Fucking David Foster Wallace (free)

Yeah, I know he's dead and all, but I have to be straight up: I couldn't get even half through An Infinite Jest. The novel was pretentious and hipster and navel-gazing and as hard to get into as any James Joyce piece of work.

I'm mostly alone in my opinion of David Foster Wallace, I realize. To be fair, I liked a few of his short stories in the collection Girl with Curious Hair. His writing was sharp and insightful in short form, particularly the first few in that collection. (The ones toward the end, meh, not so much.)

If I don't have anything else to do on Thursday April 26th, I might end up at the Hugo House and give fucking David Foster Wallace one more chance. I like the reader line up.

Reading and Celebration in Memory of David Foster Wallace
Thursday, February 26th 2009, 7:00 pm
Richard Hugo House
Free

Hugo House is hosting a special event celebrating the life and work of writer David Foster Wallace. Local luminaries David Schmader, Cienna Madrid, Paul Constant and other writers and performers will read from their most beloved of the late author’s work.

Wallace, who died tragically last September at the age of 46, was a writer of singular importance and influence, both as a literary stylist and as an exacting, hilarious, and heartbreaking examiner of the cultural and existential absurdities and tragedies in contemporary America. Come hear some of your favorite of Wallace’s essays, novels, and short fiction, or be introduced to this extraordinary writer for the first time.

For further information, contact Cristin Miller at cristinmlr@gmail.com

William Gibson to steampunk enthusiasts: make it look old!

Science fiction author William Gibson did a short reading earlier this week from his latest book, Spook Country. I wasn't particularly impressed with the reading, however the Q&A afterward was quite interesting.

Gibson on:

The popularity of the steampunk esthetic: Some of it is quite interesting and nice to look at, but for goodness sake make those decorative brass attachments on your laptop look old! Carry the things in your pocket along with a bunch of change and screws first. (Gibson and Bruce Sterling co-wrote The Difference Engine, an alternative history novel which popularized the steampunk meme.)

The science fiction genre: Speculative fiction is not really about the future. It is about society as it is at the time the piece is written. Case in point: the novel 1984 is not about the year 1984, it is an illumination of western society and culture in 1948, the year it was written.

Timeliness: He's tending to shorten his speculative timeline with each work. By the time his most recent two books were published (Pattern Recognition, Spook Country) the concepts were no longer futuristic and speculative. They were/are current and real.

Reading: Authors don't usually read their books start to finish once they are turned over for publication. That would just be too weird -- like trying to relive a part of the past.

The Singularity: The technological Singularity theory is essentially the Rapture, repackaged for geek consumption.

The movie Johnny Mnemonic:The movie released for screening was not the movie that written or shot. Sony completely re-edited the movie to make it an action flick after Keanu Reeves became famous as an action hero in Speed. The Johnny Mnemonic movie was originally a farce comedy.

Venturing further on the bike

I bought a bike about a month ago and am feeling comfortable enough with the gears to venture further than upper Capitol Hill and loops around Lake View Cemetery and Volunteer Park.

It's not the workout that was challenging; rather, it is learning the gear shifts. I've had trouble keeping it straight: on the right side the lower lever will downshift, and on the left side the UPPER lever downshifts. WTF?

After a few rides, I still hesistate briefly when changing gears but at least I am no longer downshifting when I want to up it, or vice versa. (I actually popped the chain on a earlier ride going up a hill when I got the gears confused. Ow!)

Saturday I ventured outside my 'hood and took on 10th, Roanoke, and Lake Union. Nice ride, but bang! that 1oth is a rough road. I cruised the houseboat neighborhoods and wandered down the South Lake Union Park to check out the Maritime Heritage docks. There's five or six historical boats docked there, including this sexy beast fireboat.



The return ride was up (and up!) Eastlake to Olive to Denny, with a stop in Half Price Books. Hopefully I didn't pick out any more stinkers. (My reading cred couldn't take it.)

guilty as charged: abandoning books

I'm a dedicated reader and normally give authors a LOT of latitude. I'll finish a book even if I'm not particularly enjoying it. (Did anyone like Rushdie's Midnight's Children? I mean really? Not just because it was hip?) I can't recall the last time I abandonded a book without finishing it. That is, until the last six months. I've abandoned not one, not two, nor three, but four books!

Maybe I've had a stretch of really poor luck, or I've become more discriminate, or I've lost patience. Or all three. Not sure. Whatever the reason, the following four books have been real stinkers for me to finish.

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut. 98% complete. Not a bad book; I think I just forgot to finish it. I probably only have 10 pages left but I'd have to backtrack and re-read a bunch to pick up the thread again. Nah.

Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace. (60%) Wallace was recommended to me based on my appreciation for Neal Stephenson. I found this short story collection while looking for Inifinite Jest at Half Price Books (more on that book below). The first four stories are phenomenal. After that, not so much. I still have a bookmark inserted at page 245 but it has been in the same spot for 6 months. It doesn't look good for the home team. Oh well.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (15%). I really wanted to like this book but I had to keep re-reading the same pages over and over each time I picked it up to remind myself of where I was in the "story." If you could call it that. I confessed my difficulty with this book to a 20-something and she let me in on a secret: NO ONE has ever finished this book. It is a posture prop to demonstrate lit cred. Carry it around and read it in coffee shops when you have need to demonstrate lit hipness. Thank god I never went in public with the damn thing. It is waaaay too wordy, and that is saying something from a reader of Stephenson. How this book made it past a big publishing house editor is a mystery. It would make a good door stop.

Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski. (5%) I liked Danielewski's cult-like House of Leaves for it's brave creativity and bold approach to storytelling (although uneven). So I was looking forward to reading this National Book Award winner. What a shock. Oh my god, it is Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (or perhaps Ulysses) all over again! I hated the stream-of-consciousness bullsh*t years ago, and still don't like it now that I'm all growed up. This book might be ok if you approach it expecting the s-o-c thing mixed in with pretension and lame pseudo poetry in attempt to pander to the critics (which I guess worked). Did anyone ever finish this book, or is it secretly in the same category as Inifinite Jest?

So I've a bunch of stinkers kicked under my bed on my nightstand. I can hardly believe I abandoned so many books in the last six months. More recently than in the whole of my reading years prior. I'm a little sheepish about it, but life is too short to waste discretionary time reading cr*p.