It’s on my to-read list, but starting is daunting. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (the essay collection) was amazing. I think about it often.
i tried that. didnt work for me. im actually reading it now as an ebook. this means i can jump seamlessly back and forth between notes. i dont love this because i am definitely a dead tree type reader, but in this instance the ebook is the only solution. the physical copy sits on my bedside in case.
its a wonderful read but sometimes dfw just seems unecessarily hostile to the reader.
Yeah, my strategy is to when I start reading move my bookmark from where I am in the book to where I am in the footnotes so that while I'm reading I use the bookmark to quickly find the correct place in the footnotes.
At least read the first chapter. I've never read anything like it (and I've read a lot). It was an experience more than anything. It became abundantly clear to me that I was reading something could only have been written by a true genius. No other author has a command of the modern English language like DFW did. The way he combines humor, wit, and wordplay was magic. It really showed me the power of writing.
There were a number of essays that influenced my world view and a story that left a strong lasting impression.
The essay on why we consume mass media was insightful at the time and particularly prescient given the rise of influencers, streaming, and short form video.
The essay “Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness” influenced me greatly. It made me realize how much pure artistry and mastery there is in the world. And most of it goes entirely unappreciated.
Incarnations of Burned Children was an amazing piece of literature in a harrowing and terrifying way. To this day, years later, I experience extreme l’appel du vide when carrying hot water around my children.
The idea that entertainment could be all engrossing and some forms of entertainment addictively destructive to our well-being? That we could have cameras in video conferences but would want them effectively off? It was delightfully/scarily prescient in some ways.
Actually I wish people would lead with this more: because it's a book about entertainment and how some forms of entertainment addictively destructive to our well-being, and that's why it's relevant today.
I see a lot about David Foster Wallace and "it meant a lot to me personally at once time" but very little about its objective merits (which are real to be clear).
I feel like there were many instances where something would be described, either a a character's internal feelings or an observation about the world and I would think, "damn that just perfectly put into words something that I've thought or experienced" or I'd be like "wow that's so true and insightful." And I would be thinking this all the time while reading.
On top of that I liked all the drug stuff and the kind of dystopian world created in the book.
