I'm very surprised at the fact that since the death of David Foster Wallace, author of the postmodern novel Infinite Jest and numerous unforgettable essays, I've felt the loss of his voice, his sardonic-yet-compassionate take on the world, every day. Since September 13th, when I first heard the news on National Public Radio while we were off sailing, I've braced myself against a new silence, the weakening of a shared sense of absurdity - surely D. F. W. knows how ridiculous this is, my addiction to Roger Federer's footwork - when I smack up against a new subculture. So he was with me, albeit unconsciously, when I insisted to my husband that we interrupt our cruise to veer off to Rockland Harbor so I could spend two nights in a loud, mildewed-smelling basement poolroom of a waterfront sports-bar to watch key matches of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
Only Wallace's passing has alerted me to the fact that I internalized something of his world-view, how it feels to stand on the threshhold of a new subculture, with its contradictions and absurdities winking at you, but also feeling a new sense of one's own frailties. And now with this new sense of missing him, I want to recommend three of his essays that lodged him so unobtrusively but firmly in my mind. Two are in his 1998 book: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. The title essay is about a Carribean cruise on a Club-Med-like commercial cruise-ship that - like almost all his writing, surprised Wallace in what this subculture of excess showed him about himself. He wrote the piece for Harper's Magazine, I think, and he boarded the vessel with the assumptions of his audience: that the experience would be cheesy, gluttonous, and absurd, which he showcased by men in lurid leisure suits and women in lamay evening gowns oohing and aahing over the butter sculpture centerpiece that towers over the dining-room. After cataloguing such scenes in a colloquial voice that sounds like your funniest friend, he shows himself in his cabin getting ready for the last night's banquet, gaping at the tuxedo t-shirt he brought in place of the required black-tie, having second thoughts about his sardonic choice. He says that if you think it's easy being the only one who breaks a rule - no matter how silly - in a self-contained world that you can't get out of, think again. And as he chastises himself for being literally paralyzed, confined to his room by this sudden need to fit in, he underscores the fact that life is continually surprising, continually challenging to our idea of self.
The other two essays are about the tennis players Michael Joyce and Roger Federer. The first one is in the book of essays above, about the subculture of the sattelite tennis tour, the minor-league of professional tennis. The second appeared in the New York Times a year or so ago. Google "Roger Federer as Religious Experience." It's about the preternatural grace of Federer, and the experience of seeing him live as opposed to TV. In both these essays, Wallace deconstructs physical movement and the geometry of the court to make us newly appreciate what these athletes do while at the same time retaining the mysteries of the game. Such as the way Federer seems to float a foot above the court. The fact that he never gets injured, while most other players have to wear ankle, knee, or thigh supports, attests to what otherwise would seem just a fantasy or trick of the eye.
These pieces, and I'm sure all the rest of Wallace's work (I haven't read much more than this because I find the trademark footnotes of his fiction interruptive), show us a voice that is very funny in a sardonic and ironic way, and yet is never mean or mocking. We are so lucky that he's left this rare balance, a feat akin to Federer's footwork, behind.
Our local community where he lived and taught creative writing at one of the colleges has evidenced an outpouring of sadness and grief that this creative man chose to depart this world at such a young age.
Posted by: joared | September 26, 2008 at 11:22 PM