Sheer genius. | A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

YES, YES, YES. | A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments | David Foster Wallace

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	• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments David Foster Wallace Back Bay Books, 1998 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 89 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent

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."

Sheer genius.

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.

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YES, YES, YES.

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!

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A national treasure

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.

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This exuberantly praised--and uproariously funny--first collection of nonfiction pieces by one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time--the author of "Infinite Jest"--"reconfirms Mr. Wallace's stature as one of his generation's preeminent talents" ("New York Times") 5-city author tour. Print ads .