A Supposedly Posthumous Fun ...... by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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post-modern author; at least until James Joyce has first received the “honor” of that “distinction.”

ED: So, what is po-mo literature?

DFW: Talented Tintaledaloo is growing abstracts in the north.

Others cut and paste.

Abstracts alleged to be growing in the north, presumably under the supervision of un-detected Tintaledaloo; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CC0 license; extremely modified.

DFW continued: Would you know that the sky was blue if the word

“blue” did not exist?

ED: Maybe I’d call it green. Or maybe brown. Whatever. It is what it is. What’s your point?

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DFW: You’re just being purposely and falsely obtuse.

ED: I assure you that I have made no particular effort to indicate any particular angle.

DFW: “ .................... “

ED: “ ........................ “

DFW: “ ............................ “

ED: “ ................................... “

DFW: “ ........................................ “

ED: “I think it’s your turn. Without the retardation of forty blank pages, I think we’ve already demonstrated visual po-mo.”

DFW: My turn has been forfeited.

ED: You presumably came here to say an hour’s worth of something.

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DFW: I’ve now lost interest.

ED: The show must go on.

DFW: That’s not my problem.

ED: “ ............................................... “

DFW: I can go even longer than that. Big deal. I’ve lost track.

My turn for what?

ED: To explain what po-mo literature is?

DFW: I don’t do po-mo literature. ............... Well, maybe that first one, but that was only because my professor liked that stuff, and I wanted a good grade, and ........... “

ED: Relax. I didn’t say that you did. I merely asked you if you had any idea of what it is.

DFW: You can bet your ass that I know what it is. Mary might confirm that if she ever gets off this “born again” crap. Po-mo is a designation of time; and is not indicative of any particular style. It probably started around 1950, and is called

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that only because nobody knows what else to call it. Its real characteristics are only a disproportionate interest in self and the pop psychology attendant thereto. Having said that, to avoid confusion, just as one must differentiate the old notion of David Foster Wallace from the incorrect current view of what is popularly seen as David Foster Wallace from the perception of the DFW Brand; it is also necessary to characterize what is popularly called po-mo literature by its commonly utilized devices which include an unstable narrator, a book about someone writing a book, a supposed mystery where there really isn’t any, non-standard formatting and structural elements rendered in the hope of being seen as artful or “new,” a character who doesn’t know who they are, a case of amnesia optional, the long story of what goes through someone’s mind while descending the airport escalator, the insertion of the author as a character at least one bearing the same name; a “witty” parody of another book no one has read other than the brilliant, inventive po-mo claimed writer; a derivative review written based on a primary book, other asinine mechanics like blank pages, “beautiful”

meaningless prose and text, sufficient for never ending orgasm; and last and least, the cacophony of “sophisticated,” reviewing mavens whose semi-semi-semi-semi-semi-semi-semi by-product discusses the “correctness” of an ontological approach rather than an epistemological one, interspersed with phrases like

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“theory of the novel” and “identity crisis.” One can’t help but think that it would be much too overly obvious to wonder if this group ever got out much.

ED- Speaking of that, I guess the question most would like to ask is what enables you to be out and about. You’re supposedly dead. Right?

DFW- Supposedly. I guess that “most” would be those who either didn’t read or understand “Infinite Jest,” present company of course excluded. There was no suicide. It was as much a media event just as conspiracy theorists consider the creation of ISIS. But because of the public perception of that, the book sales of the DFW Brand went up ten times over the sales of David Foster Wallace, and there are even sales of some of the errata I had abandoned. “The Pale King,” “McCain’s Promise,” “This is Water,” “Fate, Time, and Language,” and “Both Flesh and Not”

were all put out posthumously. Were I alive, I’d have not released any of them. They are just un-edited blurbs which produces sales after the establishment of the DFW brand. To give you an idea of the value of that, my heralded “Infinite Jest”

was a big hit in its first year, the result of it having sold 40,000 copies. When I packed it in the sales level was 150,000; and now it is 1,000,000. It’s been quite a lucrative nine years

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as I retain an interest. On a non-financial level I was tired of being David Foster Wallace. You might recall when the Beatles tired of being the Beatles’ and tried to opt for Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But, in my case I got this DFW

Brand abomination and spinoffs. Be careful what you want; you might get it. Joelle Van Dyne covers this fully. Just when you think you have her pegged, she suggests that she may have lied about the beginning. Unless I’m mistaken you might have noted that I referred to her stated condition as a deformity, rather than the more usual “scarring” utilized in cases of acid contact, which stems from the Latin deformitas, with an alternative definition.

ED- Slick. Joelle and Derrida are not exactly an item in the US.

But, I would also assume that your income from magazine writing, talk show fees, and various literary errata has gone right into the receptacle of the one in the defecatory position.

DFW: Yes. All things come in packages; the most common partner the crapper.

ED: We’ve almost ignored the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Since many have claimed to be puzzled by it, what was “Infinite Jest” about?

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DFW: Well, it’s as the reader sees it. My intent was to portray the absurd, near future of America; that a person is not anymore a person, but rather what his file says he is, that drug use is rampant, that commercialism has reached high levels, that the logic provided by increased information has made us colder then before, that the then recent web would addict us to the entertainment provided in both its words and images; that we will eventually become hopelessly addicted to the incessant

“show” as we don’t really like each other; that Derrida didn’t go far enough; that God gives hints of His existence which don’t satisfy the physicists, that inter-dependency has its drawbacks and dissidents, and more; the book all in a context of being primarily entertaining and amusing, in full recognition that if it was “successful” it would be absorbed by the Entertainment Beast as another market niche, much like alternative rock or anti-TV.

ED: You might have added Hamlet, tennis competition, and Boston to say the least. I think that it’s also a Bostonian novel, utilizing not only the accents of Boston, but distinctive Boston words and phrases like “Bob Hope” or “sporting lint.”

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DFW: We could go on with many asides. It’s also a world of pollution so hopeless that a large slice of Northern New England has been deeded to Canada and is used as a dump for bailed nuclear refuse catapulted from cities like Boston into the great beyond past Vermont.

ED: You refer to the area as “Enfield.” Enfield is a community that seems to be centered around Cleveland Circle. How did you get to know it?

DFW: I once lived in Brighton so I know the area. I wanted to do something that was about America, and Boston works well in that respect. I have a hard time doing anything that’s real, because there’s so much real stuff that I get overwhelmed. Enfield is actually the name of a town close to where I went to college that was inundated for a reservoir.

ED: Let me ask you the rude question that everyone talks about.

Why did it have to be so long?

DFW: I often use the word “distillate” in a somewhat pejorative sense. The other side of the coin is sloganeering; “I heart zombies” and “ASPCA Supporter.” It was initially even longer to the tune of 400 or 500 pages. The thing that scared me was that I

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didn’t want people to get the idea that it’s longer than it needed to be, because I had read stuff that’s longer than it needed to be and that is tediously dreadful.

ED: The other rude comment everybody makes is that in certain respects, it has the mark of Generation X on it, a generation some people think is awfully short in its attention span and not inclined to these big books. Who did you write it for?

DFW: One of my required traits for something being good literature is that it describes what it is like to be alive today. If Gen X-ers are as you describe them, then I can only say that what I came out of is an experimental or avant-garde tradition, and there’s a lot of very cool stuff in that tradition; stuff that’s very rich intellectually and aesthetically. The problem I have with it is that it has evolved to being things not very much fun to read; fodder for PhD

candidates only.

ED: I was just about to somewhere say that Thomas Pynchon has daunted me. William Gass and “The Tunnel” invited me but I didn’t get through it. William Gaddis, meh. Looong meh. These folks scare me and yet, not to blow smoke at you, I find  this book irresistible.

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DFW: Obviously I applaud your taste. There’s a lot of theoretical stuff going on that’s probably not of interest to most readers.

The thing I was trying to do was have something be hard but also be fun enough so that you can’t help yourself but do it, which ties into certain stuff that the book’s about.

ED: Give us a quick theoretical key, and then we’ll get off it, because this book is an incredibly concrete tool; a graduate school key.

DFW: Only if you promise to make a chopping motion if I start to get boring.

ED: Sure. Would I possibly misrepresent the acid affair?

DFW: A certain amount of the book is about the theoretics of entertainment in the avant-garde tradition. The other side is a commercial entertainment tradition, which is often fun to read, but panders. It’s stupid and too easy for the reader. So a certain amount of the way the book is structured is to seduce the reader into doing more work than is normally required, but not to have that work be odious. I can start spouting French names at

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you, but that’s less interesting to me than whether people find it fun.

ED: You say that Boston AA meetings are like nothing else on the planet. We seem to be deep inside an AA meeting, and we also seem never to get out. Then you mention the scary old guys. Who are they?

DFW: The scary old guys are the crocodiles, most of whom have been sober for 30 years and have “sponsored” countless many. If you ask them how AA works, they smile their chilly smiles and say just fine. It just works is all; end of story. Greenhorns happily and hopefully accept this. Then, after six months of sobriety they question. It’s akin to discovering that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy aren’t real. You hope your investigation determines that they are, but it never does.

ED: I suppose it’s about American politics, too. It’s also about an advertising culture and a technology of advertising that has run riot a few years into the future. Years are named for sponsors, like “Depends” and “Tucks.” What’s that all about?

DFW: Evan, Evan, my good Evan. You surprise me. I thought that was one of the easy amusing parts. Most critics seem to take it

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as a joke, ignoring that it comes back to haunt you in a broader sense; but that doesn’t matter. On a lesser level, for generations, it seems obvious that we sell our time. Time is money. N'est-ce pas?

ED: Did you do a lot of drugs?

DFW: I didn’t know a whole lot of people under 40 who haven’t claimed to have had periods where they’ve done a lot of drugs, and I was under 40 at the time.

ED: And how about the alcohol side?

DFW: Ditto.

ED: Who are you? How did this begin? How did you come to Boston?

How did you come to writing?

DFW: Please pardon the hearty laugh. I had a flashback to the substance, if any, encounter with Mark Leyner, amusing only in retrospect. I grew up in central Illinois. My parents were both college professors. They and I read a lot. I also watched a lot of television as a kid. When I was a kid I wanted to be a

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professional tennis player, which, during puberty became likely not to be a possibility.

ED: How did that emerge? Did you start getting beaten?

DFW: That would likely be true for most, but not me. I realized that the people I was beating were sons of doctors and lawyers, sometimes by a small margin, and that mathematically speaking, no pros had ever come from my home town. It’s difficult to explain to someone not having the same experience, but there comes a point at which you realize that there are a miniscule amount of pros, and the only ones of those who make a good living from the game are a miniscule subset of the miniscule. So, if you are not all that distanced from the play levels of some of the doctors and lawyers sons ......... In college I was essentially a math and philosophy major but fell in with some friends on a humor magazine who were interested in writing. I decided to do a double thesis, and did an early draft of a novel for my English thesis, which was called “The Broom of the System,” which ended up becoming my first book. And I went to graduate school briefly for fiction writing, which I advise to no one. I came to Boston because in the late 80s I was pretty confused about writing and not sure what I wanted to do. I thought I would get a philosophy PhD from a school here in Boston. I came here and tried it for

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about a semester, and discovered I was too old to be in school. I lived in Boston for a couple of years and sort of drifted around and lurked with vague ideas of researching something. I taught part time at Emerson down by the Cheers bar, and that’s pretty much it.

ED: Who encouraged you? Who were the literary gods up there, and also who on the ground said, “David, stick with it?”

DFW: It’s real weird; kind of no one in particular, but many in general. College was neat for me because I had sort of been a jock in high school. In college I discovered that I really liked my classes and also that I was smart and could have authority figures pat me on the head for stuff. A lot of my professors would point out that my papers were really more like stories than papers, and while they were good they were a little bit strange.

My best friend from Amherst was writing before I was and really served as unspoken encouragement. ...... Yes, he was that bad.

ED: Anyone more indirect?

DFW: Most of the people in Boston who I knew were poets rather than fiction writers. There was kind of a poetry mafia in Cambridge. I had a hard time in big cities, and I think one of

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the reasons I hung around long enough to research the book was that I had really wonderful friends and the community was cool, and you don’t get that in a small town the same way.

ED: I have a short question. I was talking on a program some time ago with John Updike. The subject was Thomas Pynchon, and Updike gave a kind plaudit to him. Was DFW the Generation X’s Tom Pynchon?

DFW: I’d need some kind of cogent explanation of what Generation X is. I hear the term a lot and I’ve honestly never understood what it means. I didn’t know Pynchon, but for me he is a quintessentially sixties writer. His sensibility comes out of the late Beats of the sixties; even fifties. One of the things that I think my generation misses is that real sense of unity and community which existed in the sixties. Everyone left the cities and moved to Levittown. One of the things I find amusing about Generation X is that it’s kind of a clumsy attempt to form some kind of community out of its insistently stated diversity. I’m 55, so we’re talking mostly about people who are younger. But I think one of the characteristics of my generation is that there’s a great amount an atomistic philosophy, absence of commonly accepted social values, and microcosmic communities; many professing a feeling of being lost and lonely. Largely because of

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that I think any direct comparisons between writers are a detriment to both parties, and silly in their implied belief that times do not change in a meaningful way. One cannot compare Bill Tilden, Pancho Gonzalez, Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, and Roger Federer; while it is further noted that Martina Navratilova exceeded all of their calculable accomplishments.

ED: I’m sorry. I’m being signaled that we have to break right here for a message from one of our sponsors.

A Supposedly Fun DFW Interview