a fairly thorough evisceration of david foster wallace courtest of TNR. overall, the critique, by james wood, mostly amounts to: wallace is a sniggering, self-involved stylist, incapable of connecting to human characters or to his readers on anything but a stylistic level. i.e. his stories don't move you. wood notes wallace's tendency to mock his characters, and to get caught up in the minutiae of their voices (though often slipping into more of a wallace-voice) and to completely lose track of any pathos or genuine emotional impact. this critique, i think, rings true in many ways, especially when it comes to his last book (i haven't read the new one), brief interviews with hideous men, which i found entertaining but not particularly memorable. i don't think the critique is as true of infinite jest, wallace's masterpiece that the wood never mentions, though it's true that i wouldn't describe infinite jest as a "moving" work per se.

interestingly, where wood is wrong, i think, is in the cases where the object of wallace's mockery is himself. in both "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again", about his experience taking a luxury cruise, and "getting away from being pretty much away from it all", about his trip to the indiana state fair, wallace finds much comedy in the general fish-out-of-water theme and the peculiarities of the people and events he encounters. but his mockery is primarily reserved for himself. and what emerges is a more of a gently ironic portrait of himself (and, by extension, those readers who can identify with his him-as-narrator (since i expect wallace-as-narrator is only somewhat similar to the "real" wallace)) and of the people he meets. another story from the same book ("a supposedly fun thing..") about tennis players is, i think, similarly gently ironic more than mocking (and again, with a certain amount of mockery going to wallace himself).

certainly one of the things i've always enjoyed about wallace is his use of language. i love his ear for dialect, and the way he toys with language, both in the service of greater realism/characterization, and obviously just for the joy of playing with words. but i've also always loved what i consider to be his essential humanism. my favorite works of his have always seemed not just verbal pyrotechnics, but the observations of a person interested in people. style without heart becomes quickly boring, even annoying. perhaps with time wallace's style has ossified into something he can toss off easily without really engaging his heart in what he's writing. i hope not, but his new book might provide an answer.

August 2, 2004 05:53 PM
Categories: books
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