Meta, pretty much: David Foster Wallace in NYTimes Magazine
Interesting read in today's NYT magazine about how David Foster Wallace "inadvertently created the voice of the Internet and ruined a generation of writers." Or, at least, that was the sub-headline in the print edition.
I still have a lot of work to do in catching up with DFW's work, but it is interesting to read about how some of his conventions have become ubiquitous in blog writing and to see how some turn up in Brian's posts.
As far as ruining a generation of writers, the author seems to be specifically referring to writers who copy the "slangy approachability" of his style while lacking his "roving intelligence." Clearly, nobody here would question Brian's roving intelligence so this does not apply to him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin…
August 21st, 2011 at 4:00 PM ^
I've always felt the criticism of DFW that he criticized ironic detachment while being super ironic himself missed the mark. His beef was with authors who refused to actually give a shit about anything at all, the DeLillo White Noise/Underworld wink-wink pop culture stuff that could do nothing but mock.
Despite the "Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar" stuff in Infinite Jest and some of his non-fiction work, he was a writer who really, really, really gave a shit about stuff. For all the irony and loathing in his cruise ship piece, the most memorable passage for me was the one where he tried to grab his suitcase from the South American guy who was sorting the luggage, and had a panic attack about the horrible position he'd put the poor guy in by making him choose between two rules ("the customer is always right" and "never let anyone carry their own bags"). He was empathetic and self-reflective almost to a fault, and it's no coincidence that he always ended up hanging out with people in his stories that other reporters wouldn't even notice (the sound techs in his McCain piece, the soundboard guy in his talk-radio one). I always felt like he had the "sort ofs" and the "mostlys" in his writing because he couldn't stop obsessing over whether his judgments, or anyone's, were ever ultimately right.
To the extent that internet writers have been "ruined" by DFW, it's because they've adopted his tics as tics, rather than as an expression of reflexive questioning, but I don't really see how that's his fault. But this guy is missing the point: the reason DFW's writing had so many qualifiers is that this shit is complicated.
/rant (sorry)
August 21st, 2011 at 4:12 PM ^
I bet you feel better after that one.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:13 PM ^
mostly.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:55 PM ^
I agree. I've never gotten the sense that Wallace wanted to make conclusive arguments while showing off his writing skills. He seemed like a guy who didn't feel as if he had the answers, but was interested in exploring complicated questions (ranging from political participation and the role of the citizen to the nature of addiciton to our ethical relationship with lower life forms) in as honest and comprehensive a manner as possible. He never said don't eat shellfish or watch porn, but if you're interested in knowing more here is what doing both really entails (and seeing the whole picture is going to probably leave the reader just as conflicted as Wallace probably felt on both subjects).
I would also recommend checking out "The Pale King" if anybody hasn't yet. Maybe not as interesting/comprehensible to those without at least a minimal accounting/tax law background but I enjoyed it (for what it is) immensely.
August 21st, 2011 at 6:43 PM ^
I'll check that out. As a tax/accounting professional I know painfully well that literary depictions of my chosen profession are few and far between (not that it is generally literature-worthy).
August 21st, 2011 at 8:58 PM ^
I think you've got DeLillo all wrong, if that's what you think his writing embodies.
And anyhow, DFW was deeply influenced by and indebted to DeLillo. I think it's people like Leyner, Coover, and Barth DFW was trying to distance himself from. He admired DeLillo.
August 21st, 2011 at 8:00 PM ^
August 21st, 2011 at 4:06 PM ^
is it worth reading? considering the quality of writing about sports at least, the headline couldn't be more wrong.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:35 PM ^
I've tried to tamp that down as my writing develops. There was a point a few years ago where I was at war with myself about "basically," "essentially," and other filler, qualifying-please-like-me words. Now I've mostly won that battle.
HOWEVA, I'd already read the article and it annoys me by projecting the failures of people aping DFW's style onto DFW, who came by it honestly and used it to good effect. It also mistakes correlation for causation. The forces that caused DFW to adopt that mode of hyper self-justification were not solely operating in Champaign-Urbana. It is much more likely they are the reason random bloggers adapt them. DFW is popular, but not that popular.
Also, as someone who's taken a discrete math class I love "hard not to sort of almost actually like," which communicates worlds about this guy he's describing. How else do you get across that this porn producer is almost but does not quite get you to forget that he's a total sleaze and that the liking would just be partial, more tolerance than anything, and that even the nicest, most charming edition of this particular sort of person is still pretty icky? Without using a paragraph, I mean? If that's your exemplar for how DFW fails to use language economically you've missed the point entirely while making a point so obvious it's worthy of John Madden.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:59 PM ^
i just got an A- in 2003 Modern Literature and Expression (MLB 3003) for reading that last paragraph
August 21st, 2011 at 6:47 PM ^
...four digits is another indication that I'm old. In my day, they only had three digits. Plus we had to stand in line to CRISP.
August 21st, 2011 at 8:47 PM ^
CRISP? What's that? We had folding tables in an old hall in a building that I think has since been torn down...of course, while walking uphill both ways...
The good thing about that system, though, was that it was pre-computer, so you could register for nearly any class you'd like, pre-reqs be damned...I got to take Peter Railton's Philosophy 366 class without taking any other philosophy - sort of stupid, but I loved that class...
As for DFW - I thought one of the coolest things about his writing was his desire to provide context through footnotes. Other writers can't easily imitate this...
August 21st, 2011 at 9:48 PM ^
but I interpreted those numbers as the year of the class and the classroom it was in, respectively. It was still three digit class numbers when I was there, and it's only been a year since they finally made me leave town.
And speaking of CRISP, I missed it by one semester. I started in the Fall of 2000, and returning students had registered with CRISP, but incoming freshmen used WolverineAccess. I'm sure even that crappy version of the software was much better, but I'm still bummed I don't get to tell the tales of experiencing the pure joy that was CRISP.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:57 PM ^
There were a couple of different forms of CRISP. The waiting-in-line thing was phased out c. 1994. After that it was a phone registration system, which I used my first two years. It was pretty brutal. You had to type in the subject number, course number, section number, number of credits, and probably something else, and if any of those were off, you had to do it over. All the while an automated "lady" just repeated whatever you pressed ("You have pressed - (number). If this is not correct, press 1 now..."). It was a long process. Standing in line may not have been worse.
August 21st, 2011 at 10:46 PM ^
my "day" was only three years ago and as far as I can remember we only had 3 digits for course numbers
August 21st, 2011 at 5:01 PM ^
I've read a lot of nerdy posts here (and contributed some myself), but that was just . . . pure.
August 21st, 2011 at 6:15 PM ^
Although to be fair to the author, I don't think she completely projects the failings of DFW's copy-cats on DFW. In fact, she points out that "Wallace isn’t responsible for his imitators, much less for the stylized mess that is Gen-X-and-Y Internet syntax."
She also acknowledges that his "slangy approachability was part of his appeal, and these quirks are more than compensated for by his roving intelligence" and describes him as "inarguably one of the most interesting thinkers and distinctive stylists of (our) generation."
It seems like the majority of her wrath is pointed at the "lesser thinkers" and "opinion mongers" who ape his style, but lack substance, FWIW.
P.S. I'll take the "HOWEVA" as evidence that you will not abandon your "slangy approachability" because that would, like, suck.
P.P.S. I am a sucker for writing that ironically imbeds criticism of itself within its text. The best criticism of The Big Lebowski comes from it's own narrator who declares, "It was a purty good story, dontcha think? ... Parts, anyway."
August 21st, 2011 at 6:57 PM ^
I don't think you have to explain yourself to anyone. Just be glad you didn't go to law school--look what it did to her.
August 21st, 2011 at 7:25 PM ^
This made me think of my favorite Brian Cook ironic/post-ironic sentence:
More than that, though, Alan Branch being in ur base is emblematic of the first ten games of 2006, when the Michigan defense was 1997 all over again and things were, briefly, back on course.
August 21st, 2011 at 4:47 PM ^
Footnotes.
<br>
<br>This thread needs footnotes. Possibly charts as well.
<br>
<br>+1 for being the sportsblog with the most DFW references. Actually the blog of any type with the most DFW references.
August 21st, 2011 at 5:00 PM ^
Fort-Worth, is in Texas that is all.
August 21st, 2011 at 5:36 PM ^
If blogs want to imitate spoken vernacular more than is common in printed text, why is that bad? It's a different medium, so who is she to define its form?
She also seems to want everything black and white, which would then clearly explain her disdain for postmodernism, but isn't it possible that the reality of today really does have more complexity and more shades of gray?
August 21st, 2011 at 6:13 PM ^
it's more the knowing, self-referential, "i'm in on the joke" aspects of this type of writing she's referring to, an example of which is your screen name (no offense intended).
August 21st, 2011 at 5:42 PM ^
August 21st, 2011 at 6:30 PM ^
than they were about Family Guy.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:26 PM ^
Guess I picked the wrong day to be confusing sarcasm with irony. . . Oh well, back to the irony board.
August 21st, 2011 at 7:00 PM ^
I find it interesting that some people equate the internet with some sort of deterioration in writing quality in society. This is an erroneous argument in my opinion.
There are a finite number of good writers in the world and there always has been. The internet, simply put, is a place where one can publish their work without having to jump through the impossible hoops that encompass the publishing world. Because of this, there are a lot of extremely poor writers on the internet who either a. are not good or b. don't care that they are mediocre and simply enjoy writing. Take a look at how many blogs exist that have no followers at all besides friends and family.
Thus, just because we are exposed to more crappy writing does not mean that writing as a whole has decreased in quality. The bad writing was always there, we just didn't see it as much.
As for the "slangy approachability", I can totally understand this point. Pick up a maxim magazine (I'm cringing right now). However, this style has been around for a long time. Mark Twain wrote with a slangy approachability and he was a literary genius. People read his writing and thought "wow, this is so great yet so simple, I can write like this". But they can't. That won't stop people from trying, however.
When a certain style becomes popular, there will be many who follow suit. Some have the ability, most do not. But this is not something new.
August 21st, 2011 at 7:19 PM ^
...comment:
Mark Twain wrote with a slangy approachability and he was a literary genius. People read his writing and thought "wow, this is so great yet so simple, I can write like this". But they can't.
...reminds me of the time that I was in the Hirschhorn Gallery and I overheard the following exchange:
Visitor viewing a painting by Mark Rothko or a similar artist: "I could've done this."
Security guard standing a few yards away: "It's been done."
August 21st, 2011 at 7:30 PM ^
That's brilliant. I like this a lot.
August 21st, 2011 at 7:33 PM ^
Superb. I too have heard similar comments before, especially regarding Jackson Pollack paintings.
"I don't get it, what is so hard about that? I could splat paint all over a canvas and become a millionaire."
My response "Then do it, shouldn't be too hard, right?"
Naturally, I usually run into these exact same people years later having learned that they executed their plans and became extremely wealthy. That is EXACTLY how it goes, right?
August 21st, 2011 at 7:48 PM ^
"but you didn't and the artist did."
August 21st, 2011 at 9:36 PM ^
you think you can do a Rothko (or a Pollack for that matter), then go for it. But guess what . . . .
August 21st, 2011 at 9:43 PM ^
That's an absolutely excellent response. I'm particularly enjoying it because, in my head, the security guard is Michael Clarke Duncan, the big guy with the deep voice from The Green Mile. Don't tell me if that image is in no way accurate, it's absolutely perfect coming from him.
I'm always mazed at how much resistance there is to the idea that art is more about the originality and the statement than simply the final image. My Xerox machine is producing lots of Shakespeare and yet nobody argues that it's a genius or that Shakespeare wasn't.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:50 PM ^
...far off the mark.
August 21st, 2011 at 7:56 PM ^
The war against the colloquial has been waged for generations in literature. The colloquial always seems to win.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:14 PM ^
August 21st, 2011 at 9:15 PM ^
This thread is another example of why I love this blog.I doubt one gets this discussion on RCMB.
August 23rd, 2011 at 10:21 AM ^
This thread is a perfect example of why we're here and RCMB's minions are there.
August 22nd, 2011 at 10:20 AM ^
The author of the piece works in legal writing. The constant struggle in legal writing is to be more direct, simple and clear. And your argument never gains force by using equivocal language.
The same rules don't apply to the topics DFW was usually writing about in non-fiction.
His qualified, self-conflicted tone served a purpose when he was telling you to believe in politicians or not eat lobster. If he had just come roaring out of the gate telling me eating lobster was awful, or instructing me to be open to putting my hope and trust in guys like John McCain...I would have chuckled cynically and stopped reading. The reason I didn't stop reading is because he conveyed the fact that he too had the same cynical eye-rolling initial stance as me and was working past it himself. That made his arguments more persuasive.
The article ignores this, and seems to think DFW just didn't have the guts to say what he thought. In truth, I think he often was frankly describing a conflicted take on things. I think his writing was better for the sorts of phrases this article selectively quotes to deride him.
August 22nd, 2011 at 11:20 AM ^
Very well put.
August 23rd, 2011 at 2:30 AM ^
glad someone posted this. I saw this article and immediately thought of this blog and the DFW references.