David Seruyange's Radio Weblog

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

David Foster Wallace

I mentioned last week that I was going to his reading at the Hammer Museum. It was more than I expected. Even though I had only read from Wallace¹, he seemed to be at his best. The moderator said only one thing I agreed with: that his writing is almost instantly recognizable, even in the smallest of chunks. His reading of two short pieces demonstrated her intuitive comment to be true.

There was quite a crowd gathered to see him. Some were students but quite a few, especially those who were brave enough to ask questions afterwards, were enthusiasts like me for whom Wallace had opened a new world in our understanding of what a book could be.

His first piece was cheeky and although there were larger, more subtle themes, he had most of us laughing with pleasure at each turn. I really like hearing writers read their work because they provide a natural voice for how their story flows. If you've ever read his work, you know that he not only footnotes his work obsessively, but he is capable of incredibly long sentences and the most excruciating detail. He also will sometimes revisit something (an thing, a place, a person), over and over again, adding layer upon layer of detail, telling you the story in a new light as each component is revealed.

His second piece was distrubing. Although he warned us ahead of time, it didn't detract from how discomforting the story became. It was strange, I kept finding myself thinking, that the same group of folks (myself included) who had been laughing at each paragraph of his previous piece would now give distressed sighing noises in unison. The truth of good art is that it is gripping.

There was a discussion afterwards which was almost useless as UCLA professor Mona Simpson bumbled through her rabid assumptions of Wallace, often taking time to talk about herself. Most of the questions from the audience were either too abstract or generalizations that Wallace mercilessly dealt with. A few times, however, there was this true flicker of the honesty of a guy who writes fiction and has so many critics and students reading too much into it. And I few times I thought the questioners were onto something that he casually brushed off, but which pressed on some of the finer points of his writing. For example, someone asked about his research methods and how excited he got about learning what he was writing about. Even though he shrugged his way through it, there is something to a guy who just read a story that covers, in exquisite detail, the inner workings of the IRS bureaucracy. He may play it off but make no mistake, he must really dive into his subject matter.

One thing he said, in particular, resonates with me. He was talking about endings in response to a good question about why he had a tendency to "drop off" the reader when his stories were seeming to climax. Most endings have been done, he responded, there are set number of ways for a story to end and after watching a lot of tv one knows all of them. The real story, he seemed to be saying, was in the tell. The detail. How you get there. And it seems that is the substance of his style. I think his writing works for people who perk up at descriptions, grammer, and prose, and fails for those who want television endings.

posted in [home], [books]

¹If you want something managable by Wallace, I recommend Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

9:45:12 AM comment []

Stupid Republicans

This showed up not to long after elections. If I were a histrionic right winger I'd say that it was consolation for the "liberals" after losing the election. It's ironic that perception is that "liberals" (for lack of a better term) are considered the intellectuals (or, at least, consider themselves the intellectuals) when the Republican party is a top down heirarchy of idealogues, politicians, yes-men, and religious folk.

A few months ago I ran across The Intellectual Activist while I was looking for pictures of graveyards in Philadelphia. This daily contains a round up of conservative journalism for the day, blended with little snippets of art at the end of the publication. The trial mode gives you a great feel for it but at $74 per year, it's best suited for those that benifit directly from the permanent tax cuts on dividends.

This is representative of the sort of subtle, but undeniable intellectual side of the conservative. Take away the "aw, shucks" folks, and the anti-abortion straight ticket, and you find some interesting minds behind it all, forging a path that blends "values¹" with some very concrete ideas that tend to be better shaped and defined than anything "liberal."

American policy is also being sculpted by similar intellectual conservatives. What we know today as "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and the "Axis of Evil" were cooked up in think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute by people like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. These are not back country folk. Their biographies are peppered with references to USC, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and other prestigious schools. In their political life they aren't really elected; they are powerful bureaucrats.

Months ago I saw Thomas Frank do a reading on his book What's the matter with Kansas?, in which he took every opportunity he could to point out the sheer stupidity of "the right," who he thinks of as "...evangelical Christians, antiabortion activists, gun-nuts, and Bubbas." The audience, sympathetic to his frustration and eager to consider themselves educated, laughed frequently.

And to a degree one can see where it comes from: Rush Limbaugh reminds me of a chimpanzee in a Nairobi zoo named Sebastian. Sebastian had one trick: someone had taught him how to smoke. It was fascinating and pathetic at the same time. I felt sorry for Sebastian, especially after other animals started to overshadow him. There's also Anne Coulter, so eager for publicity and attention that any wild claim for TV time will do.

But serious thinking, research, and scholarship are what direct American conservatives. They are clever, try as you might (want?) to think otherwise. Their biggest enemy, it seems, is not the "liberal," nor is it overseas in a place like Iraq. Their biggest enemy, like most highly successful folks, is their arrogance². You will find the thinkers everywhere, from the New York Times to the National Review to the Wall Street Journal. It's hard to read it and not become influenced.

posted in [home], [prattle]

¹All of our decisions are based on values. It is, rather, a priority of what we think is valuable.
²The Wikipedia article points out that Perle thought the US could take Iraq with 40,000 ground troops.

12:24:47 AM comment []