Both Flesh and Not: Essays

by David Foster Wallace

  Total # of anthology contributors who are employed as Poet in Residence at a children’s hospital: 1.

  # who are described in bio-note as “the enfant terrible of Greek Surrealism”: 1.

  # who have the last names Johnson or Smith: 6.

  Total % of anthology prose poems that are primarily about death/loss/life’s transience: 57.1.

  % about sex: 16.6.

  % about love: 0.2.

  % about cooking: 0.2.

  Square root of book’s ISBN: 43,520.065.

  Of Best of The P.P.’s 173 unmemorable or otherwise ungreat prose poems, total % that deploy as topoi or include as important characteristics (1) bitter or unhappy childhood memories: 21.3; (2) an object, scene, or tableau that is described, analogized, troped, associated, and ruminated over until the establishment of its status as a metaphor seems to be the p.p.’s only real aim: 50.6; (3) references to or discussions of Poetry itself: 12.1; (4) ultrararefied allusions to, e.g., Théophile Gautier, Paul Quéré, Sibelius’s “Swan of Tuonela,” etc.: 13.8; (5) heavy-handed use of anaphora, ploce, repetend, and/or alliteration: 20.7; (6) assorted jeux d’esprit whose main purpose seems to be to make the poet appear clever: 15.5; (7a) surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose obvious point is the psycho-affective disorder of the modern world: 21.8; (7b) surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose point or even relation to anything else in the p.p. is indiscernible: 48.3; (8a) surreal or free-associative transitions between sentences or ¶s: 51.7… (8b) which transitions themselves have no discernible point or resonance and make the whole p.p. seem at once pretentious and arbitrary: 46.6; and (9) just plain bad, clunky writing, no matter what genre or era it is: 51.7.

  Examples of above feature (9) from randomly selected anthology p.p.’s: “I don’t know how you feel about it, but for years and years, from the point of view of a person practicing my own, would-be benignly optimistic profession—that of a struggling manufacturer of colorful and sometimes even relatively amusing toys—I’ve felt that this constant placing of myself into bad moods by the conventional world, practically amounts to theft!” (Michael Benedikt’s “The Toymaker Gloomy but Then Again Sometimes Happy”); “She intended to be epic with repercussions this time, so through mostly legal methods she hastened his entrapment” (Brian Swann’s “The Director”); “No good, the slow resisting of rage, the kindly cupping of each hand in prayer while facing the shot-up outskirts of the town, as though to hold water out to a thirsty sniper, and see the rifle laid down, and water taken as a final covenant” (Robert Hill Long’s “Small Clinic at Kilometer 7”).

  Total # of zeroes in anthology’s Library of Congress Control Number: 5.

  Total # of postcolonic words left before RT’s 1,000-word limit is exceeded: 267, minus this phrase’s own 52 words.

  Most common problems with the substantial % of the book’s prose poems that are mediocre/bad: (1) The p.p.’s argument/theme/point/project is either too obvious or too obscure; (2) The p.p. lacks formal control, logic; it comes off flabby, arbitrary, dull—see, e.g., “All over the world the shooting goes on. Then the doorbell rings and the pain is actually gone. With the notes buried in the counter’s daily junk pile, you had no idea you’d even entered. Now it’s another city. No paradise, but all the blood, sex, he, she, flushed away. It’s not all luck” (Barry Silesky’s “Saved”).

  How problem (2) directly above is related to what reviewer sees as the most serious, paradoxical problem for the Prose Poem per se: Like all self-consciously transgressive poetic forms, the p.p. is, by both definition and intent, anti-formal. That is, it is distinguished as a form primarily by what it lacks, viz. stuff like line breaks, enjambment, formal rhyme- or metrical schemes, etc. At the same time, a prose poem very consciously calls itself a poem, which of course sends the reader a message, namely that this is a particular kind of literary art that demands a particular kind of reading—slow, careful, with extra attention paid to certain special characteristics. Not least of these special characteristics are the compression and multivalence of the poem’s syntax and the particular rhythms and tensions of the poem’s music. These are what give a poem the weird special urgency that both justifies and rewards the extra work a reader has to put into reading it. And see that it’s nearly always formal features that create and convey this poetic urgency: e.g., the tension of the line breaks against the lines’ own punctuation and meter, the use of breaks and enjambment and metrical scheme to control speed, emphasis, multivalence of expression, etc. W/r/t Best of The P.P., the absence of formal controls seems like the major reason why so many of its constituent p.p.’s seem not just non-urgent but incoherent; most of them literally fall apart under the close, concentrated attention that poetry’s supposed to demand.3

  Paradoxical consequence of above paradoxical problem for the 31 p.p.’s in the book that really are rich and alive and fine: It makes them seem even better, and not just better in comparison to the dross that surrounds them. It’s more like the 173 mediocre/bad p.p.’s here help the reader appreciate the terrible, almost impossible disadvantages of the p.p. form, which then makes the pieces from Davis, Ignatow, et al. seem less like just successes than like miracles. The experience of reading a piece like Davis’s “The Frogs” or Stevens’s “The Sign” or Ignatow’s “My Own House,” of watching the p.p. somehow achieve poetry’s weird blend of logic and magic with hardly any of poetry’s regular assets or tools, helps us to understand the allure of transgressive forms for writers,4 and maybe to remember that most formal conventions themselves start out as “experiments.”

  Source of metaphorical description of a prose poem as “a cast-iron aeroplane that can actually fly,” which image conveys the miraculous feel of the anthology’s best p.p.’s way better than the purely expository review ¶ just above does: Russell Edson, as duly quoted by Peter Johnson, whose Introduction however can’t leave the perfect image alone to ramify in the reader’s head but has to gloss it with “Edson’s metaphor and his comment on literary definitions are attractive to poets because he champions the unconscious and the personal imagination in its attempt to escape literary and cultural contamination.”

  Probability that, if this reviewer were named Peter Johnson, he would publish under either “Pete” or his first two initials: 100%.

  Indexical Book Review coda: Another famous R. Edson pronouncement, although this time one that P. Johnson, Ed.—for rather obvious professional reasons5—does not quote in his Introduction: “What makes us so fond of [the p.p.] is its clumsiness, its lack of expectation or ambition. Any way of writing that isolates its writer from worldly acceptance offers the greatest creative efficiency. Isolation from other writers, and isolation from easy publishing.”

  —2001

  pinchbeck—any cheap imitation; zinc and copper alloy used as fake gold pinguid—fat, oily; used of liquid or food pithecoid—of or resembling apes pityriases—skin disease w/flaking of oily scales pizzle—penis plastronplastrotrong>—the front of a man’s dress shirt; quilted protective chest pad in fencing plication—act or process of folding; condition of being folded plimsoll—primitive sneaker; rubber-soled boating shoe plover—wading bird plus fours—loose knickers bagging below the knees; worn by old-time golfers pococurante (adj.)—careless, indifferent, easy poikilothermic—cold-blooded, as in fish or reptile pongid—ape family that includes gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan Poobah—pompous, ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices, fulfills none of them poppet valve—intake or exhaust valve that plugs and unplugs its opening w/axial motion porringer—shallow cup or bowl with a handle porte-cochère—entrance leading thru building into enclosed courtyard; an enclosure over a driveway at the entrance of a building to provide shelter portico—long porch, w/columns, often leading to front door praxis—custom, application of learning prevenient—coming before, preceding primipara—woman who’s pregnant for the first time primogeniture—state of being firstborn or eldest child prion—microscopic protein particle similar
to virus but lacking nucleic acid: causes terrible crystalline changes in brain, scrapie, and mad cow disease, spongiform brain diseases privity—secret, special knowledge between two or more people; (adj.) privitive prolapse—to fall or slip out of place ptosis—abnormal lowering or drooping of upper eyelid; (adj.) ptotic purlieu—an outlying or neighboring area purlieus—outskirts, environs putrescine—foul-smelling ptomaine produced in decaying animal tissue puttee—strip of cloth wound spirally from ankle to knee… a gaiter pyknic—having a short, stocky physique quadrate—square or rectangular… four sides & four angles rachis—main axis or shaft, as in spinal column or trunk of tree or mainstem of flower raclette—cheese melted onto bread or potatoes: Swiss dish radiolarian—type of marine protozoan ramify (v.)—to have complicating consequences, “a universe of sexual experience as richly ramified as our own” ratables—income from property taxes ratoon—a shoot sprouting from a plant base, as in banana, sugarcane ravel (v.)—to become tangled or confused recrudesce—to break out anew after period of quiescence recto—right-hand page of book retroflex—bent, curved, or bent backward retroussé—turned up at the end, used to describe noses revetment—a facing, as of masonry, used to support an embankment Rhenish—related to Rhine or area around it riata—a lariat, a lasso rigorism—harshness or strictness rime—thin coating of ice or mud; rimey, rimed rimple—a fold or wrinkle rinderpest—horrible disease of cattle ringent—having gaping liplike parts like the shells of certain bivalves

  TWENTY-FOUR WORD NOTES

  Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn’t do, its extra letters and syllables don’t make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she’ll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What’s worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: “formal writing” does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing.

  If Most dictionaries’ usage notes for if are long and involved; it might be English’s hardest conjunction. From experience born of personal humiliation, I inform you that there are two main ways to mess up with if and make your writing look weak. The first is to use if for whether. They are not synonyms—if is used to express a conditional, whether to introduce alternative possibilities. True, abstract grammatical distinctions are hard to keep straight in the heat of composition, but in this case there’s a wonderfully simple test you can use: If you can coherently insert an “[or not]” after either the conjunction or the clause it introduces, you need whether. Examples: “He didn’t know whether [or not] it would rain”; “She asked me straight out whether I was a fetishist [or not]”; “We told him to call if [or not? no] he needed a ride [or not? no].” The second kind of snafu involves a basic rule for using commas with subordinating conjunctions (which are what if is one of). A subordinating conjunction signals the reader that the clause it’s part of is dependent—common sub. conjunctions include before, after, while, unless, if, as, and because. The relevant rule is easy and well worth remembering: Use a comma after the subordinating conjunction’s clause only if that clause comes before the independent clause that completes the thought; if the sub. conj.’s clause comes after the independent clause, there’s no comma. Example: “If I were you, I’d put down that hatchet” vs. “I’d put down that hatchet if I were you.”

  Pulchritude A paradoxical noun because it refers to a kind of beauty but is itself one of the ugliest words in the language. Same goes for the adj. form pulchritudinous. They’re part of a tiny elite cadre of words that possess the opposite of the qualities they denote. Diminutive, big, foreign, fancy (adj.), classy, colloquialism, and monosyllabic are some others; there are at least a dozen more. Inviting your school-age kids to list as many paradoxical words as they can is a neat way to deepen their relationship to English and help them see that words are both symbols for real things and real things themselves.

  Mucous An adjective, not synonymous with the noun mucus. It’s worth noting this not only because the two words are fun but because so many people don’t know the difference. Mucus means the unmentionable stuff itself. Mucous refers to (1) something that makes or secretes mucus, as in “The next morning, his mucous membranes were in rocky shape indeed,” or (2) something that consists of or resembles mucus, as in “The mucous consistency of its eggs kept the diner’s breakfast trade minimal.”

  Toward It might seem pedantic to point out that toward is the correct U.S. spelling and towards is British. On the other hand, so many writers at all levels seem ignorant of the difference that using toward becomes a costless, unpretentious way to signal your fluency in American English. It’s the same with gray (U.S.) and grey (Brit.), though so many Americans have been using them interchangeably for so long that some U.S. dictionaries now list grey as a passable variant. This is not likely to happen with toward/towards, though—at least not in our lifetimes. Nor will it happen with using as to mean since or because, which a lot of U.S. students like to do because they think it makes their prose look classier (“As Dostoevsky is so firmly opposed to nihilism, it should come as no surprise that he so often presents his novels’ protagonists with moral dilemmas”). As of 2003, the causal as is acceptable only in British English, and even there it’s OK only if the dependent as-clause comes at the start of the sentence, since if it comes in the middle the as can look temporal and cause confusion (“I declined her offer as I was on my way to the bank already”).

  That There is widespread ignorance about how to use that as a relative pronoun, and two common that-errors are so severe that teachers, editors, and other high-end readers will make unkind judgments about you if you commit them. The first is to use which when you need that. Writers who do this usually think the two relative pronouns are interchangeable but that which makes you look smarter. They aren’t, and it doesn’t. For writers, the abstract rule that that introduces restrictive elements and which introduces nonrestrictive elements is probably less helpful than the following simple test: If there needs to be a comma before the rel. pron., you need which; otherwise, you need that.1 Examples: “We have a massive SUV that we purchased on credit last month”; “The massive SUV, which we purchased on credit last month, seats us ten feet above any other driver on the road.” The second error, even more common, is way worse. It’s using that when you need who or whom. (Examples: “She is the girl that he’s always dreamed of”; “Daddy promised the air rifle to the first one of us that cleaned out the hog pen.”) There’s a very basic rule: Who and whom are the relative pronouns for people; that and which are the rel. pronouns for everything else. It’s true that there’s a progressive-type linguistic argument to be made for the thesis that the “error” of using that with people is in fact the first phase of our language evolving past the who/that distinction, that a universal that is simpler and will allow English to dispense with the archaic incommodious subject-who-vs.-object-whom thing. This sort of argument is interesting in theory; ignore it in practice. As of 2003, misusing that for who or whom, whether in writing or speech, functions as a kind of class-marker—it’s the grammatical equivalent of wearing NASCAR paraphernalia or liking pro wrestling. If you think that last assertion is snooty or extreme, please keep in mind that the hideous PTL Club’s initials actually stood for “People That Love.”

  Effete Here’s a word on which some dictionaries and usage authorities haven’t quite caught up with the realities of literate usage. Yes, the traditional meaning of effete is “depleted of vitality, washed out, exhausted”—and in a college paper for an older prof. you’d probably want to use it in only that way. But a great many educated people accept effete now also as a pejorative synonym for elite or elitist, one with an added sugges
tion of effeminacy, over-refinement, pretension, and/or decadence; and in this writer’s opinion it is not a boner to use effete this way, since no other word has quite its connotative flavor. Traditionalists who see the extended definition as an error often blame Spiro Agnew’s characterization of some liberal group or other as an “effete corps of impudent snobs,” but there are deeper reasons for the extension, such as that effete derives from the Latin efftus, which meant “worn out from bearing children” and thus had an obvious feminine connotation. Or that historically effete was often used to describe artistic movements that had exhausted their vitality, and one of the main characteristics of a kind of art’s exhaustion was its descent into excessive refinement or foppery or decadence.

  Dialogue Noun-wise, the interesting thing about dialogue is that it means “a conversation or exchange between two or more people,” so it’s not wrong to say something like “The council engaged in a long dialogue about the proposal.” Avoid modifying it with certain adjectives, though—constructive dialogue and meaningful dialogue have, thanks mainly to political cant, become clichés that will make readers’ eyes glaze over. Please also avoid using dialogue as a verb—ever. This is despite the facts that (1) Shakespeare used it as a verb, and (2) There are all sorts of other accepted verbalizations of nouns in English that work the same way; e.g., to diet is reduced from “to go on a diet,” to trap from “to catch in a trap,” and so on. Maybe in thirty years, to dialogue will be just as standard, but as of now it strikes most literate readers as affected and jargonish. Same with to transition; same with to parent.