Slowly Going Bald

"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."

Monday, January 16, 2006

I've got to say, David Foster Wallace is frustratingly good at what he does, which is write fiction and nonfiction that seeps into your brain and lives there, leaving behind sentences and images that you can't shake. Trust me, I've tried.

Anyone able to tear themselves away from the never-less-than-enthralling content here in the main area of the site may have noticed that Infinite Jest sits permanently on the sidebar. It's one of the best things I've ever read. I hope others pick it up and plow through it. Don't be frightened by the 1,000-page-plus length, or the copious, self-reflexive footnotes. It's amazing.

Here's a taste, for those unfamiliar with his work: An essay from the mid-'90s titled "F/X Porn," about how special effects can kill storytelling in films. Enjoy.

2 Comments:

As a huge DFW fan, two observations: 1) Did you know that John Krasinski (he of "The Office,") is adapting it for the screen (how, I don't know), and 2) I just finished Consider the Lobster, his latest book of essays. Brilliant. The man can the most banal things unbelievably fascinating.

By Anonymous, at 8:12 PM, January 16, 2006

It took some searching, but I finally found this, which talks about Krasinski adapting DFW's "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men."

By Dan Carlson, at 6:28 PM, January 17, 2006

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: Name: Dan Carlson; Location: Houston, Texas, United States

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...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

--Look Homeward, Angel

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

--John Stuart Mill

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

--G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.

--August Van Zorn

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.

--Stephen King

Film lovers are sick people.

--Francois Truffaut

Slowly Going Bald

Monday, January 16, 2006

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