A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

More brief than his novels, just as inviting, conversational, thought-provoking, and funny. The addition of a self-effacing first person is really charming. After having read the novels, which are so cool they're practically untouchable, this book is absolutely sparkling. I'd say David Foster Wallace is even better at nonfiction!

The title essay, about a hundred pages, is a sort of spy mission where the author, a man who makes it clear that he loathes the philistinism of conspicuous consumerism, poses as a boat cruise passenger and chronicles the depression and uneasiness that results from a luxury boat cruise. Wallace's depression is our joy because he is extremely funny in the way he shows how the Pampering Industry, that is, the boat cruise staff, is in fact a bunch of bullies who force us to "have a good time" as we luxuriate on a cruiser, which Wallace envisions as a sort of huge, warm womb where consciousness is lost and where the tourists experience a sort of death. Funny, profound, disturbing, Wallace hits a home run in an essay that was originally published in Harper's magazine around 1995. I believe this version is slightly different, longer, but curiously, missing some juicy parts that I remember enjoying in the magazine version.

David Foster Wallace is a gifted writer and always a joy to read. His fiction is groundbreaking, and as this book proves, his nonfiction may even be better.

"A supposedly fun thing" is a collection of essays that are ostensibly stabs at journalism, the big joke being that Wallace is no journalist. He comes off as an endearingly neurotic-bordering-on-pathologically-self-concious red headed step child of Hunter S. Thompson. In fact, it could even be stated that this book is a sort of postmodern inversion of "The Great Shark Hunt", where Thompson's diving in head first to live inside the events he reports is replaced by Wallace's endearing midwestern unwillingness to get in the way and fear of making a nuisance and/or humiliating spectacle of himself.

Mixed in with all that, though, are startling on point revelations about the state of American Culture, what it means to be an american, the nature of art, and the human condition, which one normally doesn't expect from works about TV, Tennis, State Fairs, or Carribean Pleasure Cruises(in the title essay).

While it may not be as great an accomplishment as Infinite Jest (and the comparison to that magnificent book is the only reason this is getting four stars instead of five), "Supposedly Fun Thing" is without a doubt an incredible read and well worth the price of entry.

James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, entitled _Genius_, spent a while defending that choice of adjective. The word ``genius" gets tossed around so much these days that it's been stripped of almost all its value. I tried to come up with a suitable subjective definition of genius, and my provisional one is something like the following: a genius is someone whose work changes the future direction that his particular speciality takes; after he's published his work, his speciality will never be the same again. By this definition - and by any others that I can think of - David Foster Wallace is a genius.

His genius comes from a few directions. First is his astonishing ability to meld diverse thoughts into a coherent whole. I think this is revealed most clearly in ``E Unibus Plurum," Wallace's essay within _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_ about the effect that television - particularly television's habit of swallowing irony - has on fiction. He diverges briefly into thoughts about what this means for our society in general. What happens when we spend our time conversing ironically - that is, commenting sardonically, but not actually fixing anything?

But at the same time that he can be incisive and intelligent, he's incredibly funny. The title essay from this collection describes Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise liner for Harper's Magazine, and the strange sort of death-transcendence (his term, not mine) that defines cruise lines. It's both funny enough that I had a hard time breathing at certain points, and almost heartbreaking.

I guess I don't always think of Wallace's genius until days like today when I'm sick at home and pull his essays off the shelf. I learn a little bit more about his arguments each time; laugh a little bit more; and find myself in the presence of an old friend who's incredibly candidly honest with me: ``[The mirrored staircases are] wickedly great because via the mirrors you can check out female bottoms ... without appearing to be one of those icky types who check out female bottoms on staircases." This is a man who's laying it all out on the line for you: his sense of humor, his erudition, and his very human perversions. He seems like the kind of guy with whom I could have a great conversation over coffee.

Imagine this essay collection as a conversation with an incredibly brilliant friend. It will be some of the best few hours you ever spend with a book.

Mr. Wallace isn't just funny (and he can be wickedly funny), he has a superb command of language, isn't afraid to use words, is beautifully observant, and has a great sense of character. All of those gifts have converged in a couple of these essays to make them, or parts of them, utterly memorable. Unfortunately, there are some long dead moments within each essay that make me stop and think, Now here's an example of really bad judgment. What's unfortunate is that Wallace's mistakes tarnish the lustre of his finer moments. Without the extreme bad here, though, we might not also have the extreme good. And in the end it's worth it. There are a few writers who always get grouped together with Wallace in literary commentary, but not a single one of can hold a candle to this guy.