Reviewing essays by one of my favorite authors is a tricky proposition; for one, I will just jump on board with anything he says because I like the guy's way of thinking (and additionally because it is easy to get swept up in the aptly described Bravura writing style - the big fun-making of DFW is that his readers end up dreamily penning "How true" in the margins of his books), and two, it's a collection of essays written over several years without anything resembling a cohesive center, so reviewing it as a collective is, ahem, silly. Like, say, someone naming Paul Simon's Negotiations and Love Songs, a greatest hits collection, as their favorite album. Just absurd! But I suppose I can tackle it from a "collection as reading experience," which is going to largely turn into reviewing it as though it were a greatest hits album, giving the essays star ratings and the whole nine yards. Somewhere in the back of mind is the vague notion that you are not supposed to start reviews by commenting about how you are going to write the review, much as you are not supposed to start essays with "this essay is about..." or "In this piece, I will demonstrate the futility of the modern notion of sainthood," etc. I think I'm supposed to just do it, but lest my review get screwed up, I will first take a practice run through. My review of DFW's Oblivion got a little shorted, so I'll run the collection-as-album experiment here...
DFW's Oblivion, story by story
Mr. Squishy. Four Stars. A biting account of the advertising industry and focus group-geared thinking. Interlaced with a very spectacular story about a man climbing a building; DFW actually eschews some of his trademark footnotes for a simple injected account in the main narrative that bounces around, not paragraph by paragraph, but sentence by sentence. Cool, smart start.
The Soul is Not a Smithy. Three Stars. An account of a would-be school massacre as (un) witnessed by an autistic child.
Incarnations of Burned Children. Three Stars. A two page, simply horrifying account of an accident.
Another Pioneer. Three Stars. An overheard airplane story of a near-deity in an indigenous South American village.
Good Old Neon. Five Stars. A gut-ripping story about suicide, therapy and the self. This one is so good that it physically hurts to read it, if that makes any sense - I guess the emotional content is very raw and real.
Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature. Three Stars. Great and very weird account of a mother who has had horrific plastic surgery and her spider collecting son.
Oblivion. Three Stars. A story that's ostensibly about a simple marital spat, but unravels to reveal a complexly ordered relationship. Very cool, streaming narrative.
The Suffering Channel. Four Stars. A thoroughly haunting and absurdly driven and fecal themed account of, of all things, 9/11. Beyond great.
So, it seems that this style (or the fact that I now have not read the book in a little while) makes for a little bit of a superficial take on the content, but all the same is a bit more direct with the "this was good, this was great, this was transcendent" line of criticism. So, here's the same effort on ASFTINDA.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, essay by essay
Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley. Three Stars. DFW's take on his childhood as a junior pro tennis player in the windblown Midwest. Very in depth and cool take on the aesthetics of tennis.
E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction. Four Stars. I loved this essay about fiction writing in the televisual age, the abuses and limits of irony, postmodernism and the post-postmodern direction literature seems to be forced to take. Awesome stuff.
Getting Away... Two Stars. I think I have just read too much DFW lately for this one to click with me - it was another east coast meets the familiar quaint midwest and can neither confirm his belonging there or deny his guilt over feeling above it. I just wasn't entranced by this one, sorry.
Greatly Exaggerated. Three Stars. An account of postmodern criticism and the veracity of recent "death of the author" claims.
David Lynch Keeps His Head. Three Stars. Very cool (and verbosely impressive) if you're into David Lynch and the function of the avant garde; if you're not, well, you're lame and you probably would not have enjoyed this. Also makes the interesting claim the DL paved the way for directors like Quentin Tarantino who took the absurdity of Lynchianism and made it palatable for a wider audience. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (severed ear, anyone) were the two noted examples.
Tennis Player Michael Joyce... Four Stars. Awesome account of life on the sub-star professional tennis circuit. It mentions Tommy Ho, a tennis player and classmate of mine at Rice. Anyways, this is great, not just for its take on its own subject matter but the extended idea of applying the tennis lifestyle to other ventures.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Five Stars. The unimaginably brilliant account of taking a cruise vacation, with all the elaborate deal and social commentary that such a varied adventure brings. This essay is LONG (100+ pages), and worth every sentence. This is DFW at his best - bringing his dazzling intellect and style to bear on a bizarre situation and not coming away with a simple smirk of "isn't this f'ed up," but actually having the depth to display his emotional innards as he reacts to everything he encounters. He essentially (and appropriately, given the E Unibus essay) transcends the ironic in an obviously ironic situation; I couldn't recommend this piece more.
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