authors under the influence

[Will Layman]

I think D Julius said it better than I could regarding the addiction,  
marijuana stuff.  There are a million additions in IJ, drugs being  
maybe only the most obvious.  I do think that the passage about the  
guy waiting for his (dealer?) and wondering if he should call his  
dealer, being torn about it, is real a brilliant -- not necessarily  
just a portrait of drug feeling but a portrait of fucked up desire of  
any kind at all.

I agree that the 12-step stuff is often tedious.  Again (and I refer  
again to THE ART OF EXCESS, which talks about this kind of technique,  
off-putting as it is), I think that is part of the art of it.   The  
book grinds on you, kind of saying, You think this is tedious, well  
that's REALLY what it is, and you can't sentimentalize it.

But here's to you, David, or anyone who doesn't like Wallace or IJ:  
coooooool.  Lord knows you don't have to like or have read any  
author.  Apropos of recent discussions -- I just don't like Eco.   
Don't even know why.  I've never made it through ULYSSES either, even  
though I love PORTRAIT and DULBLINERS.  Love Vollmann and Powers,  
didn't like CLOUD ATLAS or LEMPIERRE'S DICTIONARY.

So, you know, we're not robots and we like different stuff.  I just  
feel the need to stick up for IJ when it gets smacked around here,  
but that doesn't make it everyone's cuppa.

Read Shakespeare -- I'll join you.  Gonna skip the Faulkner, though.   
For me the great Faulkner is a chore rather than a pleasure -- even  
though he's brilliant.

w

On Oct 16, 2006, at 11:47 PM, David Casseres wrote:

> On 10/16/06, Will Layman <WillLayman at comcast.net> wrote:
>> ... I just could not disagree
>> more with David assertion: "no nutritional content.  Nothing to think
>> about, no change in your weather, let alone your life.  It's empty."
>> I well understand people getting frustrated with the details, the
>> length, the endnotes, but JEST is just packed with "real" concerns --
>> addiction, family dysfunction, sibling rivalry.  When you push past
>> all the hi-jinks it is a much more conventional, character-driven
>> novel than, say, GR.  And, in fact, that was Wallace's intent.  If
>> you read his essay about television and literature in the first essay
>> collection, it's clear that he wanted to write something that would
>> kind of transcend the cleverer-than-thou po-mo, Look How Self-
>> Conscious-I-Am "Lost in the Funhouse" type thing he had been writing
>> up to that point.  JEST is an attempt, I think, to write the post-
>> modern classic that destroy post-modernism by, you know, actually
>> CARING.
>
> But you know, he wound up writing a treatise against marijuana whose
> intellectual content is firmly rooted in 1950's propaganda of the most
> ignorant kind.  And a portrait of 12-step recovery that has me
> screaming for something, anything, to get me high enough to escape
> that infernal drone of disinformation. And as for family dysfunction
> and sibling rivalry, can I please, please just re-read Faulkner and
> Shakespeare instead?  OK, you've answered my complaint about "no
> nutritional content," and I'm saying Empty Calories.
>
>> I think Hal's story is actually pretty heart-breaking.
>
> It is moving.  I give it that, at least if we strip away all the
> phoney baloney about his marijuana "addiction."