DFW Doesn't Hate Anyone

Of late I've been on a bit of a David Foster Wallace binge. A group of us have been reading 30 pages of Infinite Jest a week since about mid July, and it's everything and more that the most superlative reviews say about it. One of those books that is under-served even by all its plaudits. Recently, too, since the dissertation ran out of time, I've been reading his essays (after a brief blip when I couldn't settle on a book and started The Double and then remembered what happened last time I handed an essay in - the need to read something very readable to get my reading skills back up and running, so I read Don DeLillo's Point Omega, which whilst not great, was nicely sparse and elusive. And whoever it was that said he was great writing on film, they were right).



So I'm now on to the last one in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which is the eponymous essay, the one about a week spent on a cruise ship around the Carribbean. I think it's quite infamous; the boat's name was the m.v. Zenith, which DFW very quickly, and with an acknowledgement of its groan-worthiness, re-christens the Nadir. In the book there's one about playing tennis as a young teenager in the Midwest ("Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"), there's one about TV and US fiction, there's one about his trip to the Illinois State Fair ("Getting Away From Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All"), a small one about postmodern lit theory, one about David Lynch, one about tennis player Michael Joyce titled "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" and this one about the cruise. (Not entirely sure why I listed them all there, but still). What comes out of all of these, and in the various Youtube videos I've watched of him, is what some people might call his "humanity", but if you wanted to be less bile-inducing, you might say ... that he doesn't hate anyone. He writes about people conned and sucked in by capitalism, by the media, by consumerism. He revolts at junk food, lack of community, Hollywood over-bearance. But none of it is ever directed at people. This isn't because it's simply directed at "structures", "corporations", or "systems", it's more complex than that, but never is it a case that someone could easily choose not to buy some piece of useless tat, or eat a salad rather than some horrible fried thing.


At a meeting yesterday, we were talking about DFW and someone said that he might be characterised (and has been?) as having a sort of classic US liberal position - this person used abortion as an example, saying DFW might be both pro-choice and pro-life. I'm not quite sure how that connects to classic US liberalism, but the point being that he often refuses to take a position, that he can see both sides. One might be tempted to call this a sort of humanism, but then you're back in the "humanity" of the man stuff, which is also groan-inducing, so I won't go too far. But there is something understanding about him. You see it in his video interviews (also part of the binge), where he is able to come up with a remarkably subtle position right off the bat, where most people in such situations, faced with having to answer a complicated question, simplify both the issue and their position in order just to be able to say something. What's fascinating about this is that that subtle position is probably far closer to what people actually feel about something than the simplified one-side-or-the-other variety. I would be fairly confident in saying that most people are probably conflicted about most issues. (Whether they admit it or not is another point altogether). So DFW has this ability to tap into his feelings directly, without any obfuscation for media, for presentation of self to the world, any of that stuff, and communicate them clearly and succinctly too. This subtle position is actually far more direct than the one-sided one.

You should also totally watch this video. It's a reading from the state fair essay, about the perils of baton-twirling. It's hilarious:



ADDENDUM: This lack of hatred DFW feels towards the people he meets and who fill his essays perhaps has something to do with fascination. In the end, his fascination with people, allied to the Charlie Rose-noted talent for observation, triumphs over any sort of dislike or anger. Ultimately, the people acting out the idiotic logics of postmodernity are fascinating rather than evil, and even though they are forced to project Professional Smiles retain some sort of basic independence that DFW can find.