Monthly Archive for September, 2009

I arrived a few minutes late to the David Foster Wallace reading AND BUT SO last Saturday. I had never been to the Salvage Vanguard, and the only parking spot I could find had me wedging my truck onto an unlikely angle that jacked the whole right side three or four feet higher than the left, which made me wonder if opening the driver-side door would cause the whole thing to tip over and make pavement gravy out of me.

Distracted by the cosmic-irony thoughts about getting crushed to death at a DFW event and also by the snack table, I missed most of the first essay. It sounded like a critical theory kind of piece written by somebody else about David Foster Wallace, and I was a little concerned that I had gotten the wrong idea about the show. It did end up being a sampling of his work, though, and after the first reader was through, I finished my stolen brownie and sat on the floor up front. It was nice to see a packed house.

I’ve read a few of the essays and stories but no full collections. It was fun to hear a sampling, and of favorite work too, some read in full over the course of two hours. My impressions:

“Consider the Lobster” Preference —> Suffering. “There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.” I thought it was a tricky thing for him to suggest he was simply confused at the end. Though it doesn’t come off as a preachy PETA screed, the thesis of his argument seems pretty clear until he claims it’s not. Still, incredible argument, only more amazing and hilarious that he got Gourmet to pay for the trip and the words, a real magic trick.

“Tense Present” The woman who read this was actually one of the editors who worked with DFW on the essay when it appeared in Harper’s. It was a treat to hear stories about what a pain in the ass he was and the bonsai tree he sent her as a thank-you gift with a note attached signed “William F. Buckley.” Then, she introduced the piece by saying that she assumed everyone in the crowd knew the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism in linguistics. She only read a few paragraphs but it was neat stuff about discourse communities in elementary school and the language of peer rapport. I’m going to have to read the rest of the essay and the footnotes probably, and the dictionary definition of “suppurate,” before I can talk more about it.

(Just kidding, I already looked suppurate up)

(At this point, the host approached the podium and said that the people standing in the back could come up to sit on the floor. She also suggested that someone give up their chair to a pregnant woman “two weeks from giving birth.” A young man in a chair said, “People weren’t giving up their chairs for her?”)

Doug Dorst read part of “Good Old Neon.” (Only partly at the link, so we must go buy Oblivion.) Heartbreaking and funny, and a good example of an exception to the rule about how first-person narratives should rest their focus on someone else. “What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one little tiny tiny part of it at any given instant.”

Matt Bucher read next, part of “Ticket to the Fair.” (Solid of Harper’s to put everything online for free.) I’m starting to feel redundant in saying that the writing is good. “When I was eight, at the Champaign County Fair, I was pecked without provocation, flown at and pecked by a renegade fowl, savagely, just under the right eye.” The thing I’m noticing is that each new piece serves to teach about the careful construction of language and elements therein in addition to the stated ethical or philosophical point it aspires to make.

Two people read from Infinite Jest. One of the passages was accompanied by a puppet show, which was cute, though it didn’t add a lot to the text (weirdly, because the passage was also about a puppet show). The other passage seemed picked more because it dealt with the topical depression thing–I imagine it’s easier to pick a distinctive point-driven passage out of an essay, easier also to read the opening of a short story.

The last person read his Kenyon College commencement speech “This is Water,” which was just perfect as a commencement address. I was going to read part of it to my students in class, but then the A/C broke and we had to sweat through a semicolon lesson before I let them go. “The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and to talk about.” Also interesting: “Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out” juxtaposed with the opening of “Good Old Neon.”

Last night was a salon reading with Stephen Elliot and Doug Dorst. The small room was full of supportive and kind people. Both readings were great and I was cheered to hear deft work in easy language. Good talks before and after. Tyson Midkiff took over the UTTER reading series.

Do you ever have one of those nights when you end up spending hours staring at olive green turtlenecks from the Gap?

One more day left on that Amazon/Powell’s comment contest, below. It appears as if you can win books through Powell’s through commenting on their site. Perhaps you could win twice.

It’s a bundle-up, down-comforter kind of night here in Texas. Good thing I’ve invested in turtlenecks. It is going to be ninety degrees this weekend.

I’ve been reading up on Roth IRAs, speaking of malaise. If you don’t have one of these things, and you are between the ages of twenty and fifty with savings sitting around, you need to get on the boat before that boat leaves you standing on the dock. Sometimes you want to be standing on that dock, but not this time.