task.

YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE POROUSNESS OF CERTAIN BORDERS (VI)

fwarg:

wehaventlocatedusyet:

fwarg:

'RECONSTRUCTED TRANSCRIPT OF
MR. WALTER D. ("WALT") DELASANDRO JR .'S PARENTS' MARRIAGE'S END, MAY 1956

"Don't love you no more." 
"Right back at you."
"Divorce your ass."
"Suits me."
"Except now what about the doublewide."
"I get the truck is all I know."
"You're saying I get the doublewide you get the truck."
"All I'm saying is that truck out there's mine."
"Then what about the boy." 
"For the truck you mean?" 
"You mean you'd want him?"
"You mean otherwise? "
"I'm asking are you saying you'd want him."
"You're saying you'd want him then."
"Look I get the doublewide you get the truck we flip for the boy."
"That's what you're saying?"
"Right here and now we flip for him."
"Let's see it ."
"For Christ's sake it's just a quarter."
"Just let's see it."
"Jesus here then."
"All right then."
"I flip you call?"
"Hows about you flip 1 call?" 
"Quit screwing around."

I have a lot of qualms with David Foster Wallace and how the hipster generation venerates his works and his life. But this micro-short story is undeniably a work of genius - it’s condensed, evocative and so complicated. 

Normally I would let something like this slide, but I’m in a unique mood right now. First, to dismiss something as ‘hipster’ in 2011, yet alone DFW (a man who is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest writers of the past several decades) is extremely trite and only shows how out of touch and self-important the user of that term is. Secondly, to take this short story, out of all the works of his prolific career, and deem it as ‘genius,’ screams of a desperate attempt at being unique. ‘Hey, I know this guy wrote a lot of stuff that people feel is extremely important, but I’m gonna take one of his lesser known pieces, one that isn’t nearly as impressive as his other works, and call it evocative, that way people will know I’m rebellious and don’t buy into hype,’ is essentially what I get from the above post. But yeah, go ahead, and keep talking about the ‘hipster generation’ …

Wow, I think you totally misconstrued what I have to say and I wonder why you take such personal offense to what I had to say about the story (which wasn’t negative). I don’t think he is a hipster - I think if you more carefully read my response you would see I have an issue with the way that people perceive him as a writer. I spent a good deal of my summer with individuals who treated David Foster Wallace as a deity and refused to read any other works by any other writer (unless, of course, Wallace was involved).

I’m not making some note that this is his only work that could be deemed “genius,” a term which I think you agree with considering you do mention he is widely critically considered a great writer. I think I’m perfectly allowed to use genius as an adjective to describe the short story.

And I wish you really hadn’t looked or analyzed so hard into the fact that I choose this story. It’s like your are searching for a something to patronize me with. I happened to come across this story in a class on the short story and then I wanted to share it with my blog. Why does it matter what text I connect to?  It has nothing to do with picking a “lesser known” work to be rebellious (and honestly, I’m not familiar enough with his short stories to be able to rank them).

It gets really tiresome to listen to tall skinny boys with clunky glasses and scarves and skinny jeans (at least a hundred of them, all in that office, five days a week, nonstop, oh my goddddddddddddd) go on and on about “DFW” this and “DFW” that (because, obviously, only those who truly care about him and his work will abbreviate his name to such a clever acronym!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Like, that can REALLY color the way you interact with an author’s work. I remember when I tried to read Infinite Jest last year, Russell had spent so long trying to get me hyped for it, and telling me it changed his life and blah blah blah, that when I finally sat down with it I was like.. Ugh. I just had a really bad taste in my mouth about it. 

Anyway so to suffer through months of DFW-fanboy nonsense, hyperbole, and pseudo-intellectual bullshit (not to imply that anything DFW-related is bullshit. I’m just saying, those boys were so absurd!), the feeling we were left with was just “Shut up already!”

I can’t speak for Sophie, but I imagine that discovering that short story, through whatever context it was, probably was a bit of a struggle. To let the memory of those fellow interns and their awful attitudes and their treating DFW like some kind of deity— to let all of that go and just enjoy the beauty of that story. And realize that yes, there’s something to all this DFW-worship that goes on. This story is beautiful and share-worthy, and a testament to the power of that guy’s writing- that it could actually be better than all the praise that gets showered upon it. 

whatevaaaaaaaaaaa, wehaventlocatedusyet sounds like he/she is really uptight.