May 10
It’s that time again.
It’s that time when I ask stupid would you rather questions that absolutely make no sense–and then you answer them!
What a delightful experience.
We’ve done this twice before with moderate success, so I thought I’d give it another try since it’s been a while.
Here we go.
Parenting is hard work. I know that’s a cliche, but it’s a well-earned cliche.
Kids are pretty awesome, and they can even teach you a thing or two about reading, but they also have their moments. That’s why, if you want to be a parent, it’s important to make sure you are not a mental whack job.
Mental whack jobs who are parents usually produce kids who eventually become mental whack jobs themselves. This is not good.
Since fiction is often just a mirror of reality, there’s a lot to learn from literary parents, both good and whack jobbish.
Quite a bit, actually. Let’s take at some parenting tips I put together based on lessons I’ve learned from literary parents.
I love it when writers make up funny crap—especially when they create strange words.
Twice during this 101 Books journey, I’ve encountered the term “howling” used in a humorous way.
The first time was during David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. When a character had the “howling fantods,” they had the “creeps.” You might call it the “willies” or the “heebie jeebies.”
Here’s an example of the howling fantods in context from the novel:
I can’t think of one thing, maybe other than breathing, that I would, of my own free will, do for 24 hours.
Of all the things I would not do, somewhere in the upper portions of that list would be to watch a 24 hour play of Infinite Jest.
Wait a minute, you ask…Infinite Jest has been adapted into a play? Why, yes. Yes it has. Leave it to our German friends. An expiremental theater company in Berlin, Hebbel am Ufer, embraced this epic undertaking—with mixed results, if you read Aaron Wiener’s review on Slate.
Yesterday, David Foster Wallace would’ve been 50. He’s one of the authors that I’ve slowly grown in appreciation for since I started this blog. And judging by my tag cloud on the home page, I’ve probably talked about him more than any other author.
When I think of an author like DFW, a guy who wrote the beastly novel that is Infinite Jest, I assume he must have been into heady novels like Ulysses, that his daily reading list probably consisted of Chaucer and Homer, that he would read Faulkner on his lunch break.
But maybe not. Before he died, DFW made a list of his top ten favorite books for a compilation of favorite books of famous writers. I’ve got to say—they aren’t quite what I expected from DFW, but that makes him all the more intriguing.
Here is his top 10:
This week, I’m revisiting some of my favorite posts from 2011 while I take a one-week break from writing and simply focus on reading and spending time with my family. This post was originally published on May 11, 2011. 101 Books will return live on Monday January 2. See you then!
***
What just happened?
That’s the first question I asked myself after reading the final word of Infinite Jest. And while that might seem like a bad question to be asking oneself at the end of a 1,000 page book, it wasn’t unexpected.
I’m not sure I could count how many times I asked myself “What just happened?” while reading David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece over the last six weeks. It happened, like, a bunch of times–enough to be qualified as a recurring theme in my head.
It happened enough for me to say Infinite Jest is supremely frustrating at times–the loose, non-linear plot, the $10 words, the pure effort that the book takes to read.
But is that the point? Is that what David Foster Wallace was after? Did he want to make you work your butt off to read this book?
This week, I’m revisiting some of my favorite posts from 2011 while I take a one-week break from writing and simply focus on reading and spending time with my family. This post was originally published on April 13, 2011. 101 Books will return live on Monday January 2, 2012. See you then!
***
Since I started 101 Books, I recall tearing up only once while reading–that was during one dreadfully depressing passage in Rabbit, Run.
What if the two weightiest books I’ve read so far on the Time list squared off in a death match? What would happen?
Oh, you don’t think books would ever get in vicious and violent death matches, do you? Well, you obviously don’t have my warped mind.
Gone With The Wind and Infinite Jest are obnoxiously large books. They’re leviathans, the sumo wrestlers of the literary kingdom. If they squared off in a fight to the death, here’s how I see it breaking down:
It’s been awhile since we talked David Foster Wallace on the blog, and I kind of miss it.
So, even though I’ve long since finished with Infinite Jest, I thought I’d revisit Mr. DFW today and take a look at an entertaining letter he wrote to an editor at Harper’s Magazine. His letter is in reference to an essay he wrote for Harper’s about Franz Kafka.
Remember the grammar quiz that DFW gave to his college students? He’s a grammar nazi if I’ve ever seen one, but DFW also proves that you have to know the rules to break the rules. And you also need to be able to explain your reasoning to your more-than-likely Grammar Nazi editor.
Have you ever heard of this thing called music videos?
I heard that they were a popular thing back in the 80s and 90s on a channel called MTV. Anyway, some bands still make these “music videos,” The Decemberists being one.
The band was so inspired by Infinite Jest that they made a video depicting one of the most memorable scenes in the book–the kids at the tennis academy playing Eschaton.
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