“The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unboreable…. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” – p. 438 […]
It’s Bloomsday. Literary New Year’s Eve for some of us in the macronovel fan community. (Yes, I know, certainly only some.) Season’s greetings from the Dept. of Great Minds Thinking Alike: “Although of course you end up becoming yourself.” — David Foster Wallace (see Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip […]
Q: What on Earth do you do to follow up when somebody hits it out of the park? A: You play small-ball. Genno Kane seems to have taken a cue from her new interest and our national pastime and drilled one over the left-field fence with her post ‘The Antidote To Infinite Jest?‘*. People are […]
“Every love story is a ghost story.” I’m not into ghost stories. I’ve never had the reputed pleasure of being freaked out by tales of psychotic spirits, or spirited psychotics, who are about to lop my head off with a power tool as soon as I drift off to sleep at this backwoods campsite right […]
Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality — there is no audience…. Here is the truth — actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. — The Pale King, p. 229 I’m sure everyone else has already mined this irony: We’re reading a book about the extremes of boredom because we loved a book about […]
Take everything ever written, thought or felt about the relationship between work and personal identity. Condense it into a page. That page is Section 18. ‘And Desk Names are back…. Instead of your name. There’s a plate on your desk with your Desk Name. Your Name de Gear as they say…. If you’re smart, you’ll […]
What gets me about David Foster Wallace is how he gets into your head: “That’s what I was thinking! Only better. OK, that’s what I thought about thinking. Make that ‘had a thought that could have led to, given a very generous estimation of my intellectual horsepower.’ ” A concept that seems to be crying […]
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