Good People (David Foster Wallace)
January 29, 2007
David Foster Wallace has a new story in the New Yorker…
Tags:
dfw, fiction, short fiction
6 Responses to “Good People (David Foster Wallace)”
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All me-stream all the time.
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January 30th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Good People, sounds like he is trying to do a non-ironic celebration of values that still exist in America - what he talked about years ago, in his essay on television, fiction that would come after t.v. influenced meta-fiction.
Not as good, for my money, as Good Old Neon, perhaps the best short story I have read this decade.
And another thing: why don’t you scale your comments to the side of your web page the way you do on your Ruminate site? That seems to be the most revolutionary thing to happen in blogland thus far, integrating and questioning reader/writer relationships to a greater extent than anything else, the internet’s great promise in the first place…
January 31st, 2007 at 9:54 am
I agree that this isn’t DFW’s best… but even when he’s not at his best he is better than most!
re: comments– eventually I plan to bring forward comments and such, I just haven’t had time…
February 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am
He’s a great writer and a kind of reptile. It’s hard to imagine him as a real living being, in fact. In Chekhov, by contrast, I have a sense of a writer wanting to love and sympathize with the reader, even if the reader is flawed. Though I know DFW has complained that it’s not possible to be “Russian” anymore (and by Russian here I mean “alive, warm, human” in a way that is sustainable across epochs with their changing mores, revolutions, decay), in his essay on Dostoevski. Too bad. I think he could try. I think writers have to try.
I do love DFW. I even liked “Good People” very much. I’ve read mostly his essays and some of his short stories. As far as I know now, I am never going to read Infinite Jest. But believe me…On the essays, bravo, DFW. But I get tired of being drawn into his fine writing only to come away from it with the sense that it was only an exercise. He gives an impression of a well-built guy flexing his muscles for inspection, with absolutely no feeling in his eyes. A half-formed human, really. Some kind of monster with no center. A changeling? Oh, he has his precious moments when he calls attention to just how well aware he is of his own strangeness. And I almost want to pet him like a puppy then. But consistently I emerge from the tunnel of his work as from that ride at Disney World where you’re kind of in awe for ten minutes, but when it’s over you realize it’s added nothing to your life nor to your understanding or appreciation of anything except itself. It’s a bizarre, empty feeling. And it leaves me stunned, wanting to reject him.
I wish I could say that I can’t wait until his full humanity emerges in his writing. Because that would mean I expect it to happen someday. That could be cosmically mind-blowing, so to say. Wow. A sincere DFW. It might also be a sign of the changing times. And maybe my beef is not with him but with our era. But the trouble with the matter at hand is that “Good People” and its likes leave me pretty empty. And I’m really sorry I have to feel this way, because there is something about him that’s very beautiful, noble and inspiring. I am sorry to call him a reptile–in fact, that’s not the worst thing to be… reptiles can sure be fascinating–but that’s the way it is. I am going off to a corner to hang my head in shame now.
February 14th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I’m loving your comments here and have more to say about this– hopefully this weekend when I have time. I share much of your feelings here, but wonder if the kind of detached irony that he both implements, wallows in, and sometimes decries is escapable at all, or if it is by definition a kind of black hole. I don’t know that all of these emotional and intellectual thoroughfares are two-way…
February 14th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Yeah, I’m liking your site a lot. When I first found the link on Google I thought it was another site, cosmoetica, that I’ve been to a few times and whose content is a little rambling and bombastic, though it has some interesting stuff, too. But yours is really very nicely done. Some great links here. [The Simpsons thing is crazy! She got a job out of that! The artwork is soooo funny.] SO I’ll be sure and come back for more in the same vein, or whatever you happen to have when I visit.
That’s the connundrum, the black hole thing. It’s the times. So I’m not sure what the answer is, and that’s why I find DFW a sympathetic, almost kind of a valiant guy, for at least demonstrating the problem with intelligence and some purpose. Though valiant may not mean anything anymore :o) And we’re back at the start. There’s a real problem. People need moderate warmth, a little bread, a little water. Donald Barthelme offers some warmth, a touch of sympathy (though I’ve not read most of what he wrote, only a handful of stories), as late as the 1980s, and he was trapped in the rigors of *his* times. No one thinks the 1980s were Nirvana. So why are our artists twenty years later so jaded, so convinced that they’ve seen it all? Is it a question of our advancing slowly as a species toward complete meaninglessness and self-annihilation? Buddhism has mystical answers to this question that sort of prove satisfying with some effort (effort at least for me). Or are we caught in some kind of natural cycle of thriving and dying hope, on a downturn at the moment? What do I do with these feelings of wanting to abandon myself to the currents of buy-buy-buy, use-use-use without an aim other than me-me-me? Because that’s what makes sense these days, right? Nothing matters! Buy something! Have some fun! Go to Vegas. That’s what people do. It’s what we’re all about these days and it may even be an inevitable phenomenom. But there are consequences. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I hate these times, this f*ing saturnalia without an end in sight, but maybe I’m a jerk for wishing things were otherwise. I really would like to see us turn a corner, though. And art is not devoid of its human function, as far as I’m concerned. It tries to find a center, whether overtly and intentionally or not. Oh I don’t know, I only wish our DFW would show us the way, you know?
We can’t be doomed.
I’ll look forward to your comments on art and nihilism and to more of your posts. Hope it’s a good week for you. Lotsa ice and snow here. Day off! Woo hoo!
March 26th, 2007 at 1:09 am
I’m a writer by hobby, and I’ve discovered that searching for warmth and kindness in my writing is also searching for warmth and kindness in American society: possibly futile. I’ve noticed that critiques of DFW always involve something to the effect of ‘why can’t he be more like us?’, but I’m more or less convinced that DFW is a good deal kinder and more thoughtful than the average American citizen (he worries about whether lobsters feel pain as we boil them alive, for example). And he’s generally described as cold and detached. So what might we infer? That Americans are selfish and frigid? That emotional displays in American art are necessarily self-conscious and empty? That DFW is reluctant to appear sentimental for good reason; i.e., because anything resembling flesh-and-blood human weakness is met with sneering, smirking contempt here ‘neath the grand old stars and stripes?
All of the above, I’d posit. I think maybe serious American artists remain gloomy because our society hasn’t evolved in any significant way in fifty years. Racism and homophobia are rampant, economic inequality’s on the increase, the government’s shot through with corruption, we’re bogged down in a pointless and devastating foreign war . . . bet you can’t guess what century it is! All the obvious points having been referenced, I think Good People shines a light. Here’s a story about religion and abortion and love that rings completely true, but also doesn’t come off as shrill or condescending or emotionally dead. Whatever else people want to say about DFW, the man’s got balls of titanium, and I think it’s just a matter of time before he drops the qualifications and simply speaks his mind. Lord knows his mind has gathered the necessary raw data to make a substantive case for the re-humanization of art. I’m ready for that argument.