Cosimah2o
Active Member
I've enjoyed all the fiction of Wallace that I've read (especially the novel Infinite Jest). David Foster Wallace has proven in his two essay collections that he might be even better at nonfiction. If you're one of the many people who found Infinite Jest or Wallace's extensive catalogue of stories to be excessively dense or pretentious, that shouldn't scare you from this collection.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
It's a collection of 7 essays published between 1992 and 1996. They range over a variety of topics which cover tennis, luxury cruises, state fairs, movies, television.
The title essay from this collection describes Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise liner for Harper's Magazine and the strange sort of death-transcendence that defines cruise lines.
Wallace spends nearly a hundred pages describing a seven-night Caribbean cruise on a Celebrity Cruise Lines megaship. He poses as a boat cruise passenger and chronicles the depression and uneasiness that results from a luxury boat cruise. Wallace's depression is our joy because he is extremely funny in the way he shows how the boat cruise staff, is in fact a bunch of bullies who force us to "have a good time" as we luxuriate on a cruiser, where consciousness is lost and where the tourists experience a sort of death.
Funny, profound, disturbing.. Wallace brilliantly and humorously captures his experience, writing obsessive and the humor is magnified, again and again. For the majority of this book is accessible, and original, and sheds great light on a whole sweep of contemporary US life. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is ultimately the best introduction to the writing of David Foster Wallace.
Consider the Lobster and other essays.
It's an hilarious collection of 10 essays publised 2005. Each of them was commissioned by a particular magazine with a particular topic.
"Up, Simba," ( Wallace's foray into politics) He immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns. DFW travels to South Carolina with a press contingent during John McCain's 2000 for the Republican presidential nomination.
How Tracy Austin broke my heart, sees Wallace taking on the subject of sports memoirs in the wake of his crushing disappointment at the sheer banality of Tracy Austin's autobiography. Wallace eventually launches into a discussion of the painful irony that the exploits of the greatest athletes. He comes to the conclusion that the banality and cliche ridden personality of elite sports stars is not only accessory but fundamentally necessary.
Some Remarks on KAFKA'S - DFW laments Kafka being underappreciated as a humorist and on a deeper level how the idea of what humor is has changed dramatically.
Consider the Lobster - Do lobsters feel pain? Sees him visiting the annual Maine Lobster Festival, which he basically describes as a nightmarish tourist trap whose democratization of lobster-eating. An interesting moral and philosophical essay.
As a whole, brilliantly entertaining. Recommended.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
It's a collection of 7 essays published between 1992 and 1996. They range over a variety of topics which cover tennis, luxury cruises, state fairs, movies, television.
The title essay from this collection describes Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise liner for Harper's Magazine and the strange sort of death-transcendence that defines cruise lines.
Wallace spends nearly a hundred pages describing a seven-night Caribbean cruise on a Celebrity Cruise Lines megaship. He poses as a boat cruise passenger and chronicles the depression and uneasiness that results from a luxury boat cruise. Wallace's depression is our joy because he is extremely funny in the way he shows how the boat cruise staff, is in fact a bunch of bullies who force us to "have a good time" as we luxuriate on a cruiser, where consciousness is lost and where the tourists experience a sort of death.
Funny, profound, disturbing.. Wallace brilliantly and humorously captures his experience, writing obsessive and the humor is magnified, again and again. For the majority of this book is accessible, and original, and sheds great light on a whole sweep of contemporary US life. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is ultimately the best introduction to the writing of David Foster Wallace.
Consider the Lobster and other essays.
It's an hilarious collection of 10 essays publised 2005. Each of them was commissioned by a particular magazine with a particular topic.
"Up, Simba," ( Wallace's foray into politics) He immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns. DFW travels to South Carolina with a press contingent during John McCain's 2000 for the Republican presidential nomination.
How Tracy Austin broke my heart, sees Wallace taking on the subject of sports memoirs in the wake of his crushing disappointment at the sheer banality of Tracy Austin's autobiography. Wallace eventually launches into a discussion of the painful irony that the exploits of the greatest athletes. He comes to the conclusion that the banality and cliche ridden personality of elite sports stars is not only accessory but fundamentally necessary.
Some Remarks on KAFKA'S - DFW laments Kafka being underappreciated as a humorist and on a deeper level how the idea of what humor is has changed dramatically.
Consider the Lobster - Do lobsters feel pain? Sees him visiting the annual Maine Lobster Festival, which he basically describes as a nightmarish tourist trap whose democratization of lobster-eating. An interesting moral and philosophical essay.
As a whole, brilliantly entertaining. Recommended.
