5 ms·

I wish I could still love DFW's work the way I used to, but it's colored by [allegations of significant relational abuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fo

by Arubis 4y ago

I wish I could still love DFW's work the way I used to, but it's colored by [allegations of significant relational abuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace#Personal_...).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
redtexture 4y ago
From the article. > Subsequent first-person accounts came from Wallace’s friends... >...They also produced a fairly consistent picture of a selfish friend, a manipulative—and likely abusive—boyfriend, and a jealous and self-mythologizing writer. Even were we to desire to do so, there is no way to read Wallace today without knowing these things about him. > It’s worth noting, though, that for attentive readers of Wallace’s fiction, little of the news about his personal life could come as a surprise. Wallace’s great subject was the morass of selfishness, self-rationalization, and intellectualized narcissism into which his cohort of educated, relatively privileged Americans would sink—and were sinking—unless they could find something to love more than they loved themselves. A difference between Wallace and many of his contemporaries—one that sometimes opened him to charges of hypocrisy and self-delusion, not to mention cringeworthy sentimentalism—was his commitment to doing more than merely cataloguing the traps of modern alienation. This did not mean that he claimed to have escaped those traps himself. It did mean, as reflected by his attraction to conversion narratives like Fogle’s, that he hoped he could spring his readers free.
- Arubis 4y ago
  This is fair, and familiar. A common sensation over the last half-decade or so is to be shocked without being surprised. That this was a predictable facet of DFW's character doesn't make his purported actions less saddening and hurtful. It's okay--expected!--to struggle. It's common--awful, but repairable!--to hurt others in the process. The open question is whether that repair would have ever been available had he lived.
- everybodyknows 4y ago
  > cringeworthy sentimentalism This is new to me -- anyone have an example?
jquaint 4y ago
Yeah I totally agree. It doesn't invalidate his work but it adds quite an ick factor for sure.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Edison was pretty ruthless and a garbage-y person. Do you feel an ick factor while enjoying the modern electrical world?
Invictus0 4y ago
I don't get how people can care about things like this. The American Constitution was written by slaveowners, and MLK cheated on his wife. It doesn't make the Constitution worthless nor does it make the I have a Dream speech a fraud. Never meet your heroes.
- Arubis 4y ago
  Nuance! You can do better than black and white, good/bad binary decisions. I totally care about those other factors. And I am acutely aware of the effect that physical abuse has on real, actual people. It's unavoidable that this would effect my reading of someone's work. That the writers of the Constitution were morally fallible means they weren't the final authority, and we should be willing to grow. They had wisdom; we should take what we can of it, and take a nuanced view. This is no different from my take on DFW: there's art and learning to be had, but it's no longer the pure and innocent enjoyment I would have had prior to knowing how personally hurtful he could be. The MLK stuff is uncertain as yet; the FBI was clearly trying to blackmail him, but the records remain sealed. We'll know more in a couple years: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/equality-in-the-sixties.html#f3 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/e...
  - Invictus0 4y ago
    > it's no longer the pure and innocent enjoyment I would have had prior to knowing how personally hurtful he could be. All you crave is ignorance. The reality is that everyone has personal failings of some kind. All the bridges, all the books, all the artworks were made by imperfect people that were sometimes assholes.
  - sorrychuck 4y ago
    Hanging hard onto the myth lol. The good he did is enough. One doesn’t have to be perfect for one's works to be good.
rcktmrtn 4y ago
The fact that he killed himself colors every bit of his work to me. Whatever people may say about depression being a chemical phenomenon outside of our control, there will always be something perverse to me about learning why not to commit suicide from an author who did. That said, I found Infinite Jest to be very insightful when I read it at a low point in my life, but I went into it knowing who the author was.
everybodyknows 4y ago
His more serious journalistic pieces can be read without much reflection on the man himself. On the politics of language: http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...
boppo1 4y ago
I mean, he knew he was a piece of shit and killed himself. Sort of an ultimate mea culpa. So maybe we can forgive him enough to enjoy his works.

by Arubis 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

redtexture 4y ago

From the article. > Subsequent first-person accounts came from Wallace’s friends... >...They also produced a fairly consistent picture of a selfish friend, a manipulative—and likely abusive—boyfriend, and a jealous and self-mythologizing writer. Even were we to desire to do so, there is no way to read Wallace today without knowing these things about him. > It’s worth noting, though, that for attentive readers of Wallace’s fiction, little of the news about his personal life could come as a surprise. Wallace’s great subject was the morass of selfishness, self-rationalization, and intellectualized narcissism into which his cohort of educated, relatively privileged Americans would sink—and were sinking—unless they could find something to love more than they loved themselves. A difference between Wallace and many of his contemporaries—one that sometimes opened him to charges of hypocrisy and self-delusion, not to mention cringeworthy sentimentalism—was his commitment to doing more than merely cataloguing the traps of modern alienation. This did not mean that he claimed to have escaped those traps himself. It did mean, as reflected by his attraction to conversion narratives like Fogle’s, that he hoped he could spring his readers free.

Arubis 4y ago
This is fair, and familiar. A common sensation over the last half-decade or so is to be shocked without being surprised. That this was a predictable facet of DFW's character doesn't make his purported actions less saddening and hurtful. It's okay--expected!--to struggle. It's common--awful, but repairable!--to hurt others in the process. The open question is whether that repair would have ever been available had he lived.
everybodyknows 4y ago
> cringeworthy sentimentalism This is new to me -- anyone have an example?

jquaint 4y ago

Yeah I totally agree. It doesn't invalidate his work but it adds quite an ick factor for sure.

boppo1 4y ago
Edison was pretty ruthless and a garbage-y person. Do you feel an ick factor while enjoying the modern electrical world?

Invictus0 4y ago

I don't get how people can care about things like this. The American Constitution was written by slaveowners, and MLK cheated on his wife. It doesn't make the Constitution worthless nor does it make the I have a Dream speech a fraud. Never meet your heroes.

Arubis 4y ago
Nuance! You can do better than black and white, good/bad binary decisions. I totally care about those other factors. And I am acutely aware of the effect that physical abuse has on real, actual people. It's unavoidable that this would effect my reading of someone's work. That the writers of the Constitution were morally fallible means they weren't the final authority, and we should be willing to grow. They had wisdom; we should take what we can of it, and take a nuanced view. This is no different from my take on DFW: there's art and learning to be had, but it's no longer the pure and innocent enjoyment I would have had prior to knowing how personally hurtful he could be. The MLK stuff is uncertain as yet; the FBI was clearly trying to blackmail him, but the records remain sealed. We'll know more in a couple years: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/equality-in-the-sixties.html#f3 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/e...
- Invictus0 4y ago
  > it's no longer the pure and innocent enjoyment I would have had prior to knowing how personally hurtful he could be. All you crave is ignorance. The reality is that everyone has personal failings of some kind. All the bridges, all the books, all the artworks were made by imperfect people that were sometimes assholes.
- sorrychuck 4y ago
  Hanging hard onto the myth lol. The good he did is enough. One doesn’t have to be perfect for one's works to be good.

rcktmrtn 4y ago

The fact that he killed himself colors every bit of his work to me. Whatever people may say about depression being a chemical phenomenon outside of our control, there will always be something perverse to me about learning why not to commit suicide from an author who did. That said, I found Infinite Jest to be very insightful when I read it at a low point in my life, but I went into it knowing who the author was.

everybodyknows 4y ago

His more serious journalistic pieces can be read without much reflection on the man himself. On the politics of language: http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...

boppo1 4y ago

I mean, he knew he was a piece of shit and killed himself. Sort of an ultimate mea culpa. So maybe we can forgive him enough to enjoy his works.