DFW & The Pale King

Beyond even having appeal for outsiders, he was just the most talented and engaged writer of his generation, I think. And that was just something that was fun and intimidating to watch as his career unfolded because you knew whatever he was doing was going to be worth reading—and something you could look to for the kind of instruction we look to all the great books for. After he appeared on the scene, people’s fiction voices sounded a little different—a little slangier, a little looser, and also at the same time often a little more mathematically precise. It was that mixture of precision and looseness that was so influential.

The David Foster Wallace Generation

I am now half way through this book and...it is amazing, infuriating, unfinished, funny, sad and a look at some one who was gone far too soon.

This is a novel about loneliness, boredom, isolation, and the Federal Tax Code before 1987. It is a piece of fiction, it is a memoir, it is a vision of a mind that was both razor sharp and dulled by the pain of every day existence.

The funny thing, even more than Infinite Jest, Hideous Men, or his other fiction, this is his work that best provides some sort of catharsis for the reader, and the people who would benefit from reading this book, and I have a couple in mind, never will, mostly because of personal bigotries related to either the author (anyone who has a cult of devoted followers has to be somewhat intimidating) or to literary fiction as a whole. I have also found that DFW speaks to normals more than to well, non-normals. This is somewhat of an inside joke and something that I should probably explain. I had a friend who is an academic, and she was dating an academic, and when in discussion about their relationship, they consulted "normals" to see how people in the real world related to each other. I was both fascinated and horrified by this usage, but now...I love it. I mean, doesn't this help explain things like the Kegs & Eggs "Riot"? People in and around "academia" see themselves as outside of society, and that the rules and mores of society do not relate to them in the same way because they are different, and think themselves better than the "normals".

DFW, who was exceptional, and he struggled to be "normal".

The Awl had a wonderful piece this week based on his writings at the Ransom Center at UT (Hook 'em). From that piece:
To sum up: all his life Wallace was praised and admired for being exceptional, but in order to accept treatment he had to first accept and then embrace the idea that he was a regular person who could be helped by "ordinary" means. Then he went to rehab and learned a ton of valuable things from "ordinary" people whom he would never have imagined would be in a position to teach him anything. Furthermore, these people obviously had inner lives and problems and ideas that were every bit as complex and vital as those of the most "sophisticated" and "exceptional."

Even so there was still a lot of the "prodigy" in Wallace, something he hated in himself, not just something he mistrusted and had "gotten over."

Anyway, this is a novel for the normals, the alone, the sad, and...well...people who hate to drive. It is no wonder that I love it.