainment tape in Infinite Jest.

These brief summaries are not meant to be of any serious help in understanding the story's complete arc. There are numerous other characters, both major and minor, and while this may seem like a sorry excuse, even some established literary critics have professed some troubles with the book, as far as a complete understanding. Some of the chapters, while moving and brilliant, aren't attributed to any specific character. Even the most devoted readers can be forgiven for glazing over pages upon pages of tax law and documentations. Perhaps some of the frustration can be attributed to the novel's unfinished state, but that's not at all to say it's not worthy of attention. The character sketches are sometimes brilliant. For example, the sketches of Stecyk as a dutiful young boy are both funny and discomforting:

"...[his father] offers to take him to Dairy Queen as a kind of reward, and Leonard tells his father he's grateful and that the gesture means a lot to him but that in all honesty he'd like it even more if they took the money his father would have spent on the ice cream and instead donated it either to Easter Seals or, better yet, to UNICEF, to go toward the needs of famine-ravaged Biafran kids who he knows for a fact have probably never even heard of ice cream, and says that be bets it'll end up giving both of them a better feeling even than the DQ would...Leonard takes a moment to express concern about the father's facial tic again and to gently rib him about his reluctance to go in and have the family's MD look at it, noting again that according to the chart on the back of his bedroom door the father is three months overdue for his annual physical and that it's almost eight months past the date of his recommended tetanus booster (Wallace 30.)

My friend Paul , arguably the biggest fan of Wallace that I know, described his reading of the novel as "equal parts brilliant and tedious." The tedium, which comes in the details of IRS tax preparation, is completely intentional. Wallace describes it in a way to make the reader understand how detailed and intense the work is; it's not written to show the amount of research that went into the book, but to give concrete examples as to why tax examination is such a specialized field. It's not so much that it requires care and attention to detail (which it does), but that it takes a certain kind of personality to be able to deal with long days of careful readings and understandings of wildly complicated tax codes. Of course, given Wallace's penchant for footnotes and incredibly detailed non-fiction passages, there's a certain joy and admiration that comes with even the most daunting accounts. There are very few authors who could pull off such passages without losing the reader. We're not expected to understand the codes, but we're shown them for the sake of understanding the characters and what they deal with on a daily basis:

"For ruling requests concerning the classification of an organization as a limited partnership where a corporation is the sole general partner, see Rev. Proc. 72-13, 1972-1 CB 735. See also Rev. Proc. 74-17, 1974-1 CB 438, and Rev. Proc. 75-16, 1975-1 CB 676. Revenue Procedure 74-17 announces certain operating rules of the Service relating to the issuance of advance ruling letters concerning the classification of organizations formed as limited partnerships. Revenue Procedure 75-16 sets forth a checklist outlining required information frequently omitted from requests for rulings related to classification of organizations for Federal tax purposes (Wallace 248-249)."

Taking this even further, there are passages that even work to explain boredom, both historically and socially:

"Word appears suddenly in 1766. No known etymology. The Earl of March uses it in a letter describing a French peer of the realm. He didn't cast a shadow, but that didn't mean anything. For no reason, Lane Dean flexed his buttocks. In fact the first three appearances of bore in English conjoin it with the adjective French, that French bore, that boring Frenchman, yes? The French of course has malaise, ennui. See Pascal's fourth Pensée, which Lane Dean heard as pantsy (Wallace 383)."



I'm still convinced that Wallace, for all of his talents, never gets full respect as a humorous writer, and in several sections of The Pale King, it's evident that Wallace's knack for humor was as strong as ever. Sometimes that can be lost in the shuffle, but along the same argumentative lines as the "reader/fan" debate, there's also a need to understand that hilarious commentary can easily be great writing in its own right. There are very few authors who make me laugh out loud, and I did so more than once while reading The Pale King.

"'My earliest memory of shit is dog shit. Remember as a kid how potent a presence and threat dog shit was? It seemed to be all over. Every time you played outside, somebody was stepping in it, and then everything stopped and it was like "OK, who stepped in it?" Everybody has to check their shoes, and sure enough somebody had it on their shoe.'
'Embedded in the sole. In the pattern.'
'Impossible to scrape off.'
'New was always wet and yellow and horrible, the most horrible. But old got embedded more deeply in the sole. You had to set the shoes aside until it dried and then try to scrape out the sole's pattern with a sticky or a rusty old knife out of the garage (Wallace 347).'"

"In short, not only was it surprising to be greeted in person with such enthusiastic words, but it was doubly surprising when the person reciting these words displayed the same kind of disengagement as, say, the checkout clerk who utters the words 'Have a nice day' while her expression indicates that it's really a matter of total indifference to her whether you drop dead in the parking lot outside ten seconds from now (Wallace 287)."

The fact that I've been able to cull such varied examples of the novel's themes proves two points: one, even unfinished, The Pale King stands as one of the best books published so far this year. Two, even with his death (understandably) permeating the few reviews that I've read so far, this isn't a work of nostalgia, nor does it exist solely as a lamentation of Wallace's passing. While reading it, I was challenged, amazed, sometimes confused, and ultimately very satisfied. Wallace left behind an excellent piece of literature, evocative of his previous efforts and consistent talents. When getting lost in the book, the events surrounding its release tend to fall to the side, and the novel becomes the focal point, not the author's passing. Of course, those sad events are still there after the book is done, but it's a relief that The Pale King is a work on its own, even if it was a work in progress. Much like Infinite Jest, it's not easy. Careful readings, note taking, re-reads, and pauses for reflection are required. As I mentioned above, there is so much that I haven't touched upon or summarized. Taking it all in, it's a welcome addition to the Wallace canon, and the people responsible for its publication were right to see that it made its way into book form, and its unfinished standing and occasional questionable detours work as smaller pieces to a large, enjoyable puzzle.

Work Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel. Copyright 2011 by David Foster Wallace Literary Trust.

"Infinite" and Beyond

I was thirteen years old in 1996, and that year I read a major bestselling book. I was years away from having any knowledge of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which was published that year, as well as years away from having any personal indications that I would eventually major in English and devote my time to reading and writing. The bestseller I read was H. Jackson Brown Jr.'s Life's Little Instruction Book. Looking back, it was a pseudo-religious, "holier-than-thou" collection of tidbits that were at best common sense and at worst cheesy. At that young age, I remember being irked at the instruction to "buy great books even if you never read them." What was Mr. Brown's logic? Was it his goal to have millions of people with impressive bookshelves to show off when hosting guests? Elsewhere, he suggested reading the Bible in the course of a single year, which is fitting when you're not meant to read the books you've purchased with no plans of reading.

I bought Infinite Jest for a college course some years back, and due to time and semester constraints, we spent only two weeks doing a basic study of the opening chapter. Yes, two weeks on a mere fraction of a book that's 1,079 pages. Since then, the book has been a fixture on my shelves, and it has traveled across the country twice during moves, and it came dangerously close to being my own "great, unread" book. I've read almost all of David Foster Wallace's other books (with the final exception being his debut novel, The Broom Of the System) and decided this past September to finally read Infinite Jest. After nearly three months (which seems to be the average, even for the fastest readers) and a few near postponements, I'm happy to say that I've seen this goal to the end.

Any analyses of the text tends to come with two distinct problems. One, depending on the reader, the act of reading the book becomes the focus instead of merely enjoying and studying it. There are scores of websites and online threads which, in addition to having valuable summaries and insights, also serve as a tangible statement: "Yes, we're reading Infinite Jest." This isn't meant to show off, but rather to verbalize the size of the reading. This understanding ("Infinite Jest is long and complex") too often becomes the plot, instead of the plot itself. This brings us to the second problem.

In a sort of paradox, the plot of Infinite Jest is both extremely complex yet easy to break down in a superficial manner. I'll give the superficial one, but I'll gladly acknowledge that this has been given hundreds of times. If you've read the book, you can skip ahead; if not, understand that this will not spoil or sufficiently summarize anything. The book is a study of happiness, pleasure, entertainment, and family relationships. It's set in the future, and the years have been subsidized by corporations (The Year Of the Tucks Medicated Pad, The Year Of the Perdue Wonderchicken). The bulk of the action takes place in the Year Of the Depends Adult Undergarment, which, depending on the chronology, is generally accepted to be between 2009-2015. North America has merged into the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.), and the U.S. and Canada are at odds over the Great Concavity, a toxic dump located in what used to be the bulk of the Northeast. Québécois Separatists commit acts of stunning and inspired terrorism in the United States, with a dangerously addicting film cartridge factoring into potential future acts. In the metro Boston area, the reader is given an interlocking, wildly complex, and multiple-character driven account of the lives and actions of The Enfield Tennis Academy and Ennett House, a drug recovery/halfway house. The tennis students form a character backdrop for the Incandenza family (the youngest son, Hal, is a student at the Academy; his late father founded it, and his mother is an Administrator). Don Gately, a counselor/former addict, is the focal point of the halfway house, with an equally compelling and messed up supporting cast.

Yes, fans of the book will cry foul at this summary, since it leaves out so much and probably sounds like the kind of description attributed to a high school student writing with Cliff Notes under his desk. All of my book reviews/essays are done with the intention of appealing to people who have either read the book in question as well as people who haven't. With Infinite Jest, it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't: giving a full explanation of the characters would simply be too long. On the other hand, not giving enough information leaves out too many narratives and too much of the smaller details.

The Incandenza family (father James; mother Avril; sons Hal, Mario, and Orin) is often tidily described as dysfunctional, and while this is true, what seems to be overlooked is Wallace's theme of dysfunctional fathers. Every father/child (be it male or female) relationship in Infinite Jest is marred by problems, whether these are emotional (the following passage, to me, is incredibly reminiscent of William Gaddis-type dialogue, even if most earlier reviewers fell back on describing Wallace as "Pynchon-esque"):

"...Jim, pick the book up if it's going to make you all goggle-eyed and chinless honestly Jesus why do I try I try and try just wanted to introduce you to the broiler's garage and let you drive, maybe, feeling the Montclair's body, taking my time to let you pull up to the courts with the Montclair's shift in a neutral glide and the eight cylinders thrumming and snicking like a healthy heart and the wheels all perfectly flush with the curb...(Wallace 162)."

or painfully incestuous:

"Matty'd [Pemulis] shrink away: shy are we sone scared are we? Matty'd shrink away even after he knew the shrinking fear was part of what brought it on, for Da'd get angry: who are we scared of, then? Then who are we, a sone, to be scared so of our own Da? As if the Da that broke daily his back were nothing more than a. Can't a Da show his son some love without being taken for a. As if Matty could lie here with his food inside him under bedding he'd paid for and think his Da were no better than a. Is it a fookin you're scared of, then (684)."

These citations are not meant to absolve the mothers of wrongdoing. However, the way the characters are shaped by the actions of their fathers reminds me of a quote by, of all people, George Carlin (not an exact quote): "All the problems of the world can be traced back to what fathers do to their sons." In Infinite Jest, this goes for daughters as well. The first quote is part of a rambling dialogue by James O. Incandenza's father, planting the seeds of competitiveness and masculinity in a father figure who, for the most part of the novel, is seen as a ghost or in post-mortem flashbacks. In their own (sometimes very twisted) ways, the fathers either don't see the problems of their actions, or feel that they're doing good in some way. Therefore, a lot of the issues presented in the novel can be traced back to the dysfunctional fathers.

In a wildly opposite point of view, it's hard to overstate how wildly funny Wallace was as a writer. For all the interlaced characters and actions, for all of the pages of pychosis and visually striking drug problems, Wallace outlined the book as a comedic masterpiece. A small example of this is his gift for writing quick, juvenile, but ultimately hilarious dialogues between the boys of Enfield Tennis Academy. In this passage, some of the players are attempting to figure out if the cafeteria milk is real or powdered:

"'You're saying they mix powered milk and then try and pour it into milkbags, all to allay?'
Schacht clears his mouth and swallows mightily. 'Tavis can't even regrout the tile in the locker room without calling a Community Meeting or appointing a committee. The Regrouting Committee's been dragging along since May. Suddenly they're pulling secret 0300 milk-switches? It doesn't ring true, Jim (630).'"

This is not the most obvious example, but for such a seemingly inane piece of dialogue, Wallace combines both intelligent insights and hilarious ramblings. Perhaps citing such a random snippet is best, since they're spread out throughout the novel. Given its length, that's part of the beauty of Infinite Jest: Wallace provides both the important "big picture" scenes and events mixed in with these smaller moments, all of which combine for authentic characterizations.



After finishing the book, I set out to find some critical essays on the text, and stumbled upon a valuable collection of reviews that came out in 1996. The collection is run by one or more diehard fans, since any review that has even a whiff of criticism is put down (Jay McInerney, for example, is referred to as a "has-been"). I selected two different reviews at random to read, and I was especially taken by this passage from Michiko Kakutani's review in the New York Times, originally published on February 13, 1996:

"Perfect, however, Infinite Jest is not: this 1,079-page novel is a 'loose baggy monster,' to use Henry James' words, a vast, encyclopedic compendium of whatever seems to have crossed Wallace's mind. It's Thomas Wolfe without Maxwell Perkins, done in the hallucinogenic style of Terry Gilliam and Ralph Steadman. The book seems to have been written and edited (or not edited) on the principle that bigger is better, more means more important, and this results in a big psychedelic jumble of chracters, anecdotes, jokes, soliloquies, reminiscenses and footnotes, uproarious and mind-boggling, but also arbitrary and self-indulgent."

At the same time, these sentences are both praises and criticisms of the same idea. In the Boston Book Review, David McLean (in the other review I selected) offers the same argument, but with a dose of optimism and, for lack of a better word, forgiveness:

"What follows is a scattered, non-linear, hilarious, sometimes aggravating collection of voices that somehow manages to hold together to create an aggregate, a world, that works. Wallace has not so much written a novel as created a system that is fueled by his endless imagination, his pure verbal prowess, and a language that looks familiar but feels utterly invented. Critics will debate the efficiency of the system, while others will simply put the book down in annoyance." (italics mine)

Granted, hindsight is 20/20. Later interviews and revelations revealed Wallace to be a writer who wrote fiction because of or in spite of crippling depression (my reading of this book coincided, unintentionally, with the one-year anniversary of Wallace's suicide). Writing was his way of creating order and almost scientific balances. In a strange way, the realization that even the most intelligent, well-read reviewers fell into the "is this book too long?" question is comforting. Then and now, thirteen years later, readers and reviewers struggle, not with trying to understand the book, but to understand the audacity of such an undertaking. The simple answer is yes, perhaps some scenes could have been left out. The more complex answer is no, that Infinite Jest is essential in its entirety. As I mentioned earlier, the readers get the big pictures (the characters, the vision of the future, the philosophical metaphors of the existence of a film, a piece of entertainment that is deathly perfect), along the the smaller slices of the lives, dialogues, and thoughts of even the most minor characters. There will always be a debate as to whether Wallace was indulging himself or creating his word system. Again, with the understanding of hindsight, and given how the book has become almost its own genre by itself, every word is essential. The future will bring more examples of encyclopedic narratives and post-modern showcases, but David Foster Wallace's definite masterpiece will continue to be the example by which all others are judged.

Work Cited:
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. Copyright 1996 by David Foster Wallace.

A Controlled Lack Of Control

Posthumous accolades can be a tricky road to navigate at times. In relation to deceased artists, the recollections seem to hit a high for roughly two weeks following the person's passing, and then quieting down. Once the reality has set in, once a (for lack of a better phrase) period of healing has been dealt with, more honest assessments can be made. In those two weeks (this is not at all a scientific time frame, nor is it meant to trivialize or quantify someone's death), the tributes can be clouded by honest, raw emotions, almost out of a disbelief of the death in question. One example is the death of Heath Ledger and his following performance in The Dark Knight. At first, the film was hyped because of Ledger's death (whether one wants to admit this or not), which quickly turned into honest praise once everyone saw his incredible performance. This led to sadness, given his talent and what he would have accomplished in the future. These ideas happen to lend themselves easily to David Foster Wallace. After his suicide, I wrote a pretty short tribute to him, under the influence of the aforementioned raw emotions. However, six months later, his work and life have taken on a new focus, thanks to the March 9th issue of The New Yorker.

The magazine ran a wonderful, touching biographical/professional tribute to Wallace, written by D.T. Max. This was followed by an excerpt ("Wiggle Room") from what would have been his third novel (the remaining manuscript is going to be published in the very near future). Max's essay, entitled "The Unfinished," is both a look at Wallace's talent and a look at his crippling depression, which were both related and separate at the same time. In what at first glance appears to be a straightforward essay, the reader is given the most honest, detailed look at Wallace's demons, both his mental illness and his feelings that his writings were never good enough. Granted, rare is the completely satisfied writer, but given his still devoted audience, it's shocking how Wallace's quotes paint the picture of someone who was both talented beyond measure and unequivocally unsure of himself in that same light.

"Wallace, at least, never felt that he had hit his target. His goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. 'Fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being,' he once said. Good writing should help readers to 'become less alone inside.'"

The debate over what constitutes good fiction will never end, but Wallace's almost generic explanation gives an apt definition. However, the work he left behind goes into the painstaking detail that his quote does not. "Wiggle Room" shows what it's like to be a human being under the constraints of extreme monotony, namely as a tax reviewer. As Wallace was skilled at doing, he takes a serious emotion, expands it in precise detail, and occasionally renders it darkly hysterical.

"Then three more, including one 1040A, where the deductions for A.G.I. were added wrong and the Martinsburg printout hadn't caught it and had to be amended on one of the Form 020-Cs in the lower left tray, and then a lot of the same information filled out on the regular 20, which you still had to do even if it was just a correspondence audit and the file going to Joliet instead of the District, each code for which had to be looked up on the pullout thing he had to scoot the chair awkwardly over to pull out all the way. Then another one, then a plummeting inside of him as the wall clock showed that what he'd thought was another hour had not been. Not even close. May 17, 1985. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a poor sinner."

This piece goes on fluidly to analyze etymology as well as to introduce a ghostly character. Wallace (as Max explains) did a lot of research into the lives and work of tax officials, and the product he left behind is evidence of that, yet it feels spontaneous and real. Max, reminiscent of Wallace's own definition of fiction writing, offers this tidy (yet dead-on) view of Wallace's work: "His prose slid forward with a controlled lack of control that mimed thought itself."

The notion of posthumous writing also showed itself in the same issues of The New Yorker, in the form of a book review written by the late John Updike. The magazine ran tributes to him shortly after his death, and the appearance of this review was strangely comforting. Even though he's gone, there was still something new to publish, since he contributed many reviews to the publication. There was no need to add any other acknowledgements of his death, and the review stands on its own. I might be expanding on this next week, when I write about Roberto Bolano's unfinished, posthumous novel 2666. I've been reading it for quite a few weeks, and as much as I'm enjoying it, sometimes I have the feeling that I'm not making any progress towards the ending. The mere existence of this piece of art, written when Bolano knew full well that he was dying of cancer, makes reading almost imperative, since the author wanted to get the work completed to be read and enjoyed. The same goes for Wallace's final works as well. While it's impossible to know how long his suicide was premeditated, there's the distinct understanding (as evidence by "The Unfinished") that he knew, deep down, that it was a possibility. This post might appear morbid, but in all honesty, there's still a lot of original work to savor, in spite of untimely passings.

Thoughts on David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

Like all admirers of his writing, I was deeply saddened to learn of David Foster Wallace's suicide this past weekend. Making it even more troubling was the fact that last week, I was immersing myself in his essays from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. There was going to be an essay posted on here about those writings, but I'm holding off for now. Usually I shy away from writing remembrances and tributes to deceased artists, since there's simply nothing to say that hasn't been more eloquently touched on by other writers. It was this logic that made me scrap plans for an essay on George Carlin a couple months back. However, I felt such a deep admiration for Wallace, and I don't think that any writer today can deny his importance.

What I loved the most is that he was the best living writer period in two genres: fiction and non-fiction. I didn't start reading his works until roughly four years ago, and his balance of fictions and creative/critical essays was literally refreshing, in the sense that it made me fall in love with reading and writing all over again. Whenever I reach the apex of my writing skills in the future, I will not have 1/50th of Wallace's talent and seemingly instinctual way with word crafting. This is not an ode or personal self-deprecation in the face of his death; it is fact, plain and simple.

Of course, the news reports of his passing also mentioned that his books were seeing an increase in sales since last weekend. This could be a post in itself, the fact that it always troubles me when an artist/writer/musician dies: the interest in his/her work doubles and triples. Why does that always seem to happen? For example, more Frank Sinatra CDs were sold in May 1998 than ever before. Do these sales increase because of the actual death, the increased media attention, or a combination of both? It bothers me because a person's talent doesn't change because they've died--Wallace's books should have been selling at their current rates before, regardless of his death. However, it's not bothering me as much with him. If it means that more people happen to discover his works because of these sad circumstances, that's worth it. In due time, if not already, David Foster Wallace will be placed among the best ever. Period.