Let's Book Club!: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (prt. 2) by David Foster Wallace

Part 1, the first three essays.

David Lynch Keeps His Head
Not really sure what to say, since, you know, I've never seen anything that David Lynch -- a filmmaker -- has ever produced/directed/acted in/been involved with, I think. Having said that, DFW's descriptions of everything outside of detailed comparisons of his (Lynch's) different films is insanely entertaining.

Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional... (cont'd)
If you don't have any idea of what goes on behind the scenes at a professional tennis tournament, or don't know what tennis' minor leagues are like (but you care), this is a really interesting read. The essay, for me at least, is significantly more interesting because it's set in MTL during the (now named) Roger's Cup (somewhere I've been!).

The part of the essay that leads me to believe that DFW may have been the modern incarnation of Nostradamus: he describes Agassi's groundstrokes as "like Borg if he were on both steroids and methamphetamines".

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
... is the best essay of the bunch, but is also the most tragic (though the writing itself is hilarious), which, as I mentioned when discussing "Suicide as a Sort of Present" in Brief Interviews, is how down on life he sounds (in ASFTINDA), or how a vividly he talks about wanting to die (SAASOP). Sad.

Sad, yes, but at least he's given us something to smile about -- I mean, his whole interpretation of what a Cruise is, a Cruiseline's attempt to aggressively ensure that you relax and pamper yourself. The way he describes people moving in/on/around the Cruise Ship, "bovine", his interaction with his tablemates and his intense dislike for one of the women at his table as well as his feud with the ship's captain is indescribably funny.

Mostly, the essay works so well because going on a Cruise is generally something that people think they want to do; it is, supposedly, fun -- much like, say, going to a concert or sometype of sporting event. But DFW, as is his way, finds and uncovers all that is truly strange, when you really think about it, or, when you spend 50-60 pages analyzing it.

1. The Inner Game of Tennis | Timothy Gallwey (134 pages) | A
2. The Last Shot | Darcy Frey (240 pages) | A+
3. The Road | Cormac McCarthy (287 pages) | A+
4. Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell (299 pages) | C+
5. The Last Season | Phil Jackson (304 pages) | B-
6. The Sunset Limited | Cormac McCarthy (160 pages)| B-
7. The Education of a Coach | David Halberstam (288 pages)| B+
8. Downtown Owl | Chuck Klosterman | (288 pages)| B
9. Can I Keep My Jersey?| Paul Shirley| (336 pages)|C-
10. Then We Came to The End| Joshua Ferris| (416 pages)|B+
11. Friday Night Lights| H.G. Bissinger|(400 pages)|A++
12. Strokes of Genius| L. Jon Wertheim|(208 pages)|B
13. Who's Your City| Richard Florida|( 345 pages)|C
14. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men| (336 pages)|A
15. The Book of Basketball| Bill Simmons|(736 pages)|C-
16. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again|(368 pages)|A-

Let's Book Club!: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

So, yeah, I finished another book. Finally. I think I'm feeling a little back to school guilt i.e. I'm not in school now, but it's September, okay, October -- but it's the fall -- which is a time when you ought be thinking/learning/growing, or, alternatively, pretending to think/learn/grow.

After attempting (and failing) to read The Infinite Jest at least a couple of times, but knowing that Foster Wallace is an incredibly interesting/challenging writer, I thought that his book of short stories, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, would be a good warm-up (or, at the very least, I was curious to read the book before seeing the movie). Well, after reading through the bulk - say, the last third - of the book in the last two days or so I daresay that getting through The Infinite Jest seems pretty unlikely in the near future. It's certainly not that DFW is not a great writer, because there is no question that he is, but he may be too good, or, just too experimental at different points to get through 1,000 plus pages of tIJ (w/ footnotes).

The experimentation, at certain points during certain stories, works well -- e.g. the whole concept of omitting the interviewer's questions in the "Brief Interviews". Where I have the most trouble with DFW is when he gets into the overly technical/scientific/futuristic language/plots/sub-plots/footnotes which just requires so, so, so, much energy to concentrate and follow along.

The flip side to the technical/experimental nature of his writing is that often the technical/experimental nature leads to some really stunning sort of depth/complexity/nuance that he can find in the most basic human interactions. That, and again, with the B.I.s, the way DFW draws up these incredibly strange, neurotic, sick, bizarre, men with these strange, neurotic, sick, bizarre sexual experiences. Some of the B.I.s left me laughing out loud, some of them left me looking around, sort of incredulous, in a - did anyone else see/read that b/c I can't believe that someone put something that shockingly, hilariously, strange on paper, and at other points I was just left speechless.

For me, the saddest point of the book was the foreshadowing of the third last story "Suicide as a Sort of Present" (this will make more sense if you know that DFW committed suicide late last year). Who knows, maybe there's nothing there, but the way I read it, and how clearly he elucidates the anxiety and pain and the unmet expectations of the woman in the story makes you feel the struggle he must've been going through himself toward the end of/throughout his life. At any rate, despite how tough spots of this book are to get through, it's well worth reading for its unequivocal moments of brilliance.

Grade: A

Up next: More DFW, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do AgainA

Movie Trailer dir. by John Krasinski



1. The Inner Game of Tennis | Timothy Gallwey (134 pages) | A
2. The Last Shot | Darcy Frey (240 pages) | A+
3. The Road | Cormac McCarthy (287 pages) | A+
4. Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell (299 pages) | C+
5. The Last Season | Phil Jackson (304 pages) | B-
6. The Sunset Limited | Cormac McCarthy (160 pages)| B-
7. The Education of a Coach | David Halberstam (288 pages)| B+
8. Downtown Owl | Chuck Klosterman | (288 pages)| B
9. Can I Keep My Jersey?| Paul Shirley| (336 pages)|C-
10. Then We Came to The End| Joshua Ferris| (416 pages)|B+
11. Friday Night Lights| H.G. Bissinger|(400 pages)|A++
12. Strokes of Genius| L. Jon Wertheim|(208 pages)|B
13. Who's Your City| Richard Florida|( 345 pages)|C
14. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men| (336 pages)|A

Sunday Bullets: Sheeeeeeet

• Today, or rather Friday, but I guess its still sad today... anyways, the writer David Foster Wallace passed away. If you are not familiar with DFW and you own a dictionary (he's wordy, but super hilarious), I would highly recommend picking up something by him. This is the part of the post where I vow that I will, in fact, get through the Infinite Jest, his 1,079 page masterpiece... eventually. Oh, and I suppose this - Presidential Election Season - would also be a good time to mention he wrote a really terrific essay on Rep. Presidential Nominee John McCain in his book Consider the Lobster.

• Last week, Basketbawful had an interesting post on 'The Dunning-Kruger Effect' which is: "The phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge or skill tend to think they know more or have more skill than they do, while simultaneously overlooking or underestimating the knowledge and skills of others."

• Mark's prediction for Saturday's SNL sketch. Hilarious.

• Kyle's round up (in thumbs up, thumbs down fashion) of the US Open. And, for the record I still think, including Fed's win over Andreev, that Pete still trumps Fed as the greatest of all time. While RF did prove that he "isn't finished" and that he still really wants to win Slams (I loved seeing him get a little fired up), we still haven't seen him beat a top player at the top of their game -- Andreev doesn't count. Djokovic, who was clearly shaken by the NY crowd after his post-match stupidity vs. Roddick doesn't count, and neither does Andy 'I'm just happy to be in a slam final' Murray.

• Apparently, my sources tell me, that the new TV on the Radio album has leaked. Suffice to say its no Return to Cookie Mountain (my #1 of 2006), and it might be as big a disaster as (for the record I was going to say Ike, but then thought better of it) My Morning Jackets 'Evil Urges'...