Charles Dickens and DFW shared more than a voyage at sea. While Dickens was describing his first trans-Atlantic crossing, in this title essay of the eponymous selection, DFW describes, on assignment from Harpers, a luxury Caribbean cruise. It is an opportunity ripe for beady-eyed observations of social behaviour and the zeitgeist, and DFW rises to it with Dickensian aplomb, describing his fellow passengers and shipboard activities, organised or otherwise, with delicious laughter and thought-stopping insight.

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )

This collection of essays by David Foster Wallace is maybe the best of its kind ever. Whether he describes a country fair or a luxury holiday cruise, he has an incredible eye for detail and an even more incredible sense for language and gives descriptions unequaled by other contemporary writers. ( )

A superlative collection. The two DFW-as-a-pseudo-journalist-reports-from-somewhere-you'd-least-expect pieces for Harper's were indeed fun in their comic barrage, but I think I enjoyed the one about Michael Joyce with the long title the most. I'm not a big fan of sports (with the exception of basketball), especially not the spectatorial aspect, and making watching a yellow ball bounce back and forth seem so compelling to me is tantamount to doing the same thing with watching the proverbial paint dry. Not all of the essays were as nifty: "Greatly Exaggerated" I skip-read and "E Unibus Pluram", while it had some insight, was much too long. Oh, look at me, I'm actually accusing DFW of verbosity! How ur-whatever.

His suicide in September 2008 makes it extremely poignant whenever depression or map elimination is mentioned and no doubt changed how we regard his writing. Because it does have a lot of dark moments amid all the hilarity that previously you might have shrugged off.

I'm out of my depth trying to be unshallow even for just two sentences. Well, anyway, about the title story. They've built some of those Caribbean cruise liners here in Finland too and in fact the world's largest is being built in Turku as I type. One of the shipyards, not the biggest one though, is near my school. Is this some semblance of patriotic pride I feel? Nah. It's all owned by South Koreans anyway. The biggest ships are exported of course, but we do have a "healthy" cruising tradition of our own. Videlicetly, two-day cruises to Stockholm or Tallinn and back where the ship metastasizes into a bar/sleazy hotel/public toilet on screws and the aim is to drink your weight in duty-free booze, excrete all over the place and rape as many passed out people as possible. Luxury and pampering is when someone holds your hair while you throw up. Cultural differences. ( )

Placeholder: One particular joy of owning these essays in book form (at least for me) is the awareness that you’ve been able to peek at footnotes that may have received the editorial hacksaw at Harper’s or Premiere. Prior to reading this collection, I thought my favorite essay of DFW's was either "Tense Present" or "Shipping Out." And while "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away From It All" is, in many ways, a direct ancestor of "Shipping Out," I discovered my true favorite in this collection: "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness," published in Esquire in 1996 under the title "String Theory."

It is my new favorite for two reasons: (1)The utterly casual, sincere, unapologetic and somewhat stunning deployment of the adjective "faggy" in reference to Andre Agassi, and (2) the searing, brilliant etiology of dedication, tucked into a handful of sentences at the end of footnote 24. ( )

hilarious and brilliant. ( )

Hilarious and sad - especially in the light of the author's recent suicide. The title essay about the sanitised life on a luxury cruise is marvellous. Of the cleaner, he says "it's like having a mom - without the guilt!! ( )

"Statisticians report that television is watched over six hours a day in the average American household. I don't know any fiction writers who live in average American households. ... Actually I have never seen an average American household. Except on TV."

This is a collection of seven essays originally published between 1992 and 1996, combined into a volume that shows off a good range of Wallace's talents. The subjects covered include tennis, a Midwestern state fair, a Caribbean cruise, literary theory, the film director David Lynch, and the relationship between television and American fiction.

Wallace is an extraordinarily clever writer; at times in the past I've thought he indulges himself a little too much in showing this off. Here, for the most part, he doesn't do so. (The essay on literary theory may be impenetrable, but that's true of pretty much all literary theory, to the untutored, and at least it has the virtue of brevity.)

Half of the essays see him in the role of outsider observer, going back to the kinds of people and activities that he once left behind to join the east-coast intelligentsia. But he is seldom scornful; although he's clearly glad to have moved away, he still has connections with, and sympathy for, his subjects. His relationships with Trudy on the cruise, and tennis player Michael Joyce, seem as warm as circumstances allow.

Wallace has a pleasant style, and uses his wit well. He's able to flit from observations of mundane surroundings, to challenging insights into modern society, and back again, without jarring. One highlight for me was the description of the childrens' baton-twirling contest at the state fair, which had me laughing out loud. Another was his terror of being seen, during the cruise, as part of a herd ("boviscopophobia") -- which I think is rather prevalent in some circles, and which I've never seen described so clearly.

Highly recommended. ( )

The part where DFW describes blow drying his hair in the bathroom of his cabin aboard a cruise ship is the single funniest sentence I have ever read. ( )

http://kdegelau.blogspot.com/2007/02/... ( )

You might start this for the humor or DFW's status in current lit, but you'll leave it with DFW's bemused thought patterns in your own head, long after closing the book. Hit up "Consider the Lobster" if you need more DFW, but just can't bring yourself to re-read your tattered ASFTINDA copy, lest it should dissolve into dust. HIGHLIGHT: witnessing DFW start a sentence with "Existentiovoyeuristic conundra notwithstanding", and the fact you *followed* that phrase's meaning. ( )

The title essay is a classic that humorously tells of Wallace's time on a cruise (count those Celestial Project sightings!). The remainder of the book is inconsistent. ( )

This one started my lit-love affair with DFW's writing. Wickedly funny, endlessly inventive and surprisingly touching, it showcases Wallace's freewheeling wit, exuberant style, obsessive attention to detail, and acute self-consciousness. ( )

Collection of seven short non-fiction essays by humour author Wallace who also write for Esquire and others. Deadpan cynical combined with witty observations - a brilliant mix of highbrow and lowbrow. Commentary on the cruise ship industry is the title piece and best of the bunch. Have you ever made jokes of feeling like a cow going to feed? That's the general jist here, but with a lot more originality, depth and wit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Suppos... ( )

I laughed very, very hard at the title essay, about the author's voyage on a cruise ship. Having been traumatized by the movie "Jaws" myself, I took great joy squirming along as he leans over the side, looking for fins. Some of the other essays were less enjoyable, but still it's a good read. ( )