"The next real literary 'rebels' in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels"
Hellcat, do you know what quote this is from, bc as long as it isn't Infinite Jest I want to read it.... My question is: Why wasn't DFW one of these rebels? Or was he? Did he consider himself one of them? If not, what was holding him back? Did he want to be one of them? etc, etc...
I bought the Rolling Stone that had the article about him. For me, it was pretty hard to read, and not because anything was wrong with it... I don't think I care to read much if any of of his fiction (his non-fiction is a different story) but my interest in him is growing...
Man, I thought this was going to be a post about the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. You know it's so big it has its own zip code? At least that's what a credible source told me. Seems like bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're quitting smoking? I mean, just before I come into town. You selfish prick. Hold out for one more week ... for me. I need a smiz buddy.
DFW: I've seen that quote before, but I can't recall where from. Seems like an interview he did once. Following his train of thought in interviews is more challenging than most of the stuff he wrote (that I've read). That said, understanding why he wasn't one of these new, young literary rebels (or if he was, which I don't believe he was by standard of his definition) is tough to say. I'm not about to dissect him. I think he always seemed hyper-self-aware in his non-fiction and interviews; he was the type to point out what he was and wasn't in his life/career/method, etc. Don't know if that makes sense. That's my two cents anyway.
This is from an interview he did in 1993. It's become famous among his followers for his thoughts on fiction, and mostly the line, "we become less alone inside."
--"I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of “low” art—which just means art whose primary aim is to make money—is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas “serious” art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it’s hard for an art audience, especially a young one that’s been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That’s not good. The problem isn’t that today’s readership is “dumb,” I don’t think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture’s trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today’s readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard."-- http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/catalog/show_review/41
An NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94626723&ft=1&f=13
A nice collection of links to many short stories and such: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/15/a-david-foster-wallace-retrospective.aspx
He was on Charlie Rose once. It's on YouTube.
Hey, I tried to get you to read his non-fiction, but you waved it off. I feel vindicated (for what reason, I'm not sure, it's just nice to say I'm vindicated). I'm about to scale Infinite Jest. I'm a little ashamed I haven't read it yet, being a fan. Better late than never. Maybe we can talk more DFW (the author) this weekend.
I'll be there on Saturday. I hope everyone will be out and about. If not, I'll drag you out and about, shoving a cigarette in your mouth while doing so.