I Am In Here: A David Foster Wallace Obsession

By Christian Lipski

It’s kind of fitting to be discussing obsession and David Foster Wallace, since obsession plays a large part in a number of his works. He’s got an amazing way of describing exactly how it feels to be obsessed with something or someone, and while I may not be clinically (or more importantly, legally) obsessed with DFW (as he is often abbreviated), I do feel the need to collect all of his books and both read them and read about them [1].

David Foster Wallace

I’ve read all his books, usually starting with a library copy and then progressing to buying and re-reading my own. I’ve collected most of his books in hardback, with a few exceptions (for now), and in the case of his novel Infinite Jest I actually have three copies: hardback, soft cover (for making notes in), and the newest paperback release (which was reprinted with a $10 cover price) that I had purchased for loaning out, but now can’t because it’s a signed copy. DFW being a contemporary author, it’s a lot easier to find his books in your local used book store, so that helps with the collecting.

I recently bought a copy of the audio book of his short-story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men because it was read by the author and because I wanted to see if more can be understood about the stories when the author is telling them to you—if his emphasis or inflection will reveal more about his intent. When dealing with an artist of relatively few works (two novels, three short-story collections, five non-fiction books), you’re forced to re-visit them more often, mining them for additional substance. The audio book will have to wait for a bit, though, as it’s on cassette tape and I’ll need to digitize them, which effort I suppose is another symptom of my obsession.

If there were a “You know you are obsessed with DFW when. . . ” list, I’m sure that one of the examples would read, “. . . you use scenes or concepts from DFW books to illustrate any point that comes up in a conversation,” as I’m certainly guilty of this. It’s not necessarily that I want to push the books on people (necessarily), but they do cover a lot of situations that are applicable at various times. There are many other books that are similarly inclusive, and I’d use them in my defense here if the list didn’t start with the Bible. And now it occurs to me that there’s a part in IJ about a man who became obsessed with M*A*S*H and the people he met complained “that the old man kept trying to engage them in bizarre theoretical discussions of the thematics of ‘M*A*S*H’,” so there you go.

But my obsession isn’t just due to DFW’s storytelling skills or his use of unusual styles (like his well-known use of copious endnotes, lampooned here). He seems to say a lot about what it means to be human, to strive (and often fail) to connect with those around us. In various interviews, DFW has talked about the impending/hoped-for death of irony. In his opinion, irony is too often used to distance us from potentially uncomfortable emotion, and that keeps us apart from each other as fellow humans and keeps us from experiencing our lives. What he foresees and tries to bring forth in his writing is a return to real emotion, real honesty. Even in his use of endnotes he is trying to create more of a sense of connection between the author and the reader in that the author, by using endnotes, forces the reader to interact physically with the work.

Like other obsessives, I find it difficult to accurately describe or define my relationship to the object of my obsession. It’s less of a calculated choice, and more like absorption, the way that honey passes directly into your bloodstream without needing to be digested. Obsession bypasses the brain that way, and as a result it’s hard to really pin down how it works (and of course here I must point out that choice and free are major themes in Infinite Jest). All I can say is that his writing has really spoken to me, and not in the sense that it’s still speaking to me as I type this and won’t shut up. Infinite Jest‘s AA storyline, for example, provided great support to me when I was quitting drinking (I passed that on to DFW’s literary agent at a reading I attended once). I found something in the way that he writes that describes my world at the same time that it entertains me. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, if you know your limits.

KIDS: If you’re interested in learning more about David Foster Wallace, start with a short story collection like Brief Interviews with Horrible Men or an essay collection like A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. If you love the writing, you’ll more-love (this may not be a word) Infinite Jest. Visit your local library—that’s where I started.

1. There have been several studies of DFW’s work that I’ve collected, including Understanding David Foster Wallace (Understanding Contemporary American Literature) by Marshall Boswell and Matthew Joseph Bruccoli, and two about his magnum opus: Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest by Greg Carlisle and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) by Stephen Burn, all of which help the reader to understand the themes and ideas in his various works. Additionally, the Internet hosts a large number of thesis papers analyzing various aspects of DFW’s work. (Note: All discussions of DFW are obligated to include endnotes. While not all do include them, their authors always consider it.)