Over the past few series, Short Stop has focused on stories that fall under the fiction umbrella. While some have been autobiographical, they present something more creative within the framework that is deserving of exploration. The chance to dive into what interests an author becomes a rewarding experience as I broke down themes and found interesting tidbits. While this will be the same for the upcoming series, the approach will be a little different. I’ve been a fan of David Foster Wallace ever since reading “Infinite Jest” years ago and have been curious to delve into his essays. In an effort to better understand his potential as a writer, I am going to be spending this column exploring the seven entries for “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Will the mix of analysis and autobiography provide something rewarding, or will I never do a nonfiction column again? Join me and find out. The only caveat is that due to some of these being lengthier, there’s an off chance the entries will take longer to release. Keep that in mind and let’s delve into one of the most unique voices of the late 20th century.
For a man who has spent a lot of pages in this compendium exploring our relationship with language, the funniest thing he’s done is make his shortest essay have a title like “Greatly Exaggerated.” It’s a fitting one, but it also feels underwhelming when considering that the length is roughly nine times shorter than the previous entry. It also feels like it’s his least personal and lacks a sense of self within the larger framework. This isn’t to say that Wallace fails as a writer, but part of his appeal is how he interweaves academia with personal experience in ways that make it more insightful. For the first time in my life, I am looking at a Wallace essay and thinking that it’s something that I could’ve written. I doubt that I would’ve been as enthusiastic about it as he is, but the style and substance aren’t that dissimilar from random dissertations that you give in college.
And this is for good reason. For as much as I can criticize “Greatly Exaggerated” for likely being the biggest dud in this whole project, it’s not doing anything wrong. It’s just lacking connection to a larger thesis. As the title suggests, there needs to be: A. A supposedly fun thing, and; B. I’ll never do again. We’ve seen him discuss tennis, TV criticism, and state fairs. These are things that we can acknowledge as fitting both boxes by the final sentence. Meanwhile, I remain at a loss for words as to what exactly was supposedly fun or what he’s not doing again. As someone who enjoys literary academia (I’ve even majored in it), I understand the modus operandi. I get why you’d want to break down language like this. In fact, it feels like a more banal post-script to the “E. Unibus Pluram” essay. However, it’s so straightforward and lacking personal insight that I never fully connected with it.
I’ll stop criticizing its incongruity with the larger anthology and focus on the ideas that it represents. For those who haven’t had the honor of taking university English courses (or dealt with the rhetoric elsewhere), a large part of this essay deals with the concept posited by Roland Barthes in 1967 called “Death of the Author.” In it he makes the argument that readers shouldn’t be forced to use the context of the writer and instead allow their own interpretation to inform the read. In a sense, the author ceases to exist once it’s sent out to a publishing house and there’s no need to question greater motives.
It’s a talking point that has bothered me ever since I was forced to take a literary class that spent a week discussing it. In theory, there is a lot of merit to viewing text less as a reflection of the author’s character and more on its themes and what can be extracted. In “Greatly Exaggerated,” Wallace uses the idea of this theory as unraveling a string. The idea is that by the end of the unraveling, the reader will be met with nobody at the other end. For those who see the opposite, the goal is to see the author’s truest intentions and understand the work through their process. I think on the surface that this is a great way to read literature because nobody has time to learn everybody’s life story. Can you understand my opinions on this without knowing what type of literature influences me? I’m sure you can find richer subtext, but I do think it risks navel gazing to look too closely at the work and wonder why “the blue curtains” dilemma exists. Sometimes a blue curtain is a blue curtain because the author likes the color. As someone who had to stop being a creative writing major after the bachelor level, a lot of reason for my dismissal of the highest learning is because English feels like a snake eating its own tail at a point. It is amazing and I love what the language does, but there’s some lonely bastards trying to stave off boredom by reading every sentence too closely and missing the larger point of the text: to entertain.
It makes sense that “Death of the Author” has been a controversial text ever since it was published. It remains the literary paradox on par with Schrodinger’s Cat. Do we choose to believe the unknown or risk disappointment with the truth? In my opinion, it’s about how closely you want to go. While I think writers like Jorge Luis Borges have a gift for hiding greater meaning in dense texts, I don’t believe that most will. I don’t even think Wallace has it because of how directly he often addresses the reader.
Even then, I loved getting the chance to explore the works of Virginia Woolf closely and recognizing how mental illness informed her work. I do think it enhances “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Orlando” to know personal truths about her. Even then, I chose to not go too deep as ambiguity is where the writer lives and interpretation is fun. You need to experience texts as something personal and intimate in ways that pulling back the curtain can’t. You just have to trust your instincts sometimes.
Wallace compares the work of Barthes to a contemporary 90s writer named H.L. Hix. While I am not that familiar with him outside of this context, I do love how enthusiastically Wallace talks about him, as if suggesting he is onto something revolutionary. His central essay is labeled “an autopsy” of Barthes’ theory, and I think it was a discussion worth having. Wallace seems fascinated by the potential for Generation X to be the radical generation who reshapes the industry. His manifesto was about how post-modernism and irony were limiting, and now he seeks to understand how literature can be processed on levels that had long been taken for granted.
On some level I tend to side with Hix. While I am somebody who recognizes the merit of “Death of the Author,” I ultimately find it frustrating and limiting. It’s fine if you want to stop there, but I’d argue being a consumer of culture becomes more fascinating if you look at the nuts and bolts. I enjoy listening to film scores days or weeks before I see the film to imagine how the director shot everything (I’m usually surprised by how different our visions are). I like seeing how the pieces go together and how environment informs something. Sometimes that’s what you need to understand in order to appreciate a work. Maybe the author was having a bad day or is taking his grievances out vicariously. I look at texts like Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and I cannot imagine not needing context for that. It’s one of the greatest works mankind has penned, but it’s somewhat gibberish without knowing it’s based off of him meeting a woman in his youth that has remained in his consciousness for decades. Yes, the journey to hell is a love story. It’s why it’s the archaic definition of a comedy.
I know that these sound like tangents, but I think it gets to the heart of how literature is a complicated field. For as much as I think looking too closely is harmful to any enjoyment, I would encourage readers to try and question why they like what they like. Be like Hix who agrees that writing should be about something greater underneath. Yes, it may be selfish for me to argue that, but I still think writing is supposed to be a time capsule of sorts that takes us back to Dante or Woolf and understand what their lives were like. The human condition is about maintaining understanding and empathy throughout the generations. We only know what life was like centuries ago because of documentation. While it can be argued how relevant some texts are, the reader at least has connection to that time.
That is why I ultimately side with Wallace in this debate. Despite the emphasis on Barthes and Hix, he eventually comes up with his own conclusion. After going at length about the benefits of each style, he decides that “Death of the Author” is bogus in part because it removes what’s enduring about literature. It’s something that I’ve picked up in his other essays’ subtext and maybe why I like them so much. Basically, the best writers are forming a conversation between themselves and the audience. For as much as consumption and interpretation are outside their control at a point, there still needs to be a chance for the reader to stand up at a Q&A and ask, “What did you mean on pg. 5, paragraph 7?” There is a need to share craft and have it grow. English as a form is always growing and mutating. To deny a chance to peer into its secrets feels foolish to me. I want to know as much as possible without spoiling the reading experience.
Again, I do believe you can get too involved with a text and it can ruin the joy. I had it to some extent during my university days. However, there are ways to have a text be enhanced by odd factoids. They may not change your emotional response and you may like your take better, but I think it deserves to be there. Like every conversation, there has to be two sides. Neither may hold the truth, but hopefully it will include a deeper understanding and appreciation for the subject. For whatever reason that Wallace included “Greatly Exaggerated” in this, I do not know. Part of me wants to know, but I can also guess based on what’s come before. He’s a literary nerd like myself. We just enjoy the goofy debates that academia provides. Maybe the reasoning for it being here isn’t that deep at all. I’m just going to go with that.
Coming Up Next: “David Lynch Keeps His Head”
Comments
Post a Comment