Please forgive my self-indulgence with today’s edition; the atypically long WORD and—for other reasons, atypically short WORK—commemorate a sad anniversary. And but so it goes.
WORK
“A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.
—David Foster Wallace
—from “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men”
WORD(S)
fantod. noun. Fidgety, restless, a high and worried excitement, a nervous agitation. See also fantigue.
“But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods. He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire.” (Mark Twain)
“…our flesh doesn’t sweat and pimple here for the domestic mysteries, the attic horror of What Might Have Happened so much as for our knowledge of what likely did happen…it was always easy, in open and lonely places, to be visited by Panic wilderness fear, but these are the urban fantods here, that come to get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way time is passing, when there is no more History, no time-traveling capsule to find your way back to, only the lateness and the absence that fill a great railway shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat-god’s city cousins wait for you at the edges of the light, playing the tunes they always played, but more audible now, because everything else has gone away or fallen silent…” (Thomas Pynchon)
“Clipperton stares wordlessly up at the little wrought-iron racquet-heads that serve as spikes at the top of the portcullis and fencing around E.T.A., his expression so blackly haunted that even the hard-boiled attendant told some of the people back at the halfway place later that the spectral trench-coated figure had given him sobriety’s worst fantods, so far.” (David Foster Wallace)
“Orin and Hal’s term for this routine is Politeness Roulette. This Moms-thing that makes you hate yourself for telling her the truth about any kind of problem because of what the consequences will be for her. It’s like to report any sort of need or problem is to mug her. Orin and Hal had this bit, during Family Trivia sometimes: ‘Please, I’m not using this oxygen anyway.’ ‘What, this old limb? Take it. In the way all the time. Take it.’ ‘But it’s a gorgeous bowel movement, Mario — the living room rug needed something, I didn’t know what til right this very moment.’ The special fantodish chill of feeling both complicit and obliged.” (David Foster Wallace)
WEB
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In her Erasing Infinite project, Poet Jenni B. Baker is creating, page by page, erasure poetry from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
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In “Reading Wallace Reading,” Mike Miley discusses his exploration of David Foster Wallace’s personal library and the powerful, disturbing annotations therein. In a similar vein, Maria Bustillos explored some of the self-help titles in his library.
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The University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center just made 9 drafts of the foreword to David Foster Wallace’s posthumously published The Pale King available.
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Whatever your feelings about David Foster Wallace’s writing, his ► Kenyon College commencement address (aka “This is Water”) transcends the genre and reward listening and re-listening. Jessica Hagy, of Indexed, charts/illustrates one of the most important sections of the speech in Soaking in Wonder. See also: the full text of the address.
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Today in 2008, David Foster Wallace—a writer who who delved into, and dwelled in, my heart as no other—hanged himself. He was 46.
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