tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7704583061723470804.post8364140646866299047..comments2024-03-10T07:42:17.071-04:00Comments on The Film Doctor: David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, and the information societyThe Film Doctor http://www.blogger.com/profile/03073505923746994988noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7704583061723470804.post-17180157102990464052011-04-20T07:57:12.157-04:002011-04-20T07:57:12.157-04:00Now that I'm further in the novel, I find it o...Now that I'm further in the novel, I find it odd how Wallace makes the process of joining the IRS compelling. Ideologically, it sounds like one character is regressing from a stoner 1970s figure to a much more straitlaced 1950s type with short hair and conservative suits. The Jesuit-trained professor that converts the narrator says: "here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is." Is this some metaphor for the writing process? It leaves me wondering where Wallace stands in regards to all of this sacrificing one's fun for processing tax returns. What is the redemptive power of boredom?The Film Doctor https://www.blogger.com/profile/03073505923746994988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7704583061723470804.post-65306388653057847902011-04-12T09:05:24.315-04:002011-04-12T09:05:24.315-04:00Thanks for this post, FilmDr. The TIME article mad...Thanks for this post, FilmDr. The TIME article made me want to read this book, and now your post ensures that I will. The disjointed nature of the book is intriguing to me. Also, the Kafkaesque nature of the story as well. Sometimes books like this are hard to get through, but sometimes you just "vacuum" them up, as you say. I felt that way about Pynchon's <i>Against the Day</i> which was way far out but it always kept me reading.Richard Bellamyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12397053921647421425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7704583061723470804.post-71497129586353827952011-04-12T07:16:24.267-04:002011-04-12T07:16:24.267-04:00Thanks, Hokahey.
I'm busy devouring this book...Thanks, Hokahey.<br /><br />I'm busy devouring this book since I found I could obtain a copy at a Barnes & Noble a few days before its publication date. The passage I quoted struck me as the best one thus far that strives to summarize the major theme of the novel. Instead of writing a novel to entertain us, Wallace sought to examine our sickly relationship with entertainment. In <i>Infinite Jest</i>, he characterized it in terms of an addiction that left one enthralled (urinating on the floor, etc.) until one died. In my favorite nonfiction piece "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," Wallace explored the ghastly, nightmarish nature of a cruise where the people's attempts to be perpetually happy becomes the worst kind of self-deluding despair. Now, with <i>The Pale King</i>, Wallace takes the opposite tack of depicting an boring Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the IRS to once again reflect upon our dependence on amusement (among other things--death and taxes?). Even with its uneven quality that reminds me of T.S. Eliot's line in "The Waste Land"--"These are the fragments I have shored against my ruins"---<i>The Pale King</i> strikes me as easily the best novel of the year. I've not been reading it so much as vacuuming it up (after all, should not film blogs also explore our at-times deranged nature of our relationship with popular culture? What does it mean that we feel compelled to write about the very things that perpetually distract us? Wallace shows one how to use writing as a way to become semi-self-aware of contemporary enthrallment to gadgets and amusement at any price). I'll write a larger post about the novel later in the spring.The Film Doctor https://www.blogger.com/profile/03073505923746994988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7704583061723470804.post-61157838468661283562011-04-11T14:46:14.123-04:002011-04-11T14:46:14.123-04:00FilmDr. - Have you read this book? Are you plannin...FilmDr. - Have you read this book? Are you planning to? I read a TIME article about it and I find it compelling. I'm going to present passages from it in my A.P. English class. I find it interesting that he says, "Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is." I identify with this. Similarly, I think that we only come to terms with ourselves and our world through isolation - and that's something young people these days would not readily choose to do. In the Peace Corps I spent three years in the Sahara desert - a lot of isolation, loneliness, and tedium. But you learn something about yourself - and you definitely learn that reading and writing are essential to survive something like that. I would like to read Wallace's book.Richard Bellamyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12397053921647421425noreply@blogger.com