RIP DFW
David Foster Wallace is dead.
He was probably, on reflection, my favorite "contemporary" writer, certainly the only living writer whose work I felt an obligation to purchase on publication. (Michael Chabon is easier to like, and I like him a lot, but my favorite work of his [Wonder Boys] is a success, in my opinion, because of its smaller ambitions; Kavalier and Klay is the sort of novel that wins the Pulitzer, but I thought it a less perfect work. I liked The Yiddish Policeman's Union, but I wasn't excited to buy it; I didn't really like Wallace's last collection of stories, but I was giddy with anticipation when I first opened it.) I can't think of a younger writer whose work I hold in anything like the same esteem, and the living writers from whom I derived something like the same enjoyment and wonder (and sometimes surpassing what I got out of Wallace) are older and not expected to churn out top-level work for several decades more.
I loved his essays* (the easiest element of his oeuvre) and struggled with his short fiction; aggressively experimental and mercurial (except when it wasn't) I thought his stories were brave and inventive but often had to hold them at arm's length, looking for the small moments of breathtaking observation amidst the formal gamesmanship. My favorite of his collections, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, contains several such interviews that made me wince in something like anticipatory recognition; I had not yet had, on first reading, the opportunity to be any of those men, but some of them seemed like people into whom I could develop, and I suppose I'm still struggling against that fear to this day. His more recent work was harder for me; the stories in Oblivion seemed, on the only pass I made through the book, to accentuate the things I liked least about his fiction and diminish what made me love it in the first place, but it's only one step on a journey now sadly cut short.
* (Not that they're all great; several of the pieces in Consider the Lobster, including the title piece but especially the epic engagements with John McCain and grammar, are well written disappointments, in my view; very erudite claptrap.)
His first novel, The Broom of the System is likable and clever but not so great in the end. Infinite Jest is the glittering tower, the mammoth meteorite dropped into our planet to general awe and adulation (or not, but whatever). I've read it only once and have planned to reread it for a long time; I even purchased a second copy (my first is in Tampa) for just this purpose recently, on the logic that I didn't mind funneling a few more cents of royalties Wallace's way. Soon would be a good time to start, I suppose. I offer up the standard, and selfish, wish that he'd left more of a body of work behind, but Infinite Jest is legacy enough for a few lifetimes.
He was probably, on reflection, my favorite "contemporary" writer, certainly the only living writer whose work I felt an obligation to purchase on publication. (Michael Chabon is easier to like, and I like him a lot, but my favorite work of his [Wonder Boys] is a success, in my opinion, because of its smaller ambitions; Kavalier and Klay is the sort of novel that wins the Pulitzer, but I thought it a less perfect work. I liked The Yiddish Policeman's Union, but I wasn't excited to buy it; I didn't really like Wallace's last collection of stories, but I was giddy with anticipation when I first opened it.) I can't think of a younger writer whose work I hold in anything like the same esteem, and the living writers from whom I derived something like the same enjoyment and wonder (and sometimes surpassing what I got out of Wallace) are older and not expected to churn out top-level work for several decades more.
I loved his essays* (the easiest element of his oeuvre) and struggled with his short fiction; aggressively experimental and mercurial (except when it wasn't) I thought his stories were brave and inventive but often had to hold them at arm's length, looking for the small moments of breathtaking observation amidst the formal gamesmanship. My favorite of his collections, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, contains several such interviews that made me wince in something like anticipatory recognition; I had not yet had, on first reading, the opportunity to be any of those men, but some of them seemed like people into whom I could develop, and I suppose I'm still struggling against that fear to this day. His more recent work was harder for me; the stories in Oblivion seemed, on the only pass I made through the book, to accentuate the things I liked least about his fiction and diminish what made me love it in the first place, but it's only one step on a journey now sadly cut short.
* (Not that they're all great; several of the pieces in Consider the Lobster, including the title piece but especially the epic engagements with John McCain and grammar, are well written disappointments, in my view; very erudite claptrap.)
His first novel, The Broom of the System is likable and clever but not so great in the end. Infinite Jest is the glittering tower, the mammoth meteorite dropped into our planet to general awe and adulation (or not, but whatever). I've read it only once and have planned to reread it for a long time; I even purchased a second copy (my first is in Tampa) for just this purpose recently, on the logic that I didn't mind funneling a few more cents of royalties Wallace's way. Soon would be a good time to start, I suppose. I offer up the standard, and selfish, wish that he'd left more of a body of work behind, but Infinite Jest is legacy enough for a few lifetimes.
Labels: Fiction
posted by medrawt at
22:43
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