I know two people who are as obsessed with Thomas Pynchon as I am. One recommended David Foster Wallace on the basis of our shared preoccupation. When I mentioned this to the other friend he was appalled. (Is that the right word? He said all DFW does is “suck Thomas Pynchon’s dick.” You be the judge.)
I was intrigued and picked up Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, not feeling ready for Infinite Jest (I’d already promised myself that the next massive, seemingly insurmountable work I’d take on would be Ulysses — and no pussying out this time. Hasn’t happened yet). Must have been early spring. I remember it was warm enough to bring a Jameson and Coke onto the roof to read in the afternoons, but I still wore my hoodie.
Anyway, I still haven’t finished it. I got too annoyed.
The first story is two paragraphs long and so stunningly disquieting at the first encounter that I read it over three times without stopping. “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life.” Like something out of the liner notes of OK Computer. Stories like this and “Forever Overhead” have a spooky, ethereal quality to them, although they describe, on the surface, ordinary events.
The “interviews” are actually interspersed throughout the book, in between other stories and ramblings (like the maddening “Octet.” But, later). They’re totally one-sided — we don’t know what questions are being asked, we only get the responses of those being interviewed. Which interests me. He creates a character, then simply has him sit down and tell us about himself. It’s not a Story story. It’s someone telling us anecdotes about themselves, or alluding to past events, and their story (not The Story, or A Story) slowly comes into focus. Some of them are creepy beyond words, just in terms of depth alone. Some of them are creepy because things these men think and do make it difficult for me to think of them as human beings. Hence the title, I suppose.
I still have moments where I can scarcely believe someone would write that, or have a character say that. These are the moments I read for. These little shocks are where 90% of my pleasure in reading fiction comes from, and Brief Interviews has plenty of them.
But there are also pieces like “The Depressed Person” and “Octet.” The pieces that make him known for ridiculously long and extraneous footnotes. The pieces that you read and think to yourself, “Okay, man, I get it. Our hyper-self-awareness and narcissism make any kind of genuine human interaction impossible, and it works as a loop that just intensifies the problem the more you try to free yourself from it. We’re doomed. No kidding.”
And then, three paragraphs into the seventh footnote, you say to yourself, “Jesus, are you beating this thing to death. Yes, we’re all hopelessly stunted by the psychic ‘tools’ that were supposed to help us be more productive, happier members of society. How ironic and sad. I’m terribly depressed about it, really.”
And then you turn the page and aside from three lines crushed against the top margin, it’s all fucking footnote and it just keeps going around in the same frantic circle, and you say out loud, “God Damn It!” and consider throwing the book off the roof.
The reason it’s so frustrating isn’t because he’s going to absurd lengths to show us how empty and pointless our hyper-civilized, post-everything lives are. Because that’s pretty much what Pynchon was doing in Gravity’s Rainbow, too. And he was making fun of the process of producing and consuming fiction, too, like “Octet” does.
It’s frustrating because the difference is, Pynchon is entertaining the shit out of you while he’s working his way up to showing you all of this. It grows naturally out of the stories he tells (and also out of DFW’s better stories). All you have to do is let go of your expectations and go with him. His sketches are funny, absurd, heartbreaking, frightening, poignant…everything you could possibly want in a work of fiction. But they’re so many, pulling in so many different directions, with no real common thread — and this is what prompts you to let go, and doesn’t let you in on the joke if you don’t. It’s his terms, and it’s that simple, and that’s why I respect him so much.
DFW tries to make the same point, but he does it by just (lazily, I think) writing out the problem, playing the hysterical academic, whining about everyone else’s terms, throwing around writer’s jargon and verbally tying himself in knots . . . or the character writing about writing does all this. Same difference, though, it’s just as dry and annoying.
And it’s boring. It’s shamefully boring. And sure, you could make the argument that that’s somehow part of the point, or the technique, or something, but come on, this is fiction. The only rule of fiction writing that I’ve never seen successfully broken is: Don’t be boring. If you’re going to be boring, how is there a point? How is it artful? No one’s going to want to read you. And if you don’t have/build/care about an audience, about being read, then why publish? Why not go write in the damn closet? Why write at all?
(This is, of course, based on two assumptions: One, I’m talking strictly about a reading audience, not critics. Two, every writer, whether they admit it or not, desperately wants to be read. Not necessarily known, or famous, but read. This is why writers write. It’s like a compulsion, exhibitionism even. Hell, it’s the reason I started this whole godawful mess, and I’m not even a real writer.)
Anyway. I’m barely making sense anymore, so it’s probably time to let this go. If DFW really needs to get this kind of crap out of his system, maybe he should do Lit Crit on the side. Because the other half of the stories are experimental too, and they make the same point, but they’re actually interesting and engaging; there’s space and breath enough for contemplation. They are artful. Their subtlety makes them more forceful, and makes the others seem like they should have been cut. The others seem like he’s just getting in his own way.
(Incidentally, I just finished reading the afterword of Lolita, in which, among other things, Nabokov lashes out against the “Literature of Ideas.” Actually he calls it “topical trash.” May DFW strike me dead if he’s wrong. There isn’t anything of art, of the uncanny or sublime, in it, etc. etc. I was originally planning on writing about him, after his stories, and Speak, Memory and Invitation to a Beheading and Lolita and…I can’t. He is a giant, and I am awed in ways I may never be able to articulate.)
