A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - Essays and Arguments

If you like bravura prose this is a must-read; if your taste runs to short, affect-less little sentences don't bother, this is not the book for you. How good is good? This good: the essay on the tennis pro is so moving, profound, and brilliantly crafted you'll want to read it twice in a row, even if you cultivate an active dislike for sports in general and athletes in particular, as I do. The essay on the Illinois state fair is so vivid, intense, funny, sad, and deep that you'll not only feel you've been there, but been there on the hallucinogen of the gods. The Caribbean cruise essay is a meditation on pleasure, profit, and unhappiness, and the link between them, but the descriptions are so evocative (a cloudy sky is "the color of old dimes") and hilarious that you hardly notice the unfathomable depths you've been taken to. That said, honesty compels me to admit that some of the essays are only so-so, and you can see why some reviewers marked the book down because of them. But the good ones are so very good they sustain a claim that Wallace remains the most exciting American writer since Nabokov and Capote.

Buy this writing, but don't buy this edition of the book. The paper is shoddy and the printing small and blurry.

I was hoping to have a nice copy of this book to read while on a late summer vacation, but now I will just have this eyesore that makes reading a chore.

Surely the Kindle version is the way to go.

For someone who has such a cult following, Wallace was surprisingly uneven. He's full of himself, that's for sure, and he tends to pontificate on and on. When he's clever, which isn't rare, he's very clever. A good deal of the time, however, he's just self-indulgent. He's a competent writer, and he has some insight, but I didn't find that the essays in the book justified his reputation. Essays that were of interest to me, such as the ones on tennis and large-ship cruising, were easier reads. His rant about David Lynch, the movie director, left me with the impression that he was being paid by the word and desperately needed some cash. While largely castigating Lynch, Wallace made it seem as if Lynch were of sufficient status to bother. I guess I couldn't understand why Wallace's magazine would assign him to write about someone who, from my point of view, is, at best, a second-rate director of weird movies. As with anyone who would read a book like this, I watched the movie about him (End of the Tour). The Wallace in the movie was much more sympathetic and endearing than the essayist. I'd prefer to retain that image and not bother reading him again.

I thoroughly enjoyed D.F.W's "Water" commencement speech about taking responsibility for our experience of the events in our life. And then I was surprised that the responsibility he took was to commit suicide. I learned from this book that he has a gigglely cynicism about almost everything he writes about. Occasionally very funny, but sad that he checked himself out of the humor.

I am reading, or rather trying to read, this collection for my book club, and I'm not enjoying it in the slightest. I knew little of David Foster Wallace before I heard of his suicide. I was excited to read something by a writer so highly regarded, but so far I am very disappointed. It's unkind to criticise the man so soon after his death, so I'll limit my remarks to this early collection of, frankly, immature writing.

Four essays in, and I still can't see much of a point to any of this. Wallace wrote all these essays in the early to mid-1990s, but they already seem very dated. The chosen subjects are, in the main, deliberately slight - TV, youth tennis, pop culture. With a collection of free-form commentary like this, Wallace invites comparison to other writers such as: Hunter S. Thompson; PJ O'Rourke; Gore Vidal; and from a somewhat earlier era, George Orwell (just to pick four that I'm familiar with). He compares poorly to all.

Wallace is less ambitious than any of those writers. He avoids tackling BIG subjects like politics directly. But Orwell, for instance, could write about making a cup of tea, or his favorite pub, and turn out a classic. Wallace by comparison is too jaundiced - his essays offer only a weary air of resignation. His prose is capable, but not nearly limpid or entertaining enough by itself to sustain my interest throughout these generally very long pieces.

It reads like the work of a talented young man, who was still trying to find his voice as a writer, and who did not, at this point in his life, have anything particularly interesting to say.

Critics often cry "genius" when they don't understand something, especially when it is presented in such a serious academic way, it can't possibly be trash. It must be so good, we're just not on the same level to appreciate it.

Right after I finished this book, I read the Rolling Stone article on his death by hanging, where almost from the first thing he wrote, he was declared the voice of his generation. Alas, a very hard thing to live with. How do you go anywhere but down after that?

I tried to read every essay in this book, but some of them were just so dense with nothingness disguised in tight cocoons of words, I couldn't fight through it. It's no surprise he has a fascination with David Lynch, the subject of one of his essays and another "genius" I don't appreciate. The essay which lends itself to the book's title, the long discourse on his luxury cruise, is the most accessible. The State Fair essay is the second most accessible. But it seems that Wallace's overall theme is that all people are stupid, and woe on him for being mentally superior to everyone else, and thus, a lonely stranger in a strange land.

But in a way, I understand that since I sometimes feel that way myself. And yeah, it leads to the noose because the stupid people turn out to be the happiest ones.

Reading Wallace is like being adrift at sea on a raft, and debris keeps passing by, and you're supposed to be able to tell from each piece of debris the story behind it and where it came from, even though most of the time you will have no idea. It's just debris. Yet if Wallace were on your raft, he would provide the history of each piece of debris, he just wouldn't tell you.

Very difficult to read. The text is continously broken down by notes on the bottomof the page and this makes the context difficult to follow.
I wanted to read the book before booking a cruise for the first time in my life. Now, after reading the book, I am not sure. It could be lots of fun or bore.

I got this collection of essays primarily because everyone told me "you have to read David Foster Wallace"; "You'll love his take on tennis"; "You should read the lobster story" "you'll love the cruise ship short story". So, seeing that it was on sale, I gave it a try. I primarily got this book, because 1) I'm about to go on a cruise and 2) I thought I would read his take on it as a kind of 'what to expect when you're going on a cruise'.

I am shocked, appalled and absolutely angered that I wasted hard earned money on this tragic waste of paper and ink. For those of you who like DFW, I'm about to rip him to shreds, so just read another review. If you are on the fence about purchasing, do yourself a favor and rent it from the library instead.

I think a GoodReads reviewer put this into words so I'll just copy it here:

"Holy mother of Abraham Lincoln. DFW is a long-winded pretentious sack of sh*t – he knows a lot and he’s determined to impart every last atom of it and after that he’s going to explain it all again in a slightly different way every bit as pedantic and boring with even more obscure references. DFW you win – I can’t keep up with you." Then, I get to the end of the book with over 100 pages of footnotes with footnotes to his footnotes about stuff only DFW knows.

I've read footnotes to Supreme Court cases for the last 10 years or so. I understand footnotes, but even our Supreme Court Justices know that footnotes are only to be used only when absolutely necessary. If a footnote adds something necessary to the story, add it. If it's just some weird commentary that you have to put, don't. Just ignore it. If you want to say something additional, say it in an interview or put in a "Notes from the Author" section at the back of the book.

I do NOT understand the hype. I just do not understand the love of this man. His writing style is just basic. He adds complicated sentence structure and adds complicated words, but it really doesn't add to the story. When he writes this way, it just helps solidify the fact that he has nothing to write about. He says "I want to be an author" yet doesn't seem to understand writers tell stories. This collection of stories doesn't any value to my life. It doesn't put me in the same space as the author. It only makes me want to take this book into the fire pit in my backyard and watch it burn.

I kept hearing about what a genius the author was and that if I loved non-fiction as much as I claimed, I'd be foolish not to read David Foster Wallace and , in particular, A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again. I'll say that as this book comprises of about 6 essays, 2 are absolutely incredible and worthwhile of all of the terrific things I was expecting. His essays about being on the cruise ship and about going to the state fair in Illinois are chock full of amusing observations told with spell-binding prose. When he's on , he's on like nobody has written before. I literally found myself laughing out loud and reaching for a high-lighter to read again.
However, his essay about how television writing is just subconsciously stealing from novelists and popular literature bored me to no end and was so over-written I stopped reading. Pick any paragraph of that essay and unless reading on a Kindle, you'll need to reach for a dictionary every 3 words to understand what Wallace was trying to say as he no doubt wrote with obscure thesaurus references. If written as a doctoral dissertation for an Ivy League literature class than I can understand it's import. Why it was included in this , especially in contrast to his humorous writings, I can only suppose was meant to show his intellectual range.
I guess the major issue is that the subject matters he writes about are more interesting when he widens his focus and doesn't explain every tidbit of minutiae like he does with tennis and David Lynch.
I really labored with this one and skipped large portions of some essays as I did with a certain radio speech in Atlas Shrugged. It's not an insult to DFW, it's just the book was too much famine and not enough feast. There just had to have been better examples to put into this kind of "best of" style book.

The intellect of David Foster Wallace shines through everything he writes. Reading his work makes me look harder or think more clearly about any given subject, particularly my own intellectual or emotional (or both) reaction to that subject. His intellect is infectious is what I'm sayin. It makes ME work.

This is a collection of short(ish) essays and arguments. I loved a few of them, didn't care about others, and was out of my depth for a couple. I recommend the book. If you fully engage with it, it feels like having a conversation about random topics with an exceedingly smart, slightly socially awkward guy over a beer at some bar in the Midwest.

This is a book of non-fiction essays written by David Foster Wallace, one of the most celebrated authors of modern times. This is a piece of the canon of contemporary literature. If you're reading this and are curious about what it is and how it feels to read this as someone who reads a lot of books, read on:

Brilliant writing. Legendary volume. In some of the reviews around "You End Up Becoming Yourself" and the movie "The End of the Tour", someone made the argument that reading David Foster Wallace was like being able to share headspace with your warmest and smartest friend. That's about right, and this essay collection is the best parts of that experience. "A supposedly fun thing," and the tennis essay, which in this volume is titled "A Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" defy description. They made me feel clever for reading them and being able to talk to people about them.

The the store prompt "How would you describe the plot of this book" completely misses the point of the book, FYI.

I was looking back through my books and wondering to myself, "What are the best books I've read in the last ten years?" This book by David Foster Wallace is on the top of my list.

It's a collection of essays from the late author that focus on wacky, offbeat adventures in everyday life. The two essays I remember most vividly are the one about visiting a state fair in the midwest and the one about taking a cruise. The cruise adventure is the supposedly fun thing that DFW would rather never do again. And as far as I know, he never did.

DFW is known for his over-the-top prose, his capacious footnotes, and his clever structures. Infinite Jest, for instance, is a wild ride of a book. But this collection of essays is my favorite because it captures him out in society checking things out, commenting on all that's around him, and simply trying to make sense of the world.

And the sense DFW made of the world made good sense. This is a nice collection that I'm now going to reread, since it's one of my favorites.

I thought I would enjoy this more than I did. It is one of the problems with reading or dealing with a mind a notch or two or maybe more above one's own. David Foster Wallace as all his readers know is excessively brilliant and original, wildly adventurous and original but also often abstract dull and boring. I find it difficult to really understand much of what he is saying while at the same time often delighting in the way he is saying it. Perhaps it is that he says so much at once some part of it tickles the funnybone or 'blows the mind' or moves one in another way. I find reading him much like reading many poets I do not understand, inspirational. He gets me moving in my own mind in new ways. I will also say there is a devastating kind of loneliness at work here, a sense of a mind so far above anything he is dealing with the best he can do is circle around and play with it. It is a great game which he just has the gift to play at a higher level than anyone else. In Tennis he was out there on some middle- level he could not once he got beyond his own wind-swept territory get beyond but in Writing he is out there alone, above the crowd, doing all kinds of flips and turns none of the other verbal acrobats of his generation can come close to.

Great admiration and great sadness come with the reading, and humor and boredom and an urge to skip and pleasure too.

On the surface, hiring someone of such literary prestige as David Foster Wallace to cover something as presumably banal and backwater as, say, the Illinois State Fair seems about as sane and appropriate as casting Vern Troyer in the Andre the Giant biopic. And yet, after a few steamy passages in which Wallace refers to the fair as having all the finest characteristics of an armpit and describes the force of the crowd through the midway with grandiose digestive metaphor, you realize he is pretty much just right for the job.

So too, the lengthy essays about David Lynch (whom, spoiler, Wallace never actually meets but who he seems to understand with an almost preternatural clarity/sincerity I myself feel from time to time when watching (participating in) a Lynch flick late at night--ie: this guy is a creep but he really, really gets something vital about the human condition) and tennis star Michael Joyce hit home with agonizing clarity. To say nothing of the final (titular) essay, which is nothing short of masterful.

Guaranteed after knifing through the tropical waters with Wallace, you will never imagine cruise liners the same way again. I kept thinking to myself, Geez is this Wallace character a neurotic mess!--particularly during the fair piece, which admittedly runs a bit too long.

That is my one complaint with this book and in theory it seems a bit of an absurd remark given Wallace's m.o.: this book is too long.

I don't mean the level of detail, which, for the most part, works to create an elaborate, almost microscopic level of observation that becomes quite literally unforgettable. I mean in the sense that there are details in every essay (the two shorter, more forgettable ones, not included) that are repeated more than once almost verbatim. An example of this is the deconstruction of a certain pivotal scene in Blue Velvet which, I swear, is described in identical language within the same of some ten pages, but not in a way that says 'here pay closer attention to this' as much as it does 'I forgot that I already wrote this and my brain is going so fast and in such huge circular arcs sometimes things get repeated'.

One wonders if DFW edited this himself, sometimes, given the manner in which things just seem to unspool. I suppose that is the charm of the book, of all of his works really. You get the Woody Allen-esque neuroticism, the caustic wit, and a healthy dose of wise fish out of water (little in joke for Wallace devotees) that mostly reads as hip-slappingly witty and timely--except when its not (ala the critique of TV that has definitely not aged well even though Wallace does a pretty good job of forecasting the internet). Another vague complaint is that Wallace's detached sort of Eastern Academic tone is oftentimes very spot-on and easily relatable but sometimes you'll be left wondering if the author has just escaped a cultural cell in which he was not privy to the advent of such rising mega-touchstones as Barney. This is just a little odd. Not exactly a big detraction from the fun to be had here, which, is, of course, nearly infinite.

Surely, David Foster Wallace was gifted with words and the possessor of an immense imagination. Just as importantly, he had an obsessive-compulsive need to follow his imagination wherever it led. Those attributes shine through in these essays, as he explores his own obsessions (competitive tennis, state fairs) and the habits of his fellow Americans (cruises, television).

There are fascinating insights about what happens when we are immersed in something. He writes about the geometry of Midwest farmland and playing tennis -- both of which have been done many times before -- but with a freshness and depth that is impressive. He decries how television hass such a powerful influence on our culture that it's an impregnable, self-referential being. (And he made the TV observation 20-plus years ago before online media made us even more of a society of watchers.) So his observations can sparkle.

However, the book often tiresome to read. Wallace uses words that nobody knows, and he makes up others that aren't particularly funny or insightful. Usually these extra words are part of his layering effect of using two and three adjectives or adverbs when one will do the trick. I realize that layering is part of the obsessiveness that made Wallace a keen observer. But for those of us with more-pedestrian intellect, it's just too much of a slog. I would have enjoyed these essays a lot more if they'd been half their lengths.

I read the title essay, "A supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which describe's the author's "journalistic" experience as a passenger on a typical American behemoth cruiseship, years before I actually took a cruise myself. I admit that the essay colored my view of cruising, but even after enjoying the cruise, I have to say that I agree with DFW in most every detail. Cruising does pander to the insatiable appetites of the passengers, to the infinite moral humiliation of the foreigners working on the ships. It makes both of them look poor.

DFW is a moral writer who happens to have immense powers of observation and inductive reasoning, a dangerous combination. He does not merely report the facts, but cannot help to supply the missing why. One thing that I love about DFW's writing is that he connects the layers, with an obsessiveness that seems almost humble, as if he supplies each layer to discover more, so that there is less speculation, more certainty. This pursuit of truth is, in my mind, philosophical. He does not write to amuse, or to entertain, or to tell a story, although he does do all these things. Rather, I feel that he feels compelled to write, because something drives him to find something in life that is irrefutable, true.

The question he asks in the essay on "Blue Velvet," David Lynch's original and disturbing movie, is whether art can be judged on these grounds, whether truth really is beauty, and in what strange forms beauty can take shape. I am impressed even more with Lynch's weirder, more violent "Wild at Heart," and wish DFW had spent some time on it. I will never watch a Lynch film, or any other independent film, in the same way after reading DFW.

That, to me, is the greatest compliment a non-fiction writer can have, that he changed the way his reader views the world. I leave DFW feeling more humble, more enlightened, with eyes and ears that can observe and understand a little more.

I had not read David Foster Wallace before this. While I find all suicide sad, and the reports of DFW's death tragic, I now feel that loss in the way that so many of his colleagues and readership continue to express. He was a thoughtful, inventive and personable writer and I regret he is still not out there doing his thing.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Not Do Again is a collection of DFW's nonfiction writing originally published in the 1990s. The collection is not theme-oriented; rather it speaks of the range of his talents as he hit his thirties and career stability. It is also a reminder of American preoccupations at a time when the economy was still robust, before homeland terrorism, social media and reality television. There are seven pieces, all of which were originally commissioned for Harper's Monthly and other publications. The first is memoir of a sort, recalling his tennis playing youth in Philo, IL. The next is a penetrating consideration of how television informs contemporary fiction writers and successfully manipulates postmodernism. Third, a visit to the Illinois State Fair with the mission of decoding the Midwest for Harper's audience, an often hilarious report and critique of humanity. After that, he reviews an argument pushing back on deconstructionists and postmodernism. Then, he looks at filmmaker David Lynch in action. Next up, a revealing profile of the qualifying rounds of high-stakes tennis. And lastly, at great length, he reports on a week spent aboard a Caribbean cruise, on assignment again from Harper's to interpret the appeal for the American middle class.

As a boy, he reveals in the first piece, he learned to play tennis accommodating the winds of Tornado Alley to the extent that when he went to a tournament held in a windless venue, he was flummoxed. In these pages, he is always that boy accustomed to the disability and not to the norm, which becomes hellish the more he explores it, like the appeal of amusement rides and farm animals (he is terrified of chickens) at the State Fair or the luxury and leisure of a Caribbean cruise (he describes himself as a semi-agoraphobic). He is the perfect translator for the films of David Lynch and postmodernism. His treatments are exhaustive and freighted with footnotes that often compete with the main text for space on the page (you learn to accommodate reading the text and the offshooting notes much like he served a tennis ball in the wind). He achieves it all in sparkling, intelligent language that moves swiftly.

I came to this book of essays via 'Brief Interviews with Hideous' men, a recent DFW short story collection (which I found one of those books I wanted to enjoy but couldn't). This essay collection I found I wanted to enjoy, and I certainly did.

Some pieces contain long stretches of genius. The title piece and 'Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All' are both superb dissections of a luxury Caribbean cruise and a Midwestern country fair respectively. DFW, by merely turning up and observing, picks out with his genius power rays of observation, in hillarious and telling detail, the social rhythms and pulses of these occasions. The Caribbean cruise piece must rank as one of the great modern essays as the detail slowly accumulates to reveal a nauseous portrait of overprivileged wealthy American tourists going through their bovine (with DFW's accompanying 'bovinecophobia) activities, waited on to a ludicrous degree by servants and lackeys, with the express purpose of making sure their every whim is catered for. The Illinois fair piece similarly illuminates the Midwestern condition (people go on holiday to meet people, as opposed to the East Coast where they go on holiday to escape from people) and their dietary habits, their activities (horrendous sounding carnival rides, which the author finds terrifying) and their livestock and rural baking traditions. Credit too for whichever editor of Harpers had the foresight to send DFW on these trips. He certainly taps into a vibe that fairly rips off the page when he writes up such events.

DFW is truly a massively reconstructed Midwesterner. His influences and nostalgia all points Illinois way (as evidenced by a cool piece on the physics of tennis, and his junior ranking years), but his sensibility is all hip and modern - he is well up their with the savviest and smartest of New York writers, in fact he is well above the vast majority of them.

You get the sense that there is no modern feeling that DFW doesn't understand, or try to grapple with. Reading these pieces is to engage with a creative and comic mind of the highest caliber. Unlike many writers, DFW is a true polymath, equally at home in the figures and thought processes of science as he is with pure art. Whether it be the subliminal commercialism that infects so much of contemporary US life, the disturbing suspense (rather than the 'pleasant' commercial suspense) of David Lynch movies, or the unique difficulty modern writers have in grappling with the immense televisual culture, DFW casts illuminating, if at times abtruse, analysis on the situation.

I do feel his style is a little loose limbed at times - my, admittedly probably more hidebound British ear, found the liberal smatterings of 'sort of' 'kind of' and the ubiquitous 'like', though thankfully not ',like', which no one pronounces. And some sentences are clearly only for the super intellectual academic studier of pomo texts. The worst piece, 'Greatly Exaggerated' which trips around various French post modern type deconstruction of the author style theories, is full of sentences like the following: 'What Hix offers as a resolution to the debate is a combination of a Derridean metaphysics that rejects assumptions of unified causal presence and a Wittgensteinian analytic method of treating actual habits of discourse as a touchstone for figuring out what certain terms really mean and do'. Erm, quite.

Still, DFW is known as a super smart intellectual, and he can be forgiven the odd slightly pretentious indulging in his higher planes of thinking. For the majority of this book is accessible, and original, and sheds great light on a whole sweep of contemporary US life, and most importantly is often very very funny in a genuinely warm and human way, which is a trait I find lacking in certain youngish hipster authors.

DFW is virtually unknown in the UK. Unlike some of his contemporaries (particularly Franzen and Safran Froer), he has failed to gain much of a readership over here. His books are only stocked on the shelves of the largest or most enlightened stores. I hope this changes and more non US readers discover his unique voice. As for me, I am limbering up with his most recent essay collection 'Consider the Lobster' as a final wind up before tackling the immense 'Infinite Jest' - any views on how a British reader might find that book from people who have tackled that magnum opus?

DFW has a peculiar way of writing, with incomprehensible abbreviations and footnotes that are not really footnotes but mini-essays within essays. Every observations he makes is extremely accurate, often piss-in-your-pants funny and very well couched. His sentences often run for a whole paragraph and will send you to your dictionary many times over. Sometimes you'll have to make out the words for yourself as they are not in the dictionary and were ''collaged'' together by DFW.

The title essay, `A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' is one of the best humour piece I've ever read. That one alone was worth the price of the book, as people say (and I say it too) for its accurate social observation and self-deprecating humour. In this essay, David Foster Wallace was delightfully neurotic; the snotty intellectual, semi-agoraphobic, sensitive to imbeciles, hyper self-conscious and socially aware undercover writer who goes on a cruise for the wealthy and, we assume, superficial people. I couldn't stop laughing every single page, even in the subway. Another piece tells of DFW visiting the Illinois State Fair. Now he is slightly more in his element because he is back to the area in which he grew up but just as snotty and funny as in the title essay.

Other pieces discuss David Lynch's work using tidbits of trivia and personal observation of one of his movie set (did you know Lynch pisses in the open air all the time?), an analysis of self-referential TV and fiction in the age before internet and two essays on his experience of learning tennis in windy Illinois and of watching a tennis competition in Montreal, my hometown, where I realized that his observation that we call pop `gazeous beverage' in French is right on but sounds weird in English.
You might not be interested in all essays (the ones on tennis left me rather indifferent) as they are widely varied journalistic pieces that were put together for this book but, surely, at least two will grab your attention even if you don't know the last things about raising pigs in Illinois. Also, for those who want to tackle Infinite Jest, this will give you an idea of DFW's style before you commit to the 1000 pages brick. So, 5 stars for the title piece but 4 stars for the whole thing.

David Foster Wallace, I hope you are happier where you are now. Too bad you are gone.

James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, entitled _Genius_, spent a while defending that choice of adjective. The word ``genius" gets tossed around so much these days that it's been stripped of almost all its value. I tried to come up with a suitable subjective definition of genius, and my provisional one is something like the following: a genius is someone whose work changes the future direction that his particular speciality takes; after he's published his work, his speciality will never be the same again. By this definition - and by any others that I can think of - David Foster Wallace is a genius.
His genius comes from a few directions. First is his astonishing ability to meld diverse thoughts into a coherent whole. I think this is revealed most clearly in ``E Unibus Plurum," Wallace's essay within _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again_ about the effect that television - particularly television's habit of swallowing irony - has on fiction. He diverges briefly into thoughts about what this means for our society in general. What happens when we spend our time conversing ironically - that is, commenting sardonically, but not actually fixing anything?
But at the same time that he can be incisive and intelligent, he's incredibly funny. The title essay from this collection describes Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise liner for Harper's Magazine, and the strange sort of death-transcendence (his term, not mine) that defines cruise lines. It's both funny enough that I had a hard time breathing at certain points, and almost heartbreaking.
I guess I don't always think of Wallace's genius until days like today when I'm sick at home and pull his essays off the shelf. I learn a little bit more about his arguments each time; laugh a little bit more; and find myself in the presence of an old friend who's incredibly candidly honest with me: ``[The mirrored staircases are] wickedly great because via the mirrors you can check out female bottoms ... without appearing to be one of those icky types who check out female bottoms on staircases." This is a man who's laying it all out on the line for you: his sense of humor, his erudition, and his very human perversions. He seems like the kind of guy with whom I could have a great conversation over coffee.
Imagine this essay collection as a conversation with an incredibly brilliant friend. It will be some of the best few hours you ever spend with a book.

I got this book as a present for my dad, then decided I'd better read it also to make sure I chose well. After reading the coverleaf I jumped to the fattest, most hyped essay in the book (which the editors wisely left till the end). It was rough sledding at first, putting up with footnotes which sometimes exceeded an entire page, and also sometimes branched to other footnotes. Asides within asides. There was also much psychological angst brought forth which made me think this author was not only painfully self-revealing, but also quite neurotic. But then the connections and thought processes brought out ideas which most people would probably never make (or have), such as explaining why most people going on this 7 day carribean cruise make excuses for why they're going rather than that they just want to. Or the death/decay theme that he strings along throughout the piece. Humor is spotty, as it seems strained at times, but in other places knocks your socks off, as it did mine during the skeet shooting scene. My summary of the 7NC chapter is one that will only make sense to fans of Northern Exposure-but the piece is simply Joel Fleishman on a cruise.
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Earlier essays were sampled next, and the first was very good, the second (where I'm now in the book) is excellent. It analyzes the TV culture in a most extraordinary manner, and probably is the only such piece I've ever seen where the author unabashedly states that he likes watching TV himself.
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I hope the middle of the book is more like the beginning than the end, but so far think it's worth the work. (If the middle is like the final essay, I may come back and change my review!)

David Foster Wallce is a central figure of the contemporary literary scene. As such, he is predictably controversial. His epic novels like Infinite Jest and his metaficitional short stories are loved or hated... or like me both loved and hated. When his fiction hits it is some of the best writing out there. Other times it misses its mark and just descends into a pointless headgame (but is still at least mildly entertaining).

I know lots of writers and readers and they will debate endlessly about his fiction. What they won't debate, however, is his Non-fiction. Everyone loves it. I don't know anyone who has read "A Supposedly Fun Thing" and not laughed out loud and loved it.

As another reviewer noted, the three strongest essays are the titular one (about his experiences on a cruise ship), the state fair one (much the same as the first in style and humor) and the brillant essay on irony in the TV age.

But the other essays (on proffesional tennis, david lynch, "the death of the author" argument and other things) are well worth reading, even if they aren't quite as utterly brillant as the first three, and especially worth reading for anyone interested in their subject matter.

So if you like humorous journalism at all, do yourself a favor and buy this.

David Foster Wallace is one awesomely smart guy. This is both his greatest strength and his potential Achilles heel as a writer. Personally, I will read anything this man writes, because I think he is a true genius with a rare sense of compassion, and a hilarious sense of humor. Even when his writing falls victim to its own cleverness, I still find it worthwhile - perhaps because one senses that the writer is a true mensch (not something I feel when being dazzled by the cleverness of a Dave Eggers, for instance).

Oh hell, I want to be seated next to DFW on a long transpacific flight subject to major delays, OK? I have an enormous intellectual crush on this man. And when I cavil, it is done out of love, pure and simple.

But when discussing this book, caviling would simply be out of place. It contains two of the funniest essays I have ever read in my life (the descriptions of his experiences on a cruise liner and at the state fair, respectively). Do yourself a favor. Read this book.

A very good book. The title essay is a funny look at a trip aboard a cruise ship, as seen by a man who has no business being on such a trip, i.e. a smart sophisticated city guy. Excellent too is the essay on director David Lynch, and the essay on pro tennis, though it helps a lot if you find, as I do, both subjects very interesting. Another good piece is the midwest fairground story, which is again Wallace's take on an experience he otherwise has no interest in.

The wit just doesn't quit in Chapters 3 (the Illinois State Fair) and 7 (a seven-night cruise aboard the m.v. Zenith, which the author renames the Nadir).

Don't think I've ever seen travel or destination writing that so perfectly captured the idiocy of luxury travel, the streaked-glass humidity in Miami, the quirks of one's dining companions at a cruise ship table, the sullen expressions on the vendors in Cozumel, the snarkiness of carnies at a state fair, the exultant spirit of the Prairie State Cloggers busting moves to Aretha, and pretty much every other detail that captures Wallace's eye.

Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 went right over my head, but if you are into tennis, post-modernism or mathematics, you might do fine. Here Wallace thinks about various topics as opposed to experiencing them.

And even if you only like chapters 3 and 7, that's a good 200 pages of wild reading.

The author has a little habit of inserting footnotes* that make his story fold in on itself.

* that run across multiple pages and sometimes there are footnotes ** to the footnotes

** which can be confusing ***.

*** but the guy's writing is so incredibly fun. He won't say "an all-male audience listened to the ship's captain," Instead it's, "Of the 40 or so Naderites at this lecture, the total number of women is: 0." Note to self: steal some of this writer's technique.

Yes, Wallace is a writer's writer, puckish and observant, who engaging lets his silences (like the pauses in jazz, or empty spaces in a Japanese rock garden) speak volumes. Once you get in the Wallace groove, he gets funnier and funnier. See for example the delicious understatement in passage about the dessert competitions at the state fair on page 111 ... followed by some pained hints about hospitals, and transverse colon rupture. It's like reading the winners of the Bulwer Lytton contest, you smile a little, and then it just gets punchier and punchier.

While not quite as polished as Consider the Lobster, this collection makes up for that with sheer intellectual muscle. In particular, Wallace's dissection on television as it pertains to our overall culture and to fiction writing is one of the the most painfully dead-on pieces of cultural criticism I've ever come across. He blows Neil Postman and Jerry Mander clear out of the water. This one piece alone is worth the price of the book. The other real standouts I think are the one on David Lynch, which is hella-funny if a bit repetative, and the title piece. As someone who spent two whole months on a large oceanic ship, Wallace's observations seemed to waiver between being willfully paranoiac and dead-on-balls-accurate.

This collection ranges from some pretty dense academic stuff to some really engaging narrative journalism that first appeared in Harper's and such. Overall, this collection is outstanding. The title essay alone is worth the purchase of this book, easily. This book is what has made me a fan of David Foster Wallace. It convinced me that DFW was really not pretentious at all. His writing is some of the funniest you'll find in the nonfiction genre as well. Make sure you're able to really sit down and give yourself to these, though, as they're really dense and time consuming reads.

Since the publication of A Supposedly Fun Thing... DFW's been the target of some erudite name-calling. It's easy to see why; his essays (especially the famous cruise ship one and that damn interminable State Fair one) can be taken as emblematic of that classic New-Yorkerly East-Coast phenomenon, the educated, ultra-ironic sojourn among the non-wised-up, scoffworthy philistines. Despite all of Wallace's best efforts to the contrary, his prose in this book smacks of condescension, mainly because of his relentless tendency throughout his Harper's-sponsored journalistic journeys to see himself as apart from the goings-on, even while he lays the requisite personal-essay all-encompassing final meaning on his readers. These meanings, because the embracing attitudes of human togetherness that inform them are to be found nowhere else in the essays, come off as unconvincing and lame. Wallace, the reader begins to sense, is probably the worst person to send on a journalistic assignment; he's far too self-conscious to allow himself to be immersed in his subject. Rather, he opts to remain apart and strangely aloof, constantly imposing on himself this role of Observing Journalist. (It's important to note that this role is self-imposed, an outgrowth of Wallace's own feelings of incongruity and not-belonging. This is one of self-consciousness' most ravaging aspects; it causes one to constantly second-guess one's relationships to other people, and in doing so prevents real contact between individuals. No true human contact is possible without a certain amount of presumption, and these presumptions are precisely what self-consciousness, over time, whittles away at.) An essay demands an active narrator, a narrator who's an active participant not only in his subject's interpretation but also in its defining activities. It's almost poignant, this vision of a bandanna'd Wallace on his cruise ship, eyes peering from behind thick glasses, hand scribbling hasty impressions in a notebook crammed with red-inked scrawl, still and apart, his separateness almost a visible aura around him. DFW isn't consciously elitist, nor is he heartless. But his project, which carries with it a prevailing sense of alienation (and it's not lost on me that this is a conscious agenda on Wallace's part, it's his angle, his "thing") invites unintentional elitism and paints his exceptional prose a blue-collar shade of lily white. Interestingly enough, this subtle condescension is nowhere to be found in "Signifying Rappers," his book (co-authored with Mark Costello) about the serious interpretation of serious rap. This is probably because most of "Rappers" deals with the abstract, the factors behind the rhymes which can only be fully described in polysyllables. If more actual rappers had answered Wallace's phone calls, one can imagine the humorous, eloquent, and ultimately quite aloof impressions that would've resulted. (By the way, in case any of you doubt that it's possible for an over-educated East-Coast literary type to delve into a different culture without standing self-consciously apart from that culture, check out Ted Conover's "Trucking Through the AIDS Belt," which was published in The Best American Essays 1992.)

Full disclosure: I felt the smallest twinge of disappointment as I read these essays; (not because of the quality therein--there's hardly any disappointment to be had there--but because it dawned on me that Infinite Jest, a book that I had spent the better part of February and March, slaving over and worshipping, was not in fact some work of genius that grew out of the side of DFW's head and broke off one night in a fit of divinely inspired creativity, but actually that IJ was a long, arduous work that came about as a result of years of writing and rewriting as DFW honed his craft, those winding, serpentine sentences that wrap around massive stores of information and unravel beautiful narratives covering every conceivable minutiae of a given situation, the footnotes that drag you underneath the surface of a sentence and reveal the inner-workings of a cruise ship's maintenance crew or the social status of each individual at his dinner table and upon resurfacing from the footnote, you carry the weight of all the new information upon the sentence that you once left and when you reread the sentence, this new knowledge that you have enlivens the significance of a glance or another character's tick; the footnote delves into that subconscious baggage that we carry around everyday that inform our judgements and preconceptions about every person and thing we encounter throughout life thus when I realized that these styles were worked towards upon reading A Supposedly Fun Thing that I'll Never Do Again, Infinite Jest became somewhat less special in being the only book that I've read to have all of DFW's stylistic tics). Thankfully, the disappointment wore off quickly. I came to appreciate the style that DFW worked so hard to hone. These essays are a display of the development of the IJ style. The footnotes become more and more involved as the essays progress. First there are only a few innocuous notes, simply to elucidate a small point, until the final titular essay in which the footnotes are used without restraint in full DFW-short-story-length-footnotes that intrude mid-sentence.

These essays may be the best way to come to know DFW (or at least the persona he projected). I think it sheds some light on why he has become so beloved among new generations of readers. It's easy to come across like a pompous ass in your writing, especially if you're a freaky genius like Dave Wallace was and you use rambling, run-on sentences and use info-dumping footnotes. It would be easy for any one of these essays to come across as the inflated pontifications of an over-educated intellectual, but there's something about DFW that is lovable and endearing. Although it too often consumed him, it helped that he was so self-deprecating. It gave his genius the checks and balances that a lot of other genius authors lack. Thus it lessened the extent to which he cared about his (otherwise) rampant ego. He is¹ hyper-self-aware and it comes across in long descriptions of every imaginable bit of sensory detail. In his David Lynch essay, he essentially transcribes the entire rough cut of Lost Highway into a section of the essay. Apparently he found it insufficient to merely give a plot summary and instead divined the entire script, shot list and set decoration from what must have been several viewings of the rough cut.

Occasionally his writing is tedious. There were times when I got antsy. I wanted him to get to the point and cut through all that detail and rambling. He even prefaces one of his paras by saying that "this probably will be cut by the editor but. . . (insert a few pages of details)". But any time that it became too much to handle, or when I got too bored with his work, there would be some turn of phrase, or a particular observation that would make me fall head over heels in love again. This collection is essentially "everything that Dave is into and thinks about on a day to day basis". And for so many authors, this would be excruciating to read, boring as all hell, but listening to DFW ramble on about his interests is revelatory. How did so much intelligence and sensitivity end up in one person? He was in a class of his own.

As many have said, the title essay in this volume by Wallace is worth the price alone. I've been on a cruise before as well, and holy hell are Wallace's thoughts in this essay spot on. Every sentence drips with truth.

Of course, as with anything by Wallace, you've got to meet him half-way or you will not like/understand him. This collection, because most of these essays were written for magazines or as argumentative essays, is actually very conservative writing-wise for Wallace: there are no grammatical and syntactical acrobatics and page-long insanities that inform his book-length long works, or his more aggressive short stories (like the wonderful but taxing Oblivion).

Of particular relevance in this collection is a nearly 15 year old essay E Unibus Pluram, about the corrosive effects of irony as a literary tactic aimed at television. While some reviewers have suggested this essay is outdated (and in terms of its more topical references/subjects, it is), I think it probably holds more relevance than ever, with the kind of unfathomably corrosive effects that reality TV and MTV and etc. have had on youth culture and the English language. And this is coming from a ripe old aged-22-years fogie.

There are some portions of essays that drag, but I acknowledge that may be due to my own lack of interest (say, in tennis, for the second to last essay). This collection is full of some very funny and informative essays (including one on David Lynch) that are moderately readable even with little knowledge/experience of the subject. If you are just getting into reading Wallace, this is a great way to introduce yourselves before picking up his MUCH more experimental fiction.

David Foster Wallace's essays should be savored by a slow read in order to catch all his hilarious outsider observations. I chose to take breaks between essays to prepare for the next one. I recommend you do too. It is sad that there will be no more.

Wallace is precocious--no doubt; his grammatical shenanigans shine in this work and inspired me to vow to risk more with my own writing from now on.

He is also very, very funny when he trusts himself to get beyond junior high boy humor. I quickly tired of the "ooooo let's snigger at the fat women" snidery in his essay about the Illinois State Fair. (Please! It's tiresome when Letterman pulls out that old schtick, let alone some one with Wallace's obvious literary gifts.) Other than this, Wallace has a fine sense of the ridiculous as well as the salient: despite their supposed lightness, the state fair, cruise, and television essays have poignant observations about how we Americans consume entertainment.

In the essay about the professional tennis player Michael Joyce, Mr. Wallace talks about how when he, himself was a junior tennis player, he felt that he was pretty darn good, but that "if I'd been just a little bit better, an actual regional champion, I would have qualified for national-level tournaments, and I would have gotten to see that there were fourteen-year-olds in the United States who were playing tennis on a level I knew nothing about." In the same way, most people who read collections of essays are probably pretty smart; may even think we'd be pretty good writers, if we put our minds to it. This guy is writing on a whole 'nother level. Read this and you will be thoroughly amused, as well as impressed. And yes, you'll wish you were this smart. This is a man who sees the same things you and I do, but by describing them the way he does, allows us to see things in a way we otherwise never would. And he's funny. This man has a power over language and perception that is awesome to behold. I find myself wanting to be able to experience my life the way he describes his. I wish I could describe anything as well as he describes most things. But then, I wish I could serve like Pete Sampras. And Mr. Wallace's description of the skill level of professional tennis players make it clear neither wish is going to come true.

You simply will not find writing this funny anywhere else. As evidence, I mention just one small topic in a book packed with them: Early in the book's final essay, in a long list of experiences Wallace has had, he mentions that he shot skeet at sea. A few paragraphs later, out of the blue, he pauses to note that it would be more accurate to say he shot AT skeet at sea.

Pretty funny, but maybe sixty pages later he gets around to actually describing the event. He describes the man in front of him, holding his shotgun with "casual scorn," as "perpetrating absolute skeetocide off the stern rail."

Just brilliant use of language.

You can accuse DFW of being verbose, pathologically self-conscious, even pretentious. Those are, at times, fair criticisms. His prose is often spectacular to the point that it looks like he's showing off. I can understand how that irks some people. But I cannot understand how you could read any of these essays and give them anything less than a solid 5 out of 5 stars. They have faults, sure, but the good parts overwhelm them.

The real problem with this book is that it is, at times, so overwhelmingly good that it makes reading other books difficult. Going from reading this book to reading ordinary writing is like stepping out of a cathedral into a parking garage. There just aren't (m)any writers who kick psychospiritual tail like DFW did.

DFW was a genius. Plain and simple. And yes, he even got a Macarthur genius grant. The title essay is worth the price of admission here, especially if you compare it to the edited version that Harper's ran. Wallace's dark humor and philosophical sadness are on display here in their finest form, and any thinking person will read this and at least pause before embarking on the 7NC. For those who can't quite get through Infinite Jest (I read it, I promise), this is a wonderful glimpse into the mind of a great writer who we lost too soon.

Wallace, let us say, is jump-text personified,
the perfect mouthpiece for a whole generation
of graceless, immodest, hyper-ironic, and hyper-knowledgeable youth. In an age where readers really do want to see everything including the kitchen sink thrown into their books, where buyers care not so much about structure and coherence as they do about the amount of "good stuff" packed
between covers--how much smarts they're getting for their Costco dollar--Wallace shines through brilliantly. I don't doubt the permanence of his reputation, either, as I believe we'll be seeing much more of the same from his surely imminent proteges.

David Foster Wallace is perhaps the greatest living essayist. He's never just showing off, never just impressing the reader, even when he's showing off and thoroughly impressing. His prose rockets in every direction, changing angle and tone continously. And yet his essays are sharply focused and deeply engaged with their subject matter. Best of all, even though Wallace is forever exposing the ridiculous, his writing is warm, affectionate and modest. His pieces on taking a cruise (the title piece) and on attending the Illinois State Fair are as funny and carefully observed as anything in the english language.

David Foster Wallace is a very entrancing writer. His prose is, for lack of a better word, beautiful (though he falls into bouts of "like ____ or something", more notably in Infinite Jest than here). Most of this book is his own personal narrative on events he's either experienced or sent on assignment to experience. These tend to be eye-opening, entertaining, and marvelous.
There are also a couple of essays, doctorate-level in complexity, on entertainment and David Lynch. These are very tough to get through unless you're truly interested in the subject. The Lynch essay got more readable towards the end, where it turned into a personal narrative.
The amusement level of this book is, overall, very high. Wallace's odd take on the world is something very unique, which you have to experience yourself. He's semi-agoraphobic, and possibly boviscopophobic (get used to big words). He's a ping-pong guru (maybe). He lost at chess to a 9 year old girl. He has a fear of chickens. He lets you into his world.
Enjoy

That is, unless you're someone who doesn't embarrass easily, or doesn't mind people staring at you and wondering why you're laughing so hard.

Seriously, this is one of only two books that has made me laugh so uncontrollably hard that I had to keep putting it down because I couldn't physically control myself (the other being "Me Talk Pretty One Day"). The last essay, which was the main culprit (and from which this book gets its title), is all about DFW's error-filled romp aboard a Carribean cruise. Just as good, if not quite as funny, are the essays in which he describes a trip to the Illinois state fair, and one in which he describes being on the set of David Lynch's "Lost Highway".

Highly, highly recommended.

The other essays in this volume are pretty amusing, but the real find here is Wallace's long consideration of David Lynch's career. It the best thing I've ever read on that filmmaker. Wallace catches the peculiar combination of innocence and horror that inhabits Lynch's work and makes him so special. Along with his essay "Laughing With Kafka" (not in this book but you can find it online), Wallace shows real talent as a critic, and could probably be a great one if this fiction day-job doesn't pan out (that's a joke, son.)

Way too smart-alecky for me. The writing is so far beyond clever that it is difficult to follow. Not like a college textbook hard to follow---just like a smart ass 50 word sentences ridiculous hard to follow. Boring. I rarely quit books, and quit this one.

When David Foster Wallace is really fires up the jets and hits his comic rhythm, it is--literally--exhilarating: it's the giddy intellectual equivalent of being tossed around in a Moon Bounce. His eye for the incongrous and bizarre in the everyday is almost nonpareil, and when paired with his scary mastery of the American vocabulary and deliciously direct wise-acre humor, you get a one-of-a-kind cross between Pynchon and either Chris Rock or that punk in your sixth grade homeroom that continually cracked everyone up. I liked this book a lot--it had the relaxed air of a virtuoso playing a few silly tunes at a party for friends. Like Yo-Yo Ma coming over, having a beer or three, and then playing a ridiculously ornate version of "Swanee River." Of the seven essays, the shortest--a brief review of a book that allows him to flex his meta-fictional muscles--is disposable, and his account of being thrown across a tennis court during a tornado is riveting for the story alone but not worth revisiting. But the rest of it is aces, with two stunning highlights: the title essay, in which Wallace goes on a sea cruise at the behest of Harper's and finds the whole thing a complete existential nightmare (lucky for the reader,) and a reasoned but very passionate dissection of the way post-modern irony (aided by TV) could be cutting off the artistic cojones of potential literary visionaries. Yes, I admit, you have to have a dictionary around. But I have to say--so fricking what? Wallace is clearly enamored with language and communication, and his vocab conjury feels very right-on in the context of his Homer-Simpson-Avant-Lit fusion because you cannot question the man's fire for pushing the limits of the English language. It's there on every page, even the ones with the most questionable experiments (his toying with the word "like"--like, you know, like--feels particularly unnecessary, as do some of the famed footnotes.) If you don't share his geeky, passionate fever for the written word, don't bother; but for me, it draws a line in the sand, and I'm very, very happy to stand on his side in a time when most writers just seem to draw circles around themselves. I highly recommend this book of essays to anyone who wants to find out what side they prefer.

...but i really loved this essay collection.
Wallace is (IMO) a totally hilarious writer and the essays collected in this book are astute observations and analyses of a number of topics and events written wittily with a voice that is brutally critical yet somehow still compassionate. His accounts of things as varied as a day at a small county fair to his experiences going on a "luxury cruise" are filled with information, abstract analysis, biting wit, and self-examination. I laughed out loud frequently, yet it made me think about society and selfhood a lot as well. Highly recommended for fans of this sort of writing.

This was the first DFW work I ever read, and it still sticks in my mind as a brilliant, beautiful collection. Even those who have tried Infinite Jest and hated it (and you are legion) should give this a try. You will be blissfully surprised. A friend of mine was recently on the cruise ship that is the subject of the title piece. She said that everything she saw reminded her of a specific line, that he had left nothing out. DFW is one of the greatest writers of our (or possibly any) time. Forgive him his excesses, and you will be amply rewarded.
I suppose I should make a token effort to say what the book is about. Okay, then: cruise ships, state fairs, tennis, David Lynch, agorophobia, preformance anxiety, etc. There. Now read it.

I think David Foster Wallace is a brilliant writer, but can't really hit the target all the time. Either he is totally on top of something in describing it, or he writes himself into an intellectual loop that only he appreciates. When i read his stuff, i almost wonder if he is too intelligent for his audience, in that he tries to write about pop culture and similar themes that appeal to the average reader with such strength and knowhow that he seems like he's a genius stuck in a kid's mind and his descriptions of the kid's world can become too complicated for the kid to enjoy. That said, this book is well worth it, if not for the title essay on board a cruise ship which is hilarious then for the essay on amercian writing in the television age. There is a remark about irony in that essay which just blew my top off, it was great. The other notable essay is his "personal" review and account of a state fair, which is also equally funny. As for the others, i wasn't all that interested, in that i found them too wholly theoretical and dull. However, don't let this stop you, his writing is so original and fresh that its worth buying, not only for what it can give, but for what it exposes you to. Well worth it.

David Foster Wallace's essays read like his novels: big, boisterous, smart and exuberant. The title essay is a very long, very detailed, very funny travelogue of a ``pleasure'' cruise. It reads like an extended journal entry by a very bright yet admirably down-to-earth guy.
DFW's shotgun approach is not for everyone--he writes about everything he sees and everyone he meets, so at times it sounds like he's rambling. But even when he rambles, it tends to be incisive rambling. I advise patience. It will pay off.

This collection of essays was sheer brilliance. I don't understand anything less than five stars. Okay, if tennis bores you to tears, then skip that essay -- the essays on the cruise and the fair are far more than enough of a justification to read this book. Wallace's keenly critical eye (some might say jaundiced, or jaded, or even Asperger's eye) for the darkly amusing delights of American pop culture is really impressive. I laughed out loud - frequently. It's such a tragedy that Wallace will never write another book, that our collection is complete...
If you like Wallace, by the way, don't forget Don DeLillo - 'White Noise' is the most accessible of his books...

It's true, there are two essays in this book that I have not finished (especially the essay on television). However, cruise ship holidays, pro-tennis tournaments, David Lynch and state fairs. Amazing writing, very funny indeed. He manages to observe the social mores of the that special tribe that takes 7NightCruises, gives advice on why not to date girls whose mothers look like Lynchian characters and gives us an insight of tennis players and their whimsical, yet understandable behaviour. Very funny stuff.

I find the author to be a distasteful crank and was at odds with him so often I felt like we were old enemies. In that way, you really get inside his head and I found myself begrudgingly enjoying his writing more and more. Not for everyone, but worth reading to see how much you and DFW can relate.

Almost like a bad habit, I keep returning to David Foster Wallace's works, searching for anything new he has written. Known primarily for his work "Infinite Jest," Wallace has proven himself one of today's great cultural journalists. I am so taken with "A Supposedly Fun Thing . . ." that I have purchased and, subsequently given away, two copies of this book to friends, hoping that they share my enthusiasm for Wallace's trenchant observations.

Before I had ever really heard of Wallace or his work, I read "Shipping Out," the original version of "A Supposedly Fun Thing . . ." (the title essay) in Harper's Magazine. I immediatelythought it was one of the funniest essays I had ever read and prompted me to seek out everything else he had written.

Although "Infinite Jest," "Girl With Curious Hair," and "Oblivion" are entertaining and extremely well written, I still believe that Wallace's strengths are truly revealed in his journalistic enterprises, most of them collected in "A Supposedly Fun Thing . . ." Along with the title essay, Wallace's essay on the Illinois State Fair, as well as one on David Lynch stand out from the rest of the collection. Both reveal a fascination and self-conciousness (almost uncomfortable) about each subject, laced with heavy doses of humorous observation.

These three essays provide enough justification for buying this book, even though Wallace's other essays are also well-written and observant. They are just not quite up to the standard set by the others and drift into precious "navel-gazing" too often. Readers of this volume should definitely check out "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage,"

previously published in Harper's, as well as his infamous "Consider the Lobster" in Gourmet Magazine to see him at the peak of his talents.

People who already enjoy David Foster Wallace will no doubt enjoy this book as well, but I belive that it speaks volumes that the people to whom I've given "A Supposedly Fun Thing . . ." have passed it on to someone else.

Wallace has a vocabulary that puts ordinary human beings to shame. I have to say that I think he goes on (and on and on and on) about certain subjects in these essays, but his slightly skewed perspective is refreshing in many ways. Wallace manages to be hip without being overly cynical; educational without being preachy; and intelligent without being artificially academic. I'd recommend this to anyone who is looking for something a little different.

This book was recommended by a highly regarded friend. Little did she know that I am truly an ignoramus and had in fact never even heard of Mr Wallace. I do have to say, as difficult as it was for me to read each painfully heavy page, I did come away with several observations: Tennis is way cool. David Lynch movies should at least be rented and watched. State Fairs, thank goodness, come around only once a year and last, but not least: I want very badly to go on a sea kayak tour of British Columbia with Mr. Wallace.

Wallace is a good writer. The problem is in his attempt to mate Nicholson Baker and Thomas Pynchon he can fall victim to going for style over substance.You have to read him,though,because when he does find his groove he can be great.My biggest gripe is he feels it necessary to tell us EVERY SINGLE thought that crosses his obviously gifted mind.Hey David:Good editing can be a virtue,and sometimes less can be more.Infinite Jest would have been a great 600 page novel

David Foster Wallace was one of the great minds of our time. All of his work presents original thoughts, logical progressions to achieve these, and is witty, dark, funny, methods to get there. It's a tragedy he's no longer with us, I'd advise anyone to read his work, while some is complex and dense, I assure you, the understanding is worth the work!!

I already new I loved this author (DFW) I bought this for a gift this time. He's the best author of his generation and is better than Pynchon who is of the similar style, but a little raunchy for my taste, Wallace had beautiful big glowing standards without being superior with any high minded morality and never preaches and doesn't go over the top with all the dark black empathetic self pitying sentimentality (like Denis Jonson who gets a little gooey, which there is nothing wrong with and he was my favorite next to Pynchon until DFW) but DFW still flagrantly enjoys all the narcissism, makes you feel like narcissism is almost the only thing holding society together, which I guess that's my darkest fantasy. The best novel to start with with Wallace is Broom of the System if you enjoy novels. I was completely hooked and read everything he did after that. Infinite Jest is a work without equal in scope and style and I can't be glowing enough about this guy. It's not just the humor, which I'm a complete sucker for, but that seems secondary, it's just everything about him. I keep looking around for anyone of his caliber alive or dead and can't find anyone. I saw him with a panel of other authors on Charlie Rose and I think he was with the guy who did Everything is Illuminated which I loved but he did rip off Saul Bellow a little, but the Everything is Illuminated guy is better, I thought. No one comes close to Wallace though, he did just what he set out to do with the caviar for the average reader and was just a brilliant success. I've gone back to Samuel Becket in despair, which is comfortable but I need something else. I've tried Cioran but that's too much antiquated thinking, but I like the fervent rashness of Cioran I just prefer someone a little more cerebral. I wish Wallace just kept ignoring how bad life sucks and discovered how relentless pessimism really can save us all if he were just alive at least all his fans could be giggling at all this negativity.

This collection of essays sparkles with style and wit. Though some of the pieces are overwrought and teeter on self-indulgence, even when the writing appears to turn to sardonic rambling there is much merit in Foster's articulate prose. The titular essay, at the end, is especially funny, and his adoration of the filmmaker David Lynch renewed my long-held interest in the "czar of bizarre."

David Foster Wallace is a gifted writer and always a joy to read. His fiction is groundbreaking, and as this book proves, his nonfiction may even be better.
"A supposedly fun thing" is a collection of essays that are ostensibly stabs at journalism, the big joke being that Wallace is no journalist. He comes off as an endearingly neurotic-bordering-on-pathologically-self-concious red headed step child of Hunter S. Thompson. In fact, it could even be stated that this book is a sort of postmodern inversion of "The Great Shark Hunt", where Thompson's diving in head first to live inside the events he reports is replaced by Wallace's endearing midwestern unwillingness to get in the way and fear of making a nuisance and/or humiliating spectacle of himself.
Mixed in with all that, though, are startling on point revelations about the state of American Culture, what it means to be an american, the nature of art, and the human condition, which one normally doesn't expect from works about TV, Tennis, State Fairs, or Carribean Pleasure Cruises(in the title essay).
While it may not be as great an accomplishment as Infinite Jest (and the comparison to that magnificent book is the only reason this is getting four stars instead of five), "Supposedly Fun Thing" is without a doubt an incredible read and well worth the price of entry.

David Foster Wallace is an endearing writer, and these essays (which cover tennis, luxury cruises, state fairs, movies/television) are disarmingly sincere and phenomenally crafted. His "journalistic" pieces in particular make the works of a Hunter Thompson or even a Tom Wolfe seem amateurish by comparison.
Despite DFW's repeated assertions that he's not a crack journalist, these essays prove that he's not only good: he's celestial. However, if you hate the subjects, you'll definitely be put off by his fixation with minutiae and his legions of footnotes. (The final essay describing a Caribbean cruise boasts over 130 of the little buggers.. each of them delicious.)
On the other hand, I can't think of an author who has done better with the subjects than DFW. He's intelligent without being haughty and genuine without being sickening. A great introduction to his works.

I discovered Wallace about a year ago, when "Consider The Lobster" came out. (My review of that book explains why.) I have yet to read his fiction; 1,000+ page novels scare the hell out of me, and if you, like me, are one of the great "silent majority" (please, don't start with me, I know where the term originated and I don't need your history lessons, for reasons that should become apparent below), of fiction readers who tend towards popular fiction rather than "literary" fiction, you know where I'm coming from.

But with "Consider the Lobster", I was enchanted, and I did what I mostly do best with current trends: try and catch up 10 years later; those of you who read this and are old will understand; those youngsters among you are already rolling their eyes,if they've survived to this point, but to those survivors I say Wait!

Normally, I'm a bit of a "snoot", like DFW confesses to being in CTL, but unlike him, I haven't the grammatical chops to identify the guilty culprit beyond a reasonable doubt--and far less to name him/her/it. I can only identify when something sounds right or wrong.

And along comes this guy who is a top-notch writer, or so they'd have me believe, who uses colloquial expressions like "like" and "you know", and all those horrible things we were taught to "eschew" (is that the ugliest word in the language or what? It sounds like someone hacking a loogie), and then follows them with pithy observations that are seemingly beyond his years.

This guy actually begins sentences with "And so but" without apology or apparent irony, for God's sake! But his observations, his reporter's eye for detail, are so sharp and telling, and his prose so bitingly clear, that one forgives the annoyances of his style (the footnotes: please don't get me started), and tolerates his wacky genius.

Could he be a better writer? Yes, of course. Could he be funnier? Yes, that too. Could he be both? Probably not, unless he were to undergo a Richard Pryorish running-down-the-street-on-fire thing, which I don't think any of us want to see. And if you do, you're really sick.

So why is this guy a great writer? He breaks most of the rules, certainly all the rules he disagrees with, and leaves in their wake the standard ( Yes, David, "standard", whether you like it or not) postmodern (what a godawful word, and one that he's thankfully avoided in his more recent writings -- don't remember seeing it once in CTL) excuse/reason "That's how my generation talks", and the answer is because he's just plain good at writing. Like his description of himself as a junior tennis player, where he'd be steady and wait for his opponent to let his own mistakes beat him, in a way.

I'm not suggesting that he's a fine writer by default, or unforced error: but by perseverance, and adherence to a goal--describing the situation as he sees it, without apology or irony-- or, if irony's intended, advertizing it well.

Where I do think he is remarkably disingenuous is the point in the title essay where he goes off on Frank Conroy's admittedly "self-prostituting" [sic] essay plugging the cruise line, while explaining to us that advertisements, unlike essays, can never be art.

David, David, David ... tsk, tsk, tsk ....

OK, there's a difference between an essay and an advertisement, but: I read your essay in a book, and it was a book that I bought, and paid for with money out of my pocket, that I worked for, and does the fact that I didn't read it first in Harper's or Esquire or whatever change that? Wouldn't I have had to pay for it one way or another in order to read it in the first place, and doesn't that kind of shoot the legs out of your arguement that essays and ads are inherently different?

Hey, you mentioned postmodernism first, not me.....

One of the most insightful collections of essays I've read in years, Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing explores contemporary life with fresh and vibrant language. Too many try to compare these non-fiction essays with his magnum opus, Infinite Jest; there's a directness, a desire to not beat around the bush, present in A Supposedly Fun Thing. I.J. is a massive metaphor for the issues and concerns discussed in A Supposedly Fun Thing and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (another fine Wallace book). I'd love to read Wallace's take on the post-Sept. 11th America and the Bush Administration. If you're reading this, Dave, consider this a suggestion for more exceptional essays. Thanks for the great book.

Like some of the other reviewers in this space, I had some trouble with some of Wallace's idiosyncrasies (the footnotes, strange abbreviations), but it was all well worth it. The title essay alone is well worth the price of admission, and there are some other classics mixed in here. His style does require some patience, but you'll be rewarded.

My friend give me this book and I am so happy! I read it all the time and I like it very very much. David is such a funny man! Hold on...the phone is ringing. Anyway, I keep hearing about how smart David is. I'm afraid this contradicts the evidence. I quote the top of page 258: "I...have lost at chess to a nine-year-old girl". No, David is not very smart, but he is very funny. I think of him as a man of modest intellectual means who uses all he has on top to be amusing. You too could be as funny as David if you spend all your time and devote your whole day to this. How funny do you think David would be if he also had to be corporate lawyer or a handyman. Anyway, in this book David tells so many funny stories. I prefer the last story in which David goes on a cruise and he has a really bad time because he is thinking so much and always worried. Like when he gets the baggage handler in trouble to keep his nose from burning. That one. I'm tired now, so I just say get this book because it will make you laugh so much. But that's Como!

There is exactly one reason why this book is eminently recommendable: it shows in elegant detail why DFW is, above all, a beautiful person. This book draws you in, and not just because DFW's expository skills put you right alongside the action. The real draw is that DFW is unafraid to experience and evenhandedly relate joy and wonder in details. We are allowed to know of his distaste for Andre Agassi and Balthazar Getty, but we're also treated to his clear affection for Pete Sampras and the older ladies at the cruise ship dinner table. We're also exposed to the natural and endearing compulsion to pour the au jus bucket overboard, if only to attract sharks.
Bottom line: you want to hear details when they're from people you would like and trust. DFW is likable and trustworthy, and his essays will convince you.

I most recently have given this book to a friend of my whom is a speed reader, and goes through about 3 books a week. I told her this one had speed bumps. I have given this book to at least 5 people already, including my own copy, which I will have to replace. Reading the reviews of DFW's work, I can't help but be reminded of....living people, that is, the people I enjoy being around that are interested and interesting, usually entertaining and occasionally annoying. DFW's work encompasses so many aspects of the human condition, good and bad, that I recommend this work for anyone who enjoys reading. Why? Because they will either thoroughly enjoy talking about this book, or thoroughly enjoy trashing this book. It is a life-giver to the brain and well worth the read.

What a piece of pretentious garbage. Does anyone honestly enjoy DFW's work? Honestly? I was a linguistics major in college and have what I'd consider a well-developed vocabulary, but it seemed like every other page I was looking up a word I'd never even heard of. It was a frustrating, uninteresting, uninspired read, and I didn't even finish the book. Blah.

There are some great essays in the late(tragically) Prof. Wallace's book but the winner is the eponymous " A Supposedly Fun Thing----". OMG! He goes on a seven day luxury Caribbean Cruise--not his idea of course but an assignment from a magazine. I know I would rather die than go on a cruise but to be reminded in this hilarious essay just why that is the case was a delightful experience Do not miss it! The book, I mean, not the cruise---

I cannot think of enough good things to say about this collection on non-fiction by one of the greatest authors of all time. My favorites were the title essay, the discussion of the author's experience as a young tennis player, and his "portait" of David Lynch. This is a must-read for anyone who wants/likes to think!

I started and failed to read this book several times beforefinishing it. Once I did, I was sorry I waited so long to dive intoit. While I was at first intimidated by the mathematical references, wordiness and abstract concepts of the first essay, once I got into it I enjoyed every word (or artifical word created by Wallace). I found the absurd references, made-up words, footnotes, and insightful descriptions of people's natures to be refreshing and thought-provoking. The last essay is particularly rich. I would definitely recommend this work to anyone wanting a bit of an intellectual stretch. Not that the concepts are difficult, just that the style takes a bit of getting used to. But it is definitely worth the effort!!!

Almost all of the essays in this book are excellent, but the title essay, where Wallace recounts a luxury Caribbean cruise is worth the cost of the book alone. I reread it roughly every couple months. Wallace's prose is not for the average reader, but these essays are very accessable for the most part and a good place to start if you've not been introduced to him. I believe is one of the funniest men of letters in American history and hopefully, will continue to be so.

DFW writes like an insane genius on speed. He picks a topic and drills in and won't let up until every last crevice has been examined, analyzed, and discussed. This book is not for everyone, but I loved it. It is an intellectual treat that has me looking for other DFW books to read.

Not every essay is great, but some of them are so sharp, witty, original and insightful that you'll wish he were your best friend--the one you talk to on the phone every day, the one who tells you the story about an every day event but makes it so fascinating and fun that you laugh uproariously.

He will be greatly missed by so many!

I got this book on a recommendation from a stranger who was reading the title essay while having a frothy brew down at the local watering hole. He was laughing so much I had to ask him what the hell he was reading. I got the book the next day and, well, you simply have to read the title essay. It's about his experiences on a carribean cruise ship- he goes into great detail about every aspect of "cruise-life", including (while going through one of his agrophobic moments) measuring the L x W of his cabin in Keds size 11 shoes. That cracked me up! He goes deeper too in this essay and the others (with a lot of unruly pontification) but I'll let you get the book and read it for yourself.

If this book only contained the essay about the "Nadir," it would be worth the price. I laughed so hard I could barely breathe, and the next day my body ached. The rest is great as well, especially the essay about the Illinois State Fair. But there is lots more. I give this book as gifts. Just don't read it in public.

This collection, like Wallace's other work, requires a great deal of indulgence on the part of the reader, but those who can overlook (or even appreciate) DWF's neuroses will find an honest and trenchant wit. These funny, sincere, intelligent, and occasionally even warm essays will delight lovers of telling detail and (sometimes overly) frank authorial openness. Be forewarned that Wallace writes from a very particular angsty East Coasterly intellectual positionality; if you find existential dread utterly foreign, this book will be too.

I agree with the critic who said that we shouldn't let the revisionists have the day, Wallace's finest work is Infinite Jest. However, these non-fiction essays, though some are a little dated, will stand the test of time. Excellent work from top to bottom. And, yes, I like some essays more than others, obviously the title essay, the state fair essay, and the one about math and tennis. The essays that didn't resonate as much with me didn't strike me as gratuitously boring, rather, just things like David Lynch that I'm not as interested in. However, to expect every essay to include grand themes of life is to somewhat miss the point of modern life. We have so many things to choose from, Wallace's gift is in being a guide to a few of them. The sort of guide you always wished you had on one those lame Disney raft rides.

I come from a Southern Town and have been to many, many state fairs. Depsite what some would call "East Coast Elitism," the author describes these goings on perfectly and totally accurately.
Do not look down on him just for being truthful.

I had high hopes for this author, based on third hand information from other writers who in retrospect I wasn't a fan of either. He's bloviated and has no original ideas, he just presents concepts already heavily explored as if he discovered them, worse, he connects them rarely to reality, and he suffered from Cornell West syndrome using terms like Santaclausification instead of sanctification. I read his novel Infinite Jest (I bought these both at the same time) and its in the vein of Thomas Pynchon, boring ideas presented as humor in their banality, over obfuscated by poor verbosity. He name drops authors read that fit all the college trends, when he should have spent some time reading actual academics like CS Lewis (Abolition of
Man), people who explored his ideas years ago and exhaustively in what amounts to their footnotes...I was excited when I heard this author was being recreated by an actor I enjoyed, but I realize now that enjoyment of his novel lies with middle level readers just being excited they could finish it (ala Pynchon). How much did this author's teachers fail him by not giving him the appropriate criticisms when he needed them, in his youth. Some people just want to be authors and some people want to explore ideas...this one, unfortunately lies in the former.

More accessible and immediately satisfying than Wallace's fiction, this book is a good entre for those who want to get their toes wet without making the 1100 page commitment demanded by Infinite Jest.

DFW's essay's on tennis star Michael Joyce and the title essay about a week-long Carribean cruise achieve the rare combination of hilarity and seriousness.

Critics of DFW tend to fall into one of two categories:
1. Too stupid/impatient to get what's going on/being attempted;
or
2. Smart, but ideologically encumbered/terminally insecure, and thus predisposed towards rejection.
Both sets of critics appear to have missed the point.
The joy of DFW is that he doesn't attempt to answer his own questions. This is the literary equivalent of socratic method. He presents his argument to the reader, and then asks (as in Chapter 1 of Infinite Jest), "what's _your_ story?" Like any other educational experience, what the reader elicits is directly proportional to what the reader invests. Challenging? Yes. Pedantic? Often. But also by turns hilarious, insightful, and deeply moving. Consider anything he's written as one half of a dialogue. It's left to the reader to respond.

Those teenage students who aspire to be writers, READ THIS BOOK! Wallace's combination of interesting syntax, choice diction, and lucid description is a lesson to follow. Though he bears gifts, you can learn a lot from his writing.
Those of you who do not aspire yo be writers will enjoy the book as well. This is a great book that will appeal to just about anyone. Tennis, geometry, state fairs, and a 7NC. Plus Wallace's sparkling talent and laugh-out-loud humor on top of that. Wow.

While some essays were entertaining, on whole I found this book to be quite annoying. The author tries to combine stuffy academic writing with popular non-fiction, with decidedly mixed results. For example, Wallace seems obsessed with footnotes (several of his footnotes have footnotes!) which disrupts the narrative flow on nearly every page of some stories. He also comes across as a whiny outsider; his stories about the state fair and life aboard a cruise ship reveal more about the author than about the subject.

I really like David Foster Wallace's fiction, but his non-fiction is the best book format material I have ever read. He is amazingly capable at evoking empathy, while occasionally stunning with his amazing command of the language and his in-depth research of his subjects.

I loved the humor of these essays. DFW was a great loss to American literature.
The prose is challenging, with its obscure acronyms and multiple footnotes and parenthetical statements. The result, however, is well worth the slog.

I work as a librarian in a (you guessed it!) public library and ordered this book for our shelves here in a midwestern
town. I read many of the essays in original form and
was so amused by them I wanted to spread the mirth
with our patrons. So far, everyone I've recommended
it to has really enjoyed it. You've gotta read the a)cruise
ship essay in entirety and b)what he says about Balthazar
Getty in the Lynch essay!

when people come up to me and ask where they should start with Wallace I turn them to this collection as it is the most clear and readable introduction to his life and work. a beautiful introduction to DFW's personality.

Wallace's rather off beat description of his personal life, from playing amateur tennis to dating modern American women is an enthrallingly different, humourously critical way of looking at the world. While I found the stories entertaining and easy-reading I do have one little hint for the author: Dave, try to cut down on those annoying footnotes a little.

Sadly, I can't write like David Foster Wallace. The silver lining : I can read what he writes.
Get this book. Keep the Webster's on hand. Take frequent breaks. The utterly hilarious (and wonderfully true) review of the Illinois State fair is worth the price of this book.

Wallace is a show-off when it comes to prose but uses it to his advantage in this great collection of short non-fiction stories. His descriptions are intense and colorful and his footnotes delightful.

Highly recommended.

David Foster Wallace's irreverence and genius really comes through in this collection of essays. Everytime I read another one I can't help but feel sad that we've lost such a talent. My favorite is the rant on Television.

Quite possibly the most gruelingly verbose book I have ever attempted to read in my life. Those of you who made it to the final page should receive merit badges for torture resistance. Kudos.
Readers who gave this tree-waster five stars... Well, what can I say? I hope I don't get stuck next to you on a plane any time soon.

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again is waste money on book by David Foster Wallace.

Good day, Sir!

David Foster Wallace is a profoundly gifted writer, particularly of nonfiction. Yet backtracking to this "early" anthology of his work was an experience that left me surprisingly disappointed. Admittedly, part of the problem is that his early-to-mid 1990's musings on television and pro tennis (which comprise a substantial portion of this book) are now simply out-of-date.

But additionally, Wallace lacked the focus needed to make his points clearly when he wrote these pieces. While I think it can be fascinating to watch a brilliant mind wander about on the page (Tom Wolfe's nonfiction comes to mind), Wallace is not wandering. He's willfully zigzagging, in the writer's equivalent of "Look Ma, no hands!"

And this obfuscatory style often undermines his own material. A funny line about how tennis pro Michael Chang has "as unhappy a face as I've ever seen outside a Graduate Writing Program" is hopelessly outnumbered by bits like "I was disabled because I was unable to accommodate the absence of disabilities to accommodate." Right. Wallace's word play and tangential trains of thought CAN be amusing and even delightful... but in A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING..., they are more frequently just a chore to read.

I'll confess, I only read one chapter, the one about the Illinois State Fair. For several summers while I was in college I worked the ISF, and I had a whole lot of fun. My experiences in no way reflect Wallace's. His conclusion that because the Midwest is so vast and vacant we therefore seek to recreate by milling about in crowds seemed ill-informed and shallowly drawn.

I'm sure his east-coast audience had all their Midwestern sterotypes upheld. He made it to the loud and dirty car races but missed the night the symphony played...as it does every year...for free. Guess that wouldn't have meshed with the portrait he was painting.

There was no mention of the butter cow yet a long disseration about baton twirling. Sigh, how did he manage to miss the butter cow even with a Native Companion as a guide? I expected this story to be told with at least a tiny dash of affection and native awareness. You think we locals don't know that the fair exists for the benefit of politicans and gluttons? You think we aren't aware that it is over-priced, hokey, and more often than not hotter than blazes!? Watching other people in their profane t-shirts and buttock revealing short shorts is part of the fun! It's like the goofy relative you keep inviting it back to Thanksgiving dinner, you do it because its tradition!

I found this writing extremely difficult to read and understand. The sentences were long and confusing and by the time I got to the end of a paragraph I struggled to follow the point. The stories were generally interesting but in the end I gave up because I found it too much work to carry on.

David Foster Wallace's short essays can be amusing at times, but the descriptions can get tedious (see 500 footnotes for examples) and he rarely seems to connect with the people he's describing.

I haven't read the DFW novels, but for hilarious and cringe-inducing non-fiction commentary, Sedaris is THE master, with Dave Eggers, Sloane Crossley and others far ahead of DFW.

Sorry, I wanted to like the book more, especially with his untimely death.

A real hipster bible
I was told well suggested to buy this book by a ex black metal guitarist turned pretentious foodie Via a liberal arts school. This book is a tedious mess .
This was one of the worst books I have ever read I barely made it through before trading it in for credit at a used book store . The essay on David Lynch was rough I wonder if he has even seen a David Lynch film? Did he put it in there to seem smart? and why does name dropping make one seem hip anyway?
I really agree with Bret easton Ellis , it seems makes people feel they are some kind of faux intellectual if you suggest it to people to read.
My question is how did he write this book with his head up his rear end? Thats the real feat in this book!