this book is the transcript of a video interview/conversation between david foster wallace and bryan a. garner that took place in 2006, several years this book is the transcript of a video interview/conversation between david foster wallace and bryan a. garner that took place in 2006, several years after dfw wrote this amazing essay/review of bryan a. garner's Garner's Modern American Usage:
i was lucky enough to have attended a similar interview/conversation between dfw and george saunders many years ago, and this book reminded me just how good he was in this context, how simultaneously awkward and natural - how his mind worked to make unexpected connections while still addressing the questions at hand.
for someone who has a(n undeserved) reputation for being "difficult" or "overwritten," it is worth noting how much of this interview is focused on his preoccupation with clarity in writing, and his discomfort with all the linguistic clutter that plagues us, particularly in business writing and advertising.
Buried verbs, which I was taught are called nominalizations, are turning a verb into a noun for kind of BS-y reasons. "I tried to facilitate the organization of the unions," instead of , "I tried to help organize the unions." People like them in bureaucratic, institutional, academic writing, I think, because some people get the idea that maximum numbers of words, maximum amount of complication, equals intelligence and erudition.
and to that i say amen!! utilize, anyone? that word is my personal bugbear. it is so puffed-up and important-sounding to the person using it, but so, so clunky and unnecessary. "use" is such a great word. there's no shame in using simple workhorse words.
But you'll notice, this is the downside of starting to pay attention. You start noticing all of the people who say at this time rather then now. Why did they just take up one third of a second of my lifetime making me parse at this time, rather than just saying now to me? And you start being bugged.
exactly. don't waste my time - just say what needs to be said in a way that will be understood. and i'm not trying to drain all the poetry from life - there are places in which big purple words are completely appropriate, but when you are trying to get a point across to the broadest range of people, sometimes simplicity is best.
…people, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority.
not me!! i see it for what it is: you like to hear yourself talk and are trying to be impressive, but any girl worth her pigtails is most impressed by precision.
i work in an office now, and have been newly exposed to so very many unconscious jargony words and phrases. it makes me feel like a little kid playing dress-up, so i refuse to adopt them. you want me to "reach out" to jack?? how 'bout i just "email" him? there is too much puffery in the world and i really appreciate that this bothered him as much as it bothers me.
because this just makes sense to me:
the fact remains that, particularly in the professions, that the average person you're writing for is an acute, sensitive, attentive, sophisticated reader who will appreciate adroitness, precision, economy, and clarity.
"economy" is my favorite word there. no one needs to wade through five garbage words to get to the root of what you are trying to say.
i am not a great writer. i am not a SNOOT. i have SNOOT tendencies, in that the misuse of "random" or "epic" gives me chills and i always scowl at the "10 items or less" sign at the grocery store. i am altogether too casual in my writing, and even though i know the "right" way to do things, i am not as vigilant as i should be when i am banging out reviews or emails. but i love reading books like this, where articulate and thoughtful people get really passionate about language and its deployment. my etymology class in undergrad was one of my very favorites in my academic career. so while i probably wouldn't have picked this up without the dfw-hook, i would still have loved reading it.
i could spend all day quoting from this book, but miles to go and all, so i am just going to leave with this really nice long portion of text, because it made the hibernating SNOOT in me smile sleepily at baby-dfw before returning to dreams of its own comma-addiction:
BAG: Why do you think so many children, not just in this country but in almost every English-speaking country, are taught not to begin sentences with conjunctions? You can't begin a sentence with and or but. My own recent findings suggest that you really can't write all that well until you're beginning 10%-20% of your sentences with conjunctions.
DFW: Really? You like it, I notice. Again, it would be a guess. Teachers have a larger agenda, which is to teach students to be able to make compound sentences with more than one independent clause. The big way to do that is with conjunctions and commas.
They're also probably trying to beat out of the students the kinds of sentences that students were exposed to when they were learning to read: "See Dick run. Period. See Jane run. Period. Dick is with Jane. Period." Right? So as part of the attempt to talk about more complicated sentences, it becomes easy to go too far and get knee-jerk and say, "Therefore, just don't do this. It's caused nothing but trouble. Don't start your sentences with but and and." When the truth is, eh, 20% of the time you're probably going to want to, but they're very special cases. So let's sit down for three hours and talk about them.
Well, you're not going to do that with a third grader. Right? That's why this is not a skill that you just learn once and you're done with. This is…You're never done.
BAG: A lifelong apprenticeship?
DFW: This is a lifelong apprenticeship with aspirations to journeymanhood. Right? Yeah. But I think that's a guess. It's very easy to make fun of teachers who do this.
A teacher of mine in junior high hated me because i corrected her about hopefully. She said, "You never start a sentence with hopefully. Hopefully is an adverb." Right? So you never say, "Hopefully it will rain today because my crops really need it." And the truth is there's such a thing as a sentence adverb that expresses the speaker's intention, but that's college or grad-school grammar. It was appropriate in eighth grade for that teacher to tell her students, "Don't do this," because most of us were screwing up with adverbs anyway. Right?
So her nightmare was some little nerd in the back row who happened to know what a sentence adverb was. But when I look back on it, she was completely reasonable. It would have been nice if she would have said,"For now, don't do it. Later on, as part of your lifelong apprenticeship, you're going to learn there are certain adverbs that are in fact graceful at the start of the sentence. But for now, boys and girls, don't do it."
This is part of my own recovery from having hated my grammar teachers. I'm starting to realize they had reasons for what they were doing. They weren't often real smart about them, though.
april is national poetry month, so here come thirty floats! the cynics here will call this plan a shameless grab for votes. and ma(UN)HAPPY POETRY MONTH!
april is national poetry month, so here come thirty floats! the cynics here will call this plan a shameless grab for votes. and maybe there’s some truth to that— i do love validation, but charitably consider it a rhyme-y celebration. i don’t intend to flood your feed— i’ll just post one a day. endure four weeks of reruns and then it will be may!
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anniversary float, for reasons.
i was afraid to read this book. i was afraid it was going to knock something loose in me, emotionally, and that it would be the book to cut the "i-don't-cry-at-books-karen" to her knees.
this is a book written by dfw's widow, after his suicide, and is a collection of free-verse musings about the end of their lives together, and the period following his death, interspersed with her artwork.
and quickly, so as not to dwell or invite sympathy: i have been there. i have found a body. i have spent nineteen years wondering what i could have done differently, how i could have been better, given more, how i could have interpreted the signs better, to have been the kind of person who doesn't have this memory following them.
i bought the book yesterday, and i knew if i didn't read it right away, it would be just one more book in the stacks, sandwiched between cookbooks and frothy YA dystopias and it would stare at me, accusingly, every day, as one more reminder of my failure of character, of my reprehensible fear-stasis, and it would lose all potential impact from having become a just another familiar prop in my house. so i sucked it up, and read it all alone in my house on a rainy friday evening, during the worst of all possible weekends. and it hit me again and again, but it did not make me cry. so there's that.
i was not prepared for the loveliness of it. for how much it would be a better-expressed manifestation of my own voiceless rage, despair, self-recrimination, and nostalgia. theirs was a different relationship than the one i lost, but it's got the same infrastructure, and nearly the same emotional aftermath.
there are so many passages i wanted to type out here, but it almost feels too revealing, too personal, to do so, if that makes any sense. and it's the kind of work that is difficult to excise a portion of to hold up to the light - it works better as a progression, even though it doesn't read chronologically. but there is a raw emotional-logic to its narrative.
and it plays rough. it is like being exposed to all the stages of grieving at once, and while there are glimpses of humor, it seems inappropriate to respond to the humor, pressed up against the wall of so much confusion and despair as it is. every single time she mentioned the dogs, my heart ached.
the news of dfw's death floored me.i remember the phone conversation that broke the news to me. i just whispered "no," and thought "not again," like it was a mistake, or a prank. and i didn't even know the man. a couple of exchanged letters, a single late-night phone conversation, some broken plans; but it still felt like a betrayal. infinite jest, from the first time i read it, was and is one of the most impressive books i have ever read, and i felt that anyone who could have written something like that must surely have been above the kinds of self-doubt and disappointments as the rest of us, with our comparatively shabby intellects.
but obviously not. and this book adds a dimension to the man and his legacy that was lacking in many of the self-serving memorial-speeches and articles that came out after his death. and she sort of addresses this, with such casually-sharp insight. this is a genuine love letter; a true expression of grief and the fucking howling anguish that follows you around like some kind of horrible shadow forever.
but it is never manipulative or pity/attention-seeking. (except that on the copyright page, there is an offer to obtain "a special signed and numbered edition" of the book, which seems inappropriate and a little ghoulish)
but apart from that, it is a jewel of a book, and while i still abhor the act that gave this book life, it does help, in some small way, to understand.
so. it gets five stars because of how terribly sad i still am. i read this online, of course, years and years ago, but i reread it in book form, just so. it gets five stars because of how terribly sad i still am. i read this online, of course, years and years ago, but i reread it in book form, just to see if anything had been added. it hasn't. just the fact of his death on the flap. i'd really rather have added material than that fact, wouldn't you? and i also would have liked this to have been delivered at my graduation (i mean, i had quincy jones, i can't complain too much, but still... despite all the good advice in this book, i am a complainer) so, a five star, five gun farewell salute to dfw, from me.
infinite jest is like the best lover i have ever had. and i knew we were not exclusive; i knew it had been around and MFSO had had an equally intense infinite jest is like the best lover i have ever had. and i knew we were not exclusive; i knew it had been around and MFSO had had an equally intense relationship with it, but i can honestly say i have never felt this way about a book before, and i never expect to again, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event.(i know one time i compared graceling to a romantic relationship, but that was an analogy - this is true true love)
reading this companion book is like revisiting old love letters. i would frequently get a warm rush of emotion when a particular scene was deconstructed, or when links and connections were made that despite my seven readings of the source material, and the two previous companion books, i had never seen.
because this book is exhaustive. but never exhausting. not for a fan. reading this book is like finding out that the whole time you were together, your partner secretly played the accordion. and played it well. there are obviously allusions i caught: extensive hamlet connections, clockwork orange, various david lynch moments. but there are others with which i was less familiar: the beatles, tolstoy, tennyson. and i am sure there are some "connections" that are just serendipitous to the researcher; DFW was good, but one or two of these just have to be happy accidents, don't they??
and i just can't help but yearn. the same way the films of JOI were never made, or never found (orrrr weeerrreee thhheeeyyy?) and his suicide prevented so many more opportunities and advances in his medium, so the fucking suicide of DFW has destroyed so much potential. and i get angry, i do, but to me this book - this perfect dream, this religion - it does more for me than any real-world encounter ever could. and that's the irony, right?? me, slackjawed, engaged in my entertainment, losing my ability to connect to anything except this illusion. shattering.
and some lit crit sucks all the juice from a text and leaves it a husk of critical jargon and historical precedence. greg carlisle makes it sing. you can feel his excitement as he makes connection after connection, even with seemingly-minor repetitions of words like "blue" or "circular", or images of "spiders" or "waste." it is all cataloged and he makes meaning out of it that is astonishing.
infinite jest is a novel that is, of course, "constructed as much out of what is missing as what's there". but g.c. sure makes a lot of what is there. this is balls to the wall, minute vivisection.
here is an example of a particularly awesome passage: Gately remembers the ex-Navy "M.P." and dreams of Joelle (M.P., Madame Psychosis), who in one dream had the face of a "jowly British P.M.." (cf Pat Montesian as P.M. on p 178). Matthew Pemulis (M.P.) awaits an opportunity to consume DMZ (madame psychosis). in this section, Mrs. Waite dies and Death says "wait".
that sound is my head exploding. i wish i had a dick, so i could watch it become tumescent.
and this - oh my god:
"just before racial slurs and references to white supremacy occur in the narrative, Gately thinks of his first joint as his first "duBois". is this intended to resonate with the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, balancing the racial slurs in Gately's memory with reference to an African American hero? does the white supremacist's being an Orkin man (an exterminator, but not from Terminex and not Public Enemy's Terminator x) resonate with the idea of roaches, both in terms of marijuana and of the extermination of roaches by Or[k]in?"
and this - pretty much the last line in the book, before the "more questions" section and many diagrams and chronologies: "The end of Infinite Jest brings us back to the beginning. At the end of the novel, Gately is unable to communicate; at the beginning of the novel, Hal is unable to communicate. We can begin the cycle again and follow Gately's narrative thread through the DuPlessis incident and recovery and gunshot wound and memories of substance abuse. We can try to better understand Hal and to discern the reasons for his behavior in the Year of Glad. But there will always be a gap of one year (between November Y.D.A.U. and November Y.G., cf this study's "more questions") in these elegant, complex narrative cycles that we must navigate by leaps of imagination. With each cycle of our reading, the gap will seem less daunting; but it will always remain open. As we read, we must continue to join the narrative threads - we must connect everything - in the nebulous underworld of our minds."
oh my god, it is so true. you will get closer and closer, but you will never ever fill in all the gaps, and that is what makes this the most wonderful, frustrating, rewarding book ever. and what makes a study like this one so dick-hardeningly good.
buy this book. read this book. and then read infinite jest again.
i recommend this book to anyone passionate enough about IJ. it is not for people who read the book just as a landmark kind of thing - you won't appreciate it. it is only for the truly nutso. this man's passion for IJ makes me so happy. i picture him sitting on the floor with multiple copies of infinite jest splayed open all around him, going through with different colored highlighters: greg carlisle, i fucking applaud you and what you have done here. i guarantee i will be reading this one again.
update: or i WOULD, but i don't think i'm ever getting my copy back. not awesome. ):
im not really sure why this is being published now, when it was written for the ghost of election past, but im not going to complain because i love thim not really sure why this is being published now, when it was written for the ghost of election past, but im not going to complain because i love the dfw, and now i can rate it. greg will never catch me!!! ...more
i think it is time to write a proper review for this book, as it is one of my all-time favorites and deserves way more than two words. bacthis book...
i think it is time to write a proper review for this book, as it is one of my all-time favorites and deserves way more than two words. back when i was a junior in college, i was at the nyu bookstore, trying to sell back some textbooks before going away for winter break. the person in line in front of me was trying to sell back infinite jest (where was i when this class was being offered?? ) and of course, they weren't taking it back because nyu is a stingy fucking school. she turned around to me and said "you want this??" and i said "yes,"cuz i don't say no to free, and she said "merry christmas,"and kinda just thrust it at me. and it was the best present i ever got. a true christmas miracle. i was on my way to see my then-boyfriend in italy for the start of a european jaunt, and i missed out on a lot of european cities because i could not put this book down. i read it on planes and trains and a gondola, in restaurants and bars, by canals and in a cafe on top of the alps. fuck cathedrals, i had this book. i am a truly bad traveler, but i am a committed reader. as soon as i finished the book, i started right over. and since then i have read it a total of seven times. it is the most glorious collection of words that has ever been published. it is everything - it is funny and sad and creepy and disturbing and completely absorbing and brilliant. and he was just a gem of a man. the first time i got to meet him, i dropped this book in front of him - by now all tattered and smooshed, and he seem surprised that "someone has actually read their copy." and then i gave him a card that had been a thank you card, but i crossed out "thank" and wrote "fuck" in its place and said "fuck you for writing the great american novel before i got the chance to." this is the kind of thing i think is charming because i am deeply flawed. but it worked, and he called me and it was really nice - he was a great man who was truly kind and courteous to his fans. i ended up getting a proper thank you card from him because he is more traditionally charming. and now i am sad just thinking about this. so the review ends here because it has served its cathartic purpose for me and i guess if anyone is reading this you just got a free glimpse into the softer side of karen. it happens.
this book made me wet myself. twice. i wish to god i was exaggerating. or elderly. but poor dfw on a cruise ship... no one has ever paired genius withthis book made me wet myself. twice. i wish to god i was exaggerating. or elderly. but poor dfw on a cruise ship... no one has ever paired genius with social awkwardness more charmingly.
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