Goddamnit David Foster Wallace

When I finished reading Infinite Jest I have to admit I was disappointed.
Are you kidding? I invested myself into a 1000 pages for that to be the ending?
I remember distinctly feeling the urge to go back to the beginning,
To start again, and read the whole thing,
To see if I could figure it out.
Then I stopped myself.
My rational brain took over.
1000 pages is long enough to read a book, that is over the appropriate length as is.
You shouldn't reread it,
The point must be you'll never figure it out.
He must be saying life is cruelly nonsensical in how it ends.
He killed himself eventually.
It makes sense.

A few months later (now) I am working on a show about writers
And one of the characters admits to writing a couple thousand pages
All on this one novel he's been working on.
All on one novel. A double David Foster Wallace.
Indeed he is treated like a genius.
So on a break in the green room,
I get to talking with the actor playing the DDFW
And mention this fact
(Sort of a tricky assistant director way to give a non-note,
To express passion about a fact that may not have come to light quite the same way before,
In hopes of inspiring the sense you wish was there with what you see--)
Anyway,
He starts to talk about Infinite Jest, which he's also read,
And mentions how after HE finished reading the book he ALSO was let down,
And went online.
 I went online, too, but half-heartedly. Like, it felt like cheating,
To read what other people thought.
I wanted to keep my experience with it to myself.
I think I was a little afraid I was too dumb to have really read it.

Well, so, but apparently I am a little dumb
Because I should've followed my instincts.
The last scene of IJ isn't the end at all--
It seems DFW wanted you to go back to the beginning
Where cleverly hid within the first few chapters
was the so called "final" scene
Where Hal and Gately dig the antidote "entertainment" out from Hal's dad's skull
A very Hamletian image
Which, when you first read,
& that's made reference, you don't remember
Because you didn't know what you were reading.

So the sick joke is that Infinite Jest IS a kind of infinite jest,
You're supposed to read it start to finish to start to finish,
And perhaps do so infinitely--
But no one ever will, because the book is famous for being given up on
Too difficult, too dense, too complex, too sick, too silly, too giving-legitimacy-to-the-inner-turmoil-of-the-privileged--

I remember randomly bumping into a friend at the airport
Waiting to fly home to California for Christmas
And we got to talking,
And I mentioned I was reading the book,
Sort of surreptitiously showing off to him about how smart & intellectual & hipster & cool I was,
To read such a difficult literary book,
And I remember him being like "Aw man, I hate that book,
I hate how it coolifies that way of thinking, you know?
It makes depressive and sad thoughts really cool,
When they're not, you know?
I feel like it's no wonder he killed himself.
The book was just too unnecessarily complicated, I stopped after about halfway."

And I know I felt the same way at times,
Though I also know I felt rewarded for taking on the challenge,
Like, he wanted to test readers, to see if they'd follow even if they didn't quite understand,
Or read even when they were sort of being pushed NOT to read,
DFW said in an interview that he felt like he set out to write a really sad novel,
And was surprised everyone thought it was so funny.
A hyper-aware hyper-aware guy.
Someone who wants to control how he is seen.
Someone who plays a part.
An actor.

There's a part in Infinite Jest where Hal postulates
that Hamlet is only pretending to pretend he's mad--
That he uses the excuse of performance to really let himself be crazy

He (David, Hal, Hamlet, my airport friend, my actor friend, myself)
Doth protest too much, methinks--

Sometimes you need a mirror

Stand in front of an audience.
There's a full length mirror standing among them.
Maybe a few.
Maybe for you.

There are times when
I am really fucking angry.
Is that what it means to be a man?

REVENGE THIS FOUL
AND MOST UNNATURAL
MURDER

I know it's not acceptable for men to show any emotion
At least that's what I've understood to be the case
Growing up

Even for my father
Who's by no means a meathead or testostertank
or war hero or anything like that
Even for an accomplished doctor
An intellectual
A goofy nerdy musician
To feel is to fail

So don't "do" it
Don't perform it
Keep it inside
You keep it to yourself
You stay strong for the ones who are relying on you
No one wants to see their leader overwhelmed
No one wants to watch tears fall, snot clot,
pain tourniquet out of your chest

But
I'd like to suggest
Or
Rather
I believe it is the case
That one emotion men are culturally forgiven for displaying
Openly and in front of other men
and women particularly
Is rage

TOO HOT, TOO HOT

Take any king, take any leader, any tyrant, anyone in charge
Yelling, commanding, swelling chest and pulsing veins
This
Gets
Things
DONE

Isn't impotent rage like the standard for men?
It's what we have access to
The "I'm not gonna take this shit anymore"
The "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"
The "This. IS. SPARTAAAA!!!!"
"FREEDOM!!!"
"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
In the fantasies we watch these men then get shit done.

"GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!!!!!!"

Battle cries.
Rebel yells.
Exhale all the breath you've got, batter it against your vocal cords,
Send the enemy running
Because you are full of might and terror
And you must be obeyed.

To be a man do you need to be obeyed?

What happens when you're not?
What happens when you don't get what you want?
When no one will listen?
When no one understands?
When you're a cypher, even to yourself?
When your uncle's killed your dad in the most shameful, underhanded way,
And is fucking your mom, married your mom, and wants you to play nice?
To stop being sad? To stop FEELING?
To feel is to fail.
What do you do? What do you do?
What if you don't know what to do?

When you yell at your audience
Aren't you really watching yourself?
SEEing yourself be powerful
Be mighty
Be strong
Be a man
Performing

Does anger allow us to DO something
Does anger allow us to see
our fragmented reflection in the faces of those who fear us
That we are perceivable?
That we are seen?
That we could be understood?

And how often does that really work?
That we really feel understood?

How often does yelling and anger and rage lead to destruction and pain and no going back
That is of course a simple question.

Sure, the rest is silence,
But the conversation ends.

Everybody, men and women, of course, we all need to get mad sometimes
Hawks and handsaws
We all need to act out, to wave our arms, raise our voices, feel ourselves being seen, being heard
We need to let the feelings out we can't express
Because sometimes we can't express the horrible things we never thought we'd feel
Until they need to just express themselves
Sometimes we can't know what we think until we see what we say,
to borrow an expression that's not mine.

But.
But.
But.
Hold on there, cowboys.

If we were able to express even battered shards of how we feel as we go
To people outside ourselves
If we felt we were heard more regularly
If men were allowed, expected, even, to be intelligible outside of themselves
Would we really need to kill everyone and end the play
Only the last to fall?
To feel is to fail,
But since when is failure worse than death?

Does Hamlet really speak to anyone but himself?
Is he not perhaps holding that mirror up, not to nature, but only to himself?