And but so

From “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” by David Foster Wallace:

“… I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the Guest Relations Desk whether snorkling necessitates getting wet, whether the skeetshooting will be held outside, whether the crew sleeps onboard, and what time the Midnight Buffet is. I now know the mixological difference between a Slippery Nipple and a Fuzzy Navel…I have in one week been the object of over 1500 professional smiles…Is this enough? At the time it didn’t seem like enough…”

Last weekend, we drove to Allegheny College to see our elder kid’s designs for her senior¹ comprehensive project, which is a requirement for your degree at that school.² It was a wonderful weekend, not in the least because my husband started humming “Sunrise, Sunset” and we realized how much time had passed since we were at the same school as undergrads³ and that most of what had happened since then has been great, if wholly different from what we thought would happened when we were 21.

But this isn’t about that.

Elder Kid and I were in the bookstore the morning before we drove home. She brought over a Flannery O’Connor book and asked if I’d get it for her. I’m a easy touch when it comes to buying books for the kids.⁴ We got to talking about writers she’s reading and David Foster Wallace came up because the store had a used copy of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

I don’t know if she knew⁵ that DFW is my all-time favorite. I’ve read Infinite Jest twice.⁶ I used to teach the title essay in Consider the Lobster. When he killed himself,⁷ it felt like someone I knew well had died. I experienced something very much like grief for a person who’d sent me a postcard once.⁸ ⁹

“What you really should read first,” I told her, “is his non-fiction. Don’t get me wrong. Infinite Jest is a masterpiece — but before you even ponder starting that, read his essay about going on a luxury cruise. I have it at home.”

one of those times when the cover and the content had a conversation with each other that illuminated both

I made a mental note to grab my copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and leave it on her bed so she can start it over Thanksgiving if she wants. In between pulling it off of the shelf and flinging it into her room, I started re-reading the title essay,¹⁰ just to be sure it hadn’t be visited by the Suck Fairy since I’d last read it.

Short answer: it has not. DFW’s work¹¹ remains singular and magnetic and personal and universal.

Which is great. I hope Elder Kid enjoys it as much as I do.

The re-read, however, makes me realize how very much I stole from DFW voice-wise, as well as how thoroughly some of his quirks have become my own. Between him and Robert Heinlein,¹² 3/4 of how I write can be explained. That’s both irritating and comforting. I will leave the mechanics of what I stole from who as an exercise for the student.¹³

I’m now driven to unearth my copy of the lobster essay and “Up, Simba,” his essay about John McCain’s campaign¹⁴ and, of course, I’ll pick up a copy of This is Water for the Elder Kid at graduation time.¹⁵

[imagine a really great transition here.]

A couple more writerly links:

Once upon a time, it might have been possible to make a living as a writer. Now? Ha. Hahaha.¹⁶

And yet, some of us write for ineffable reasons.¹⁷ John Green in his great podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed¹⁸ hits on the iceberg tip of it in an episode about an Icelandic hot dog stand and signing your name 250,000 times:

You are reminded of something Eudora Welty once wrote. “All serious daring starts from within.” Forget transatlantic crossings. This is proper adventure--reader and writer descending into the chasms, roped together like climbing partners. Sometimes, when you read, it feels as if the writer knows your secrets without you ever having to say them aloud. Similarly, writing can become a place where you talk about what you can’t talk about, where you seek form for the formless. How can you thank the reader for venturing into these depths with you? You can’t thank them properly, and so you sign your name over and over again, because it is the only thing you can think to do. 

It’s only through writing that I can put form around the formless and hope that someone else will come along into the void with me.

Also: those hot dogs are pretty freaking great.

I can’t quickly put my (electronic) hands on my picture of us at that hot dog stand. Please accept this photo of a pig in lingerie outside of a nearby Reykjavik restaurant in its stead.

1. I KNOW.

2. I graduated from the same college. My comp was on The Castle of Perseverance, a medieval morality play. I chose it a) because I’m a big fan of the medieval morality play because you always know who the good guys are and b) because of the way it was staged back in the day. The theater itself was an open field in which you’d dig a massive, circular moat. The displaced earth would be piled up to form seating areas. Scenes were staged at the four cardinal directions and the castle from the title was dead center. The climactic scene was played so that the setting sun would provide a halo for the ascending Christ. Despite my identification of a great green space to dig up — right behind Arter Hall — the powers that be would not sign off on staging it. So I wrote about the play instead.

3. We told Elder Kid that she did not have to go to the same school we did but the heart wants what it wants.

4. or most anyone really

5. She certainly knows now

6. please clap

7. I looked it up. He was 46 when he died. 46! I’m already 6 years beyond that. If he’d lived to be 50, would his brain have been less of an asshole? Mine certainly is, mostly because I no longer care about so many things I once did. Time erodes the edges, you know?

8. long story — but I had it framed

9. this was complicated by the fact that he committed suicide a year or two after I’d been through some tough mental health/post-partum/suicidal ideation my own self. If this brilliant, successful person who seemed to have his shit together didn’t actually have it together, what hope did I have? Nearly two decades on, I know about the folly of comparing your insides to someone else’s outsides but wasn’t there yet. His death shook my foundations, psychiatrically.

10. It came out in 1996, which is only a decade or so ago. Time is a kick in the head.

11. The more I know about DFW the human, the happier I am I didn’t actually know him because he seems like A LOT.

12. yes, really.

13. there are no students of my work, mind.

14. WHAT WOULD HE HAVE MADE OF THE LAST SIX YEARS?

15. I KNOW

16. This is not one of those “please, pity the writers” links. We pity ourselves enough to more than get that job done. It is, however, an answer to “you’ve published three books. you must be rich!” thoughts folks might have in their heads. Writing, for me and for most, is a side hustle. If I didn’t have a fully employed spouse with health insurance and shit, I couldn’t do this.

17. Constance Fay compares reasons for writing to reasons to pursue trail running and she’s very much not wrong.

18. I know has his own life and stuff but I’d selfishly welcome a couple more episodes whenever.