Painful, painful, painful. Biographies of writers inevitably fall into two categories. First, the adventurer, the traveler, the inspired, whose lives are as interesting as their works – think Twain, London, Vollmann. Their life stories make for exciting reads. Second, the boring, dull, working or academic life hardly worth writing about, and here I’m thinking of Carver and Borges. The life of David Foster Wallace definitely falls into the latter. Champaign, Amherst, Arizona, East Coast, Bloomington, California. That’s about it. No high seas or war reportage here. In between these locales we read in D.T. Max’s Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story of the depression, the angst, the valiant struggle for sobriety, the many loves and many loves lost, the writing, the elusive man himself, a literary powerhouse of his generation (and mine). It is heart-wrenching to follow knowing where it all leads. Infinite Jest, for many strange reasons, has come to be known as the seminal book of its time. The novel eventually brought him unexpected celebrity with which he struggled. Too premature to be a masterpiece, it’s difficult to eclipse a master-type work. He set the mark high from the start and struggled to live up to what he perceived to be would be expected from him. That’s why The Pale King, unfinished and published posthumously, took so long to write. Claiming to have deposited page after written page directly into the trash for quite some time, he was unsure of himself. This kind of uncertainty is the worst kind of debilitation for a writer. It’s crippling. When we read up on exactly what Wallace was trying to accomplish with King, however, we see that he was well on his way to a mature masterpiece.
Celebrity took a weird toll on him. It’s uncomfortable watching him (on YouTube) squirm under the spotlight with Charlie Rose, as the interviewer reaches, suggests, infers and makes fun. Paralyzed perhaps a bit by a strange intellectuality and over-seriousness, Wallace can’t ever seem to explain himself properly. He was conflicted about the appearance to begin with (we read that he tried to get out of it). Wallace had a love-hate with television and media, the way even something as simple as an interview could be broken down and subject to unreality. He wrote quite a bit about television’s impact on culture.
He was on the show to promote A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, a non-fiction collection and one of the first things I read by him. Jest was already picking up serious momentum, and I distinctly remember a few writer friends mentioning him by name around this time. Someone mentioned to me an unusual ending to one of his stories where Wallace never specifically wrote the ending but left it in outline form so the reader knew what would happen but could also perceive the inner-working of the story, a unique post-modern spin. Another trademark of his, the footnote, also led to a number of conversations about innovations and unconventionality. With style, intelligence and grace Wallace was able to drag us out of Writer’s Workshop phony dramatic realist nonsense.
With regards to non-fiction, nothing can be more interesting to a writer than the real writer. The non-fiction gives us a glimpse into the real working of the mind, something which we’re distanced from with the art. And here I’m thinking of Carver and his autobiographical “Fires” and Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Although most of it was journalism-type reportage, Wallace opened many doors with his.
Max’s Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story constantly goes back to how frustrated Wallace was about his fiction. Either it wasn’t good enough or there wasn’t enough of it. Wallace cared deeply about the message and worked hard to provide solutions for our unhealthy addictions, narcissism, neuroticism, and meaninglessness. It was not for art’s sake with Wallace. It was, Yeah? So now what? Which brings us to the question, What is the function of contemporary novels?
When it came time to apply to grad schools in the late 90's there were really only a few options for me. East Coast, West Coast, Iowa… A professor, who happened to be my adviser, brought in a new issue of Harper’s with an excerpt of the newly published Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, another fascinating venture in storytelling I could see. Later, I told the adviser where I had applied. He asked if I had tried ISU. No, why? You know David Foster Wallace teaches there, don’t you? No. Dalkey Archive Press published experimental fiction there. It was happening, so I applied and that’s where I eventually went. I soon learned Wallace was impossible to get to, even at an opening gala of some sort, where they led him out like a prized stallion. He was totally inaccessible, and faculty made you feel awkward for even asking about him. To get a class with him was next to impossible, so I didn’t bother. Still I read him. I remember being particularly impressed with “Lyndon,” another impressive feat. And recently, I came across Everything and More by chance and was absolutely floored by his take on modern mathematics. A fascinating read, it was like running into an old friend.
Still, what is the function of the contemporary novel? What is its purpose?
Parts of Infinite Jest have been compared to The Brothers Karamazov (the moral arc of the story is comparatively similar), and Hamlet is never too far away. Wouldn’t it be better to read The Brothers Karamazov and Hamlet? The answer is definitely yes, it’d be better to read these masterworks. So the inherent challenge of today’s fiction is to create something comparatively useful, not necessarily superior to the canon. It seems Wallace wasn’t able to work his way out of the hole he dug for himself.
There is an overwhelming sense of failure on behalf of his illness and his recovery. All that work! Early on at Amherst he said he wanted to write books that will be read 100 years from now. His will be read 1,000 years from now. He accomplished that much. An invaluable loss. What tragedy. Painful, painful.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Pure Being
Deeply moved by the story of Christopher Johnson McCandless, “Alexander Supertramp,” as related by John Krakauer. Enjoyed an episode of “Iconoclasts,” a documentary-style, intellectual pairing of the author Krakauer and Sean Penn, Into the Wild’s director, shot on location in Alaska. Also watched a Charlie Rose interview with Penn and Eddie Vedder who did the music for the film. Uber-publicity! All four men were touched by the unique story of this young man McCandless who both lost and found himself in the wilderness.
On the surface it’s easy to understand why a man would take to the road. It’s easy to see why a young man would want to test himself extremely, supremely. But beyond that, what would drive a man to discontinue any and all communication with his family? Or assume alternate identities? Going deeper, it’s a complex story, and it appears there are many complicated reasons. The mystery itself becomes part of the man, part of the enigma, even though, for the most part, McCandless documented most of his trip.
There is a photograph of Chris sitting by the bus in Alaska when he was healthy. He is happy and content. His smile reveals a devilish form of accomplishment. There is another a few months later, and this time he’s in trouble. He weighs 67 pounds, but again wears a devilish grin. Here is the superhuman attempt to achieve a pure form of freedom with the bare minimum; an exercise of magnificent proportions; an isolated and immediate existence; a demystification of the myth that we are better here in our safe society; that somewhere within ourselves exists the power to live a better, cleaner life, undestructive to ourselves and surroundings, unantagonistic to others. Dreams lived out conscientiously whose realities became something more in the end.
We create the world we inhabit. There is no system in place that controls our passions, decisions, lifestyles. Individually we control virtually nothing. Yet there resides in that miniscule amount we can control the potential for every possibility. Only the will to exercise this very real power remains. Sometimes that will is not enough. It was at least for McCandless.
What he envisioned, as modest as it was, came to life. Though a somewhat bizarre storyteller (he usually refers to himself in the third person – the only other chronicler I’ve come across to do this was Julius Caesar), he was a story-liver. Krakauer explores the many multi-faceted themes of the young man’s life and validates them, out of exasperation contemptuously with what critics have contemptuously deemed foolish, senseless, and incomprehensible. He refers to Chris as “boy” frequently and out of respect. The author sees him as a kindred spirit, a lost son, a brother, the younger mentor. More (if not most) importantly, Krakauer sees himself in Chris, the young man the author grew out of materialized in the Alaskan wilderness with one question on the lip of every self-photographed smile: “This is me. Who are you?”
The question that perseveres.
I vaguely remember when the story broke in 1992. I was 15. I remember thinking that some old hippy starved to death in an abandoned bus. It was portrayed that way. I laughed about it – it meant nothing to me. The story was splashed across the screen with incredulity. At the time, I think, authorities did not know the identity of McCandless, and they broke the story to locate the family. Even then the general consensus was, “What was he thinking,” “How dumb can you be,” “There was a town nearby,” “He didn’t know what he was doing.” Fifteen years later I watched Sean Penn explain himself to Charlie Rose and the author. This time, at this point in my life, this juncture of will and wish, dreams and possibilities, Chris McCandless’s story illuminated the quintessential vision for me of being and becoming.
What would lead a man to think he could live off the wilds of Alaska with hardly any resource? The answer is what offends most people. Krakauer explains in “Iconoclasts” that the whole world is mapped out and that the only way to get lost in it is to throw away the maps. To want to get lost may seem selfish, idealistic, beyond sensibility. For me it is larger and more significant; it is a Homeric spear crashing through the shields of life. Where most stories weave some dilemma between man and man, man and nature, or man and god, McCandless’s story weaves all three at once. Of being, becoming and overcoming. He almost made it, too. Almost. He accomplished what he wanted. Nothing is left but the tragedy.
The question perseveres.
What happened to that young man, that former self of a former self? Did he live up to expectations? Did he set any worth setting? Does the cost of experience outweigh the dream itself? Who are you? What have we become?
On the surface it’s easy to understand why a man would take to the road. It’s easy to see why a young man would want to test himself extremely, supremely. But beyond that, what would drive a man to discontinue any and all communication with his family? Or assume alternate identities? Going deeper, it’s a complex story, and it appears there are many complicated reasons. The mystery itself becomes part of the man, part of the enigma, even though, for the most part, McCandless documented most of his trip.
There is a photograph of Chris sitting by the bus in Alaska when he was healthy. He is happy and content. His smile reveals a devilish form of accomplishment. There is another a few months later, and this time he’s in trouble. He weighs 67 pounds, but again wears a devilish grin. Here is the superhuman attempt to achieve a pure form of freedom with the bare minimum; an exercise of magnificent proportions; an isolated and immediate existence; a demystification of the myth that we are better here in our safe society; that somewhere within ourselves exists the power to live a better, cleaner life, undestructive to ourselves and surroundings, unantagonistic to others. Dreams lived out conscientiously whose realities became something more in the end.
We create the world we inhabit. There is no system in place that controls our passions, decisions, lifestyles. Individually we control virtually nothing. Yet there resides in that miniscule amount we can control the potential for every possibility. Only the will to exercise this very real power remains. Sometimes that will is not enough. It was at least for McCandless.
What he envisioned, as modest as it was, came to life. Though a somewhat bizarre storyteller (he usually refers to himself in the third person – the only other chronicler I’ve come across to do this was Julius Caesar), he was a story-liver. Krakauer explores the many multi-faceted themes of the young man’s life and validates them, out of exasperation contemptuously with what critics have contemptuously deemed foolish, senseless, and incomprehensible. He refers to Chris as “boy” frequently and out of respect. The author sees him as a kindred spirit, a lost son, a brother, the younger mentor. More (if not most) importantly, Krakauer sees himself in Chris, the young man the author grew out of materialized in the Alaskan wilderness with one question on the lip of every self-photographed smile: “This is me. Who are you?”
The question that perseveres.
I vaguely remember when the story broke in 1992. I was 15. I remember thinking that some old hippy starved to death in an abandoned bus. It was portrayed that way. I laughed about it – it meant nothing to me. The story was splashed across the screen with incredulity. At the time, I think, authorities did not know the identity of McCandless, and they broke the story to locate the family. Even then the general consensus was, “What was he thinking,” “How dumb can you be,” “There was a town nearby,” “He didn’t know what he was doing.” Fifteen years later I watched Sean Penn explain himself to Charlie Rose and the author. This time, at this point in my life, this juncture of will and wish, dreams and possibilities, Chris McCandless’s story illuminated the quintessential vision for me of being and becoming.
What would lead a man to think he could live off the wilds of Alaska with hardly any resource? The answer is what offends most people. Krakauer explains in “Iconoclasts” that the whole world is mapped out and that the only way to get lost in it is to throw away the maps. To want to get lost may seem selfish, idealistic, beyond sensibility. For me it is larger and more significant; it is a Homeric spear crashing through the shields of life. Where most stories weave some dilemma between man and man, man and nature, or man and god, McCandless’s story weaves all three at once. Of being, becoming and overcoming. He almost made it, too. Almost. He accomplished what he wanted. Nothing is left but the tragedy.
The question perseveres.
What happened to that young man, that former self of a former self? Did he live up to expectations? Did he set any worth setting? Does the cost of experience outweigh the dream itself? Who are you? What have we become?
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