A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
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I want to read everything David Foster Wallace writes. I’m just in complete and total awe of the dude. I’ve reviewed Girl with Curious Hair, a collection of short stories, and Consider the Lobster, a collection of nonfiction essays previously published in various mediums. My current read, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, is in the same format as Consider the Lobster; it’s just a collection of *better* essays.
My favorite essays from this collection include:
“Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All” (a deep-dive into the Illinois State Fair)
“David Lynch Keeps His Head” (his opinions on Lynch after getting behind-the-scenes access to the making of a Lynch film)
"Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" (reporting on qualifying rounds of a tennis tournament + reflections on the sport/competitive athletics in general)
“A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (his experience on a 7-night luxury Caribbean cruise)
DFW can take any humdrum subject and make it deeply interesting and moving. He’s so hypnotizingly descriptive that I find myself rapt in a diatribe about how weather affects tennis players. Magazine publishers knew that, which is why Harper’s did things like ~hey, let’s just throw David Foster Wallace on a cruise ship and see what happens~. No angle, no guidance, just his in-depth experience speaking for itself.
This collection comes with his signature footnoting (his writing is literally riddled with hundreds of footnotes-- mostly sassy and judgmental asides). I personally love this, but I can see how some people might find it disruptive to the pace. The footnotes are part of his brand, though; he’s incredibly astute and he describes everything so specifically and thoroughly that I began to question if I was looking at the world as carefully as I should be. Maybe I ought to stop and really smell these freakin roses. But it must be exhausting to be him (which is perhaps why he decided to stop being him). I get the distinct sense that he doesn’t do anything casually and that when he consumes things, he does it with all his senses wide open.
Because of all the detail, it’s not a quick read- but I have to remind myself that that’s probably a good thing. I don’t need to be gobbling down every single book I read. That’s not very on par with the stop-and-really-smell-these-freakin-roses vibe.
I sincerely believe that there’s no one who has ever written like him-- that he’s in a category all on his own. He understands the intricacies of the human condition and articulates them in ways that resonate so deeply. This collection is no exception, and I highly recommend it. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again receives 5 out of 5 flames.
