Seems like a good decade
ago. My first exposure to the deeply depressed and fucked up world of David
Foster Wallace was his award-winning short story called “Good Old Neon”. A
dense, self-defeating, self-pitying monologue that seemed a lot more gripping
than it should be. The story doesn’t have much of a plot – just a guy who
thinks himself into thinking that he is a fraud. Since this guy is pretty much
the author himself (to a large extent in any case), you understand this was the
area Wallace didn’t even need to explore. For all his sense of humour and
relative success, this was the world he inhabited. Full of hideous men and
morose, intense self-deprecation.
It took me some time, as
well as Wallace’s untimely death, to get back to the man’s writing. These two
books I’m reviewing here, his collection of short stories / sketches titled Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and a
set of articles and essays Consider The
Lobster, represent two sides of Wallace’s writing: fiction and non-fiction.
Although having said that, do they really?..
They say fiction can
tell you a lot more about its author than a diary or a memoir can ever hope to.
Apparently this is an arguable point, but one very much justified in the case
of David Foster Wallace. There isn’t
much fictional value in his 1999’s Brief
Interviews With Hideous Men. Do not expect conventional short stories with
your climaxes and your denouements. Instead, expect wordy and weedy
observations stuffed in the minds and mouths of, well, hideous men. Moody,
self-obsessed, withdrawn and just flat out disgusting. All, we now understand,
deeply rooted in the author’s complexes and fears.
Since Wallace isn’t bothered with giving us memorable or at least half-tangible stories, much of
it seems anaemic and doesn’t really stick with you. You may remember certain details or rather exotic agendas which drive
these people into sorry and despicable states (here’s a guy whose father works
in a urinal; here’s a guy with a stump for an arm and who walks around causing
pity in others; here’s a guy who thinks that in the large scheme of things
Holocaust may be a good thing, etc.), but there’s only so much ugliness and
depression you may take in one go. Chances are, you will get bored. Or maybe
you won’t, but in that case you most certainly are the sort of troubled
individual Wallace was writing this for.
Why brief Interviews? Well, quite simply, that’s
the form Wallace found most fitting to present the personalities of these people.
For instance, you have this guy who is full of spite for men who think they
know how to please a woman. So what we get is a rather repetitive (and rather
annoying) monologue that’s actually a dialogue with no questions voiced. You
just know there is a question, and probably an obvious one, but you don’t see
it. This sort of format is effective, and allows you to get involved and
perhaps even identify with the hideous man in question. Then again, maybe not.
However, my favourite
piece here is not an interview but a lengthy, meditative reflection on growing
up called “Forever Overhead”. A simple enough metaphor; the author is observing
a young girl about to springboard into the swimming pool. It’s a beguiling,
transfixing piece, and the way this girl (it’s her thirteenth birthday) is
about to be immersed into this hostile and adult world, you get entangled in
Wallace’s unassuming, verbose prose.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is not a great book, but it’s occasionally half
amusing to read about a guy who is detestable and knows it. Much like that
anonymous author of Dostoyevsky’s Notes From
Underground.
6/10
Consider The Lobster, on the other hand, is wildly entertaining. None of
that depressing, self-imposed misery. And where from? The book is a collection
of essays, articles and reviews dealing with issues as diverse and intriguing
as lobsters (yes), John McCain and pornography. And the good thing is that the
contents are as gripping as the themes that Wallace covers.
Part of the book’s
appeal lies in the sheer immediacy of its language. Wallace knows no
intellectual restraints, he is just giving it all out – much like a modern day
blogger. But with a lot more insight and writing chops.
Every piece manages to
be addictive in its own way. It’s touching (“The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” is
Wallace’s personal experience of 9/11), cynical (“Up, Simba” is a lengthy
account of McCain’s presidential campaign that Wallace was commissioned to
write for Rolling Stone), and
occasionally quite technical and scientific (his exhaustive review of Bryan A.
Garner’s A Dictionary Of Modern American
Usage). Wallace’s main strength as a non-fiction writer is his ability to
find humour or/and appeal in such seemingly dead topics as the Maine Lobster
Festival or trashy memoirs of once great sportsmen (in “How Tracy Austin Broke
My Heart” the author wanders from Austin’s monosyllabic autobiography to the
general problem of sports memoirs).
My favourite essay,
though, has to be the one that opens the collection. “Big Red Son”, a totally
electrifying article on AVN Awards (sort of Oscars in pornographic film
industry). The piece evoked an essay by Martin Amis I once read in Guardian. It was called “A Rough Trade”
and it dealt with Amis’s close (too close you might say) experience with
American pornographic market. But whereas Amis has successfully explored and
exploited the subject in a number of his novels and short stories, Wallace’s
writing gives off an appealing odour of innocence and bewilderment (which is
only natural). When he calls the Awards “an apocalyptic cocktail party” or “an
obscene and extremely well-funded High School assembly”, it’s both hilarious
and credible.
“Big Red Son” is a
terrific insight into the world inhabited by humourless people with hilarious
names. Like critic Dick Filth, for instance. People who nonetheless take the
whole pornography thing very seriously indeed. A contrast Wallace makes us
enjoy so much.
In the end, you have to
admit that it’s precisely non-fiction writing where Wallace excelled. It’s
wickedly entertaining pieces on boiling lobsters and adult cinema that disclose
his deep, complex, intriguing, insecure personality.
9/10
Having said that, it’s
surely a pretty inspired, if claustrophobic, ride through empty streets and
murky, half-lit rooms. The unassuming, quietly seductive opener “Alphabet Song”
sets the mood nicely, but the following “Brains” with its underpinning robotic
drum beat and ethereal vocals is a slow-burning triumph. Then clever,
almost-playful keyboards of the short instrumental “Stem” give way to another
classic, “Propagation”, which moves us further into gothic territory. Might
have been woeful were it not for the beautiful, beguiling melodies floating
around this thing. The first side is actually near flawless, but Lower Dens
seem determined to shrug off any accusations of that sort.
