A cursory glance at the Blog entries will reveal that I am a big admirer of David Foster Wallace. Critics generally represent him as a smart aleck (which is true) and often claim that his writing is superficial (which is way off the mark). The criticism probably partly stems from the fact that you have to concentrate to keep up with his observations and willing to accept that he will sometimes go off at tangents. At times he seems like someone with so much to say he can’t get the words down fast enough. He is so brimful of ideas and asides that his novels and essays are peppered with footnotes – sometimes these become mini essays in themselves. It may be tempting to skip these but I would urge newcomers to his work to ALWAYS read them . If you don’t, you’re liable to miss gems like this which is from the essay “Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky” in his ‘Consider The Lobster’ collection:
“One has only to spend a term trying to teach college literature to realize that the quickest way to kill an author’s vitality for potential readers is to present that author ahead of time as ‘great’ or ‘classic’. Because then the author becomes for the students like medicine or vegetables, something the authorities have declared ‘good for them’ that they ‘ought to like’ at which point the students’ nictitating membranes come down, and everyone just goes through the requisite motions of criticism and paper-writing without feeling one real or relevant thing. It’s like removing all oxygen from the room before trying to start a fire.”
