For those who have never read Wallace's nonfiction before, this isn't the essay collection to start with. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again has more winners that I read over and over, with the piece on taking a cruise an absolute gem.

That book also has accounts of the Illinois State Fair and a top-level tennis tournament. This volume has a visit to the Maine lobster vessel but it doesn't reach the peaks (well, digressions and ruminations) that the earlier volume did. Instead he pretty much settles on mulling over where lobsters feel pain (they seem to) and thus whether we should be eating or cooking then. He would have made a good popular science writer.

The funny piece on a porn movie awards show in Las Vegas is really more Wallace's element. Yes, it's as tacky and ridiculous as you might expect, but he also gets the perspective of the addled waiters as the awards dinner, just like he did with Tibor (the Tibster) in the cruise story.

The piece of Updike the misogynist makes you wonder why Wallace wasn't given more chances to take on these grand old men. Wouldn't he have been good on Roth and Bellow?

Also spot on is the review, from Harper's, of a new Oxford book on American usage. He really zeroes in on the author/editor's premises, whether he's liberal or conservative, yadda yadda. Maybe this only interests copy editors and their fans, but it was a lot more interesting that the review in A Supposedly Fun Thing of some text on deconstructionism or something. Then there was a strange visit to some obscure right-wing talk show host in Southern Calfornia; why would anyone outside the region and time give a damn.

Maybe the John McCain profile would have seemed more interesting if I hadn't read Michael Lewis's very similar treatment in a book covering the Dole election (whenever that was). Or, for that matter, Timonthy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus, the seminal account of the 1972 campaign.

Lewis and Wallace have the same problem: they know very little about *policy* and have little interest in learning more. They both like and admire McCain and, without thinking very much, assume that's all readers and voters want or need to know. Lewis went through the whole campaign, so he's the worst offender; he never tried to grasp the platforms of any of the candidates in that race. Well, regardless, we all know all this color stuff about McCain many times over by now; Wallace's piece doesn't age well. ( )

A collection of essays and observation pieces from one of the best late-20th-c. American writers.

"An actor named Jim Buck wins AVN’s Gay Performer of the Year Award, and you better believe yr. correps. sit bolt upright when the person who appears onstage to accept the award is a pink and leptosomatic 4’10” and is wearing an Eton collar and appears, even under 125X binoculation, to be a twelve-year-old boy. And it turns out it is a twelve-year-old boy: It’s Jim Buck’s little brother. 'Jim can’t be here tonight because he’s performing in a Shakespeare festival in New Orleans,' the little boy says (correspondential expressions of bug-eyed inquiry at Hecuba and Filth — Shakespeare festival? sending a prepubescent relative to collect your excellence-in-filmed-sodomy prize? — are met with bemused shrugs), 'but I’m here to thank you on his behalf, and to say that I taught Jim everything he knows.' [Enormous audience laugh and ovation, single spasmodic shudder from hunched ABC Radio lady.]"

Maudite Red
Magic Hat Roxy Rolles

It's scaring how clear in his work are the worries and the remarks that led him to suicide, despite his rich display of knowledge and wit. ( )

David Foster Wallace is brilliant, smart, hilarious, and dead.---and I still can't make it through Infinite Jest. This book is gaggle of essays---from attending adult video award ceremonies to teaching Kafka to SNOOTs (Syntax Nudniks of Our Time)
And if you want confirmation that Scotty Schwartz (from The Toy and A Christmas Story) really did make a porno flick, and really is an idiot, check it out.
He sticks his tongure on other places.
Even more interesting about this cerebral collage is that the photo of DFW on the back looks just like the Geico Neandrathal...

BUY, BORROW, or BURN?
BUY ( )

The porn essay! The porn essay! ( )