DF Wallace

[Tim Ware]

Hey Paul:

One man's ashtry ...

I loved the book the first time through and even more the second time. I
could say it's too bad you didn't finish the beast. As in GR, many of those
irritating details become significant on a second reading. I like the guy's
writing. I didn't find the novel empty. 

I too think CivilwarLand in Bad Decline is wonderful. But I don't think it
obviates IJ. I suppose I've always been suspicious of criticism of the
So-and-so-said-the-same-thing-but sort.

Oh well.



On Sun, 16 Jun 1996, Paul DiFilippo wrote:

> 
> 
> Not belonging to the DFW-list--and now with no intention of 
> joining _ever_--I thought I'd post this here, because of past
> interest.  Anyone wishing to repost to the DFW-list is welcome to.
> HOW I SPENT MY LATE-SPRING VACATION TRYING TO READ INFINITE JEST
> So here I am on Block Island, Rhode Island--"the Bermuda of the 
> North"--with IJ my only reading material.  I settle in.  Five days
> and a mere 300 pages later, I give up.  Why?  Well it's not because
> of any TRP ripoffs--as with DFW's earlier BROOM--but only because 
> the book is so damn _empty_.  As a satire--its main mode--it pales
> next to George Saunder's CIVALWARLAND IN BAD DECLINE, which 
> accomplishes everything DFW is trying to do in a tenth of the space,
> and with genuine pathos.  As a skewering of jargon and psychobabble
> and tech-talk, any Mark Leyner piece of 500 words easily
> transcends it.  But the worst affliction is its fascistic--yes,
> fascistic--domination of the reader through extreme and meaningless
> specificity of details.  Now, haven't we always agreed that the 
> reading experience is a _collaboration_ between writer and reader?
> The reader is supposed to use his/her imagination to supply the
> images hinted at/sketched in by the writer, it being generally
> assumed that concise writing simply cannot replicate _every_
> sensual/historical detail any fictional character would really
> encounter.  But DFW, by supplying such essentially banal and worthless
> details as the type of sheets on a character's bed, seeks to remove
> any readerly contribution, forcing his godlike (if only he were!)
> images on the reader in an assault that reminded me of Alex
> getting his eyes clamped open in CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  As one of DFW's
> own characters says, upon the point of suicide, "she was collecting
> details like empty seashells."
> To 
> To contrast, consider Harold Brodkey's "Innocence"--sixty pages of
> detail about a single sexual encounter--yet full of meaning.
> POSTSCRIPT:  I finally found a used bookstore on Block Island and
> picked up a good old Ross MacDonald--TROUBLE FOLLOWS ME (1946)--and
> almost immediately read this sentence:  "The first stages of
> drunkenness are delicate, illusive and altruisitc, like the first
> stages of love."  Seems to me this is what the first 300 pages of
> IJ could be boiled down to.
> 
> --
> DiFi&Newton/2 Poplar/Prov., RI 02906/Vox: 401-751-0139
> "I have almost nothing in common with myself"--Franz Kafka
> "I do the best imitation of myself."  Ben Folds Five
>