Both Flesh and Not
Page 21
Here is an overt premise. There is just no way that 2004’s reelection could have taken place—not to mention extraordinary renditions, legalized torture, FISA-flouting, or the passage of the Military Commissions Act—if we had been paying attention and handling information in a competent grown-up way. “We” meaning as a polity and culture. The premise does not entail specific blame; or rather the problems here are too entangled and systemic for good old-fashioned finger-pointing. It is, for one example, simplistic and wrong to blame the for-profit media for somehow failing to make clear to us the moral and practical hazards of trashing the Geneva Conventions. The for-profit media is exquisitely attuned to what we want and the amount of detail we’ll sit still for. And a ninety-second news piece on the question of whether and how the Geneva Conventions ought to apply in an era of asymmetrical warfare is not going to explain anything; the relevant questions are too numerous and complicated, too fraught with contexts in everything from civil law and military history to ethics and game theory. One could spend a hard month just learning the history of the Conventions’ translation into actual codes of conduct for the U.S. military… and that’s not counting the dramatic changes in those codes since 2002, or the question of just what practices violate (or don’t) just which Geneva provisions, and according to whom. Or let’s not even mention the amount of research, background, cross-checking, corroboration, and rhetorical parsing required to understand the cataclysm of Iraq, the collapse of congressional oversight, the ideology of neoconservatism, the legal status of presidential signing statements, the political marriage of evangelical Protestantism and corporatist laissez-faire.… There’s no way. You’d simply drown. We all would. It’s amazing to me that no one much talks about this—about the fact that whatever our founders and framers thought of as a literate, informed citizenry can no longer exist, at least not without a whole new modern degree of subcontracting and dependence packed into what we mean by “informed.”8
In the context of our Total Noise, a piece like Mark Danner’s “Iraq:… Imagination” exemplifies a special subgenre I’ve come to think of as the service essay, with “service” here referring to both professionalism and virtue. In what is loosely framed as a group book review, Danner has processed and arranged an immense quantity of fact, opinion, confirmation, testimony, and on-site experience in order to offer an explanation of the Iraq debacle that is clear without being simplistic, comprehensive without being overwhelming, and critical without being shrill. It is a brilliant, disciplined, pricelessly informative piece.
There are several other such service essays among this year’s proffered Best. Some, like Danner’s, are literary journalism; others are more classically argumentative, or editorial, or personal. Some are quite short. All are smart and well written, but what renders them most valuable for me is a special kind of integrity in their handling of fact. An absence of dogmatic cant. Not that service essayists don’t have opinions or make arguments. But you (I) never sense, from this year’s Best, that facts are being specially cherry-picked or arranged in order to advance a pre-set agenda. They are utterly different from the party-line pundits and propagandists who now are in such vogue, for whom writing is not thinking or service but more like the silky courtier’s manipulation of an enfeebled king.
… In which scenario we, like diminished kings or rigidly insecure presidents, are reduced to being overwhelmed by info and interpretation, or else paralyzed by cynicism and anomie, or else—worst—seduced by some particular set of dogmatic talking-points, whether these be PC or NRA, rationalist or evangelical, “Cut and Run” or “No Blood for Oil.” The whole thing is (once again) way too complicated to do justice to in a guest intro, but one last, unabashed bias/preference in BAE ’07 is for pieces that undercut reflexive dogma, that essay to do their own Decidering in good faith and full measure, that eschew the deletion of all parts of reality that do not fit the narrow aperture of, say for instance, those cretinous fundamentalists who insist that creationism should be taught alongside science in public schools, or those sneering materialists who insist that all serious Christians are just as cretinous as the fundamentalists.
Part of our emergency is that it’s so awfully tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, preformed positions, rigid filters, the “moral clarity” of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new vistas of personal ignorance and delusion. In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help. That’s about as clearly as I can put it. I’m aware that some of the collection’s writers could spell all this out better and in much less space. At any rate, the service part of what I mean by “value” refers to all this stuff, and extends as well to essays that have nothing to do with politics or wedge issues. Many are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets—whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.
That last one’s9 of especial value, I think. As exquisite verbal art, yes, but also as a model for what free, informed adulthood might look like in the context of Total Noise: not just the intelligence to discern one’s own error or stupidity, but the humility to address it, absorb it, and move on and out therefrom, bravely, toward the next revealed error. This is probably the sincerest, most biased account of “Best” your Decider can give: these pieces are models—not templates, but models—of ways I wish I could think and live in what seems to me this world.
—2007
trichome—hairlike or bristlelike outgrowth Trimurti—Hindu trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer; Hindu version of the trinity: sits in chair w/ three faces facing three different ways triskelion—figure w/ three arms or legs coming out of a common center (exotic sex resembling a triskelion) triturate—to rub, crush, or grind into fine powder: to pulverize troche—small medicated or flavored tablet truckle (v.)—to be servile or submissive; (n.) bed w/ casters for rolling stuff trunnion—pin or cylindrical projection on which (e.g.) a cannon pivots; also fans, PC monitor try square—carpenter’s right-angled ruler T-top—auto w/ removable roof panels Tu enim Caesar civitatem dare potes hominibus, verbis non potes—saying: “Caesar, you can grant citizenship to men but not to words” uncus—a hook-shaped part (biology); nose? toe? uvulitis—inflammation of the uvula; special kind of sore throat vadose (adj.)—relating to water that’s above the groundwater table but in the ground vail (v.)—to doff cap; to lower your flag in submission valetudinarian—sickly, weak, morbidly health-conscious person vaunt—brag, boast; “an air of vaunt around him” venatic—of or related to hunting venery—pursuit or indulgence of sexual act vermiculate—wormish vermiculation—wormlike movements; appetite; sexual wormlike marks or carvings as on masonry vermiferous—wormy, worm-riddled vernalization—subjecting seeds or seedlings to low temperatures to speed up plant development vernation—the arrangement of young leaves within a bud vernissage—private showing held before art exhibition opens verso—left-hand page of book vestal—chaste, pure videogenic—like photogenic or telegenic but w/ video vidette—mounted sentinel stationed in advance of an outpost vituperations—angry remarks volute—spiral formation as in whelk shell; spiral scroll-like ornament as on Ionic column welt—raised seam between sole and upper of shoe whelm—to cover with water, submerge whinstone—hard, dark kinds of stone like basalt and chert widdershins/withershins—in a counterclockwise or contrary direction wiggan—stiff fabric used for stiffening windrow—long row of cut hay or grain left to dry after harvest before bundling windrow—row of snow or leaves heaped up by wind wonky—shaky, feeble; wrong, awry woodbine—climbing vine with yellowi
sh flowers wrack (n.)—damage from devastation, violence/ruin WYSIWYG (adj.)—desktop-pub./computer term for screen showing exactly what the printed page will look like wyvern—(heraldry): a two-legged dragon w/ wings and a barbed tail yashmak—veil worn by Muslim women yawp (v.)—to talk coarsely or loudly yean—to bear young yenta—person/woman into gossip, meddling (Yiddish) Yggdrasil—in Norse mythology, the huge ash tree that holds together earth, heaven, and hell by its roots and branches ylang-ylang—oil from Asian tree used in perfume
JUST ASKING
Q: Are some things worth dying for? Is the American idea1 one such thing? Who’s ready for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as heroes and martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?2 That is, what if we decided that a certain minimum baseline vulnerability to terrorist attack is part of the price of the American idea? That ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our way of life—not just of our soldiers and money on foreign soil, but the sacrifice of our personal safety and comfort? Maybe even of more civilians’ lives?
What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite everyone’s best efforts, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of terrible suicidal attack that a democratic republic cannot 100 percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are worth the price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned of more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some safety or (b) some portion of the rights and liberties that make the American idea so precious?
Q: In the absence of such a conversation, do we trust our current leaders to revere and safeguard the American idea as they seek to “secure the homeland”? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, PATRIOT Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for the moment that some of these really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we become so selfish and frightened that we don’t even want to think about whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?
—2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The David Wallace Literary Trust and the publisher wish to thank Sam Freilich, Vanessa Kehren, Victoria Matsui, Steve Kleinedler, Margaret Anne Miles, and Joseph Pickett for their invaluable help.
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following pieces were originally published in slightly different form in the following books and periodicals:
“Federer Both Flesh and Not,” originally published as “Federer as Religious Experience” in the New York Times, 2006.
“Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young” in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1988. Some of the ideas and language in this essay appear in “E Unibus Pluram,” A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Little, Brown, 1997.
“The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress” in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1990.
“Mr. Cogito” in Spin, 1994.
“Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open” in Tennis, 1996.
“Back in New Fire,” originally published as “Impediments to Passion” in Might Magazine, 1996.
“The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2,” originally published as “F/X Porn” in Waterstone’s Magazine, 1998.
“The Nature of the Fun” in Fiction Writer, 1998.
“Overlooked: Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels > 1960” at Salon.com, 1999.
“Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama” in Science, 2000.
“The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal, ed. Peter Johnson” in Rain Taxi, 2001.
“Twenty-Four Word Notes,” reprinted from the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus with permission from Oxford University Press. Copyright © 2004, 2008, 2012 by Oxford University Press.
“Borges on the Couch” in the New York Times Book Review, 2004.
“Deciderization 2007—A Special Report,” originally published as the introduction to The Best American Essays 2007, 2007.
“Just Asking” in The Atlantic, 2007.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College; his senior English thesis, the novel The Broom of the System, was published in 1987, and his senior philosophy thesis was published as Fate, Time, and Language in 2010. He earned a master of fine arts at the University of Arizona. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. He also published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Oblivion; the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster; a book about hip-hop, written with his friend Mark Costello, Signifying Rappers; and a book about infinity, Everything and More. Over the years, Wallace taught at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the Whiting Writers’ Award and served on the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
ALSO BY DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
The Broom of the System
Girl with Curious Hair
Infinite Jest
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Everything and More
Oblivion
Consider the Lobster
McCain’s Promise
This Is Water
The Pale King
Acclaim for David Foster Wallace’s
BOTH FLESH AND NOT
“What makes Wallace’s work so likely to stand the test of time is how rigorously and aggressively it bent forms into the shape of modern thought.… Wallace had the most sensitive cultural antennae of his generation, and in these essays he goes to war with them, using them time and again, at first, to describe every facet of a thing, to show you its many corrugated surfaces and contradictions, before admitting it is the thing’s mystery that makes it beautiful.… Every one of these pieces, even the tiniest introduction to a collection of prose poems, hums with Wallace’s contrary energy.… They show a mind at work, and it was one of the best this country has seen.”
—John Freeman, Boston Sunday Globe
“One of the best writers of our time.… If you’ve never read David Foster Wallace before, his masterful study of Roger Federer, included in this anthology, is an ideal place to start.”
—Steph Opitz, Marie Claire
“Wallace was his generation’s most eloquent cartographer of the Total Noise society.… He charted the absurdities and sadness of life in this land of hype and hyperbole, and he did so in incandescent prose that was as magical as it was elastic.… At their best these essays remind us of Wallace’s arsenal of talents: his restless, heat-seeking reportorial eye; his ability to convey the physical or emotional truth of things with a couple of flicks of the wrist; his capacity to make leaps, from the mundane to the metaphysical, with breathtaking velocity and ardor.”
—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“David Foster Wallace l
eft the essay form in a different state than it was in before he wrote. He wrote of Federer that he had ‘exposed the limits, and possibilities,’ of his sport. Wallace himself, with mystery and metaphysics galore, did no less for the essay.”
—Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune Printers Row
“Like previous collections of David Foster Wallace’s essays, Both Flesh and Not displays the late author’s vast intellectual curiosity.… The book also features selections from Wallace’s much admired list of dictionary words, as well as twenty-four word notes that he contributed to the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus. Both showcase Wallace’s ever-evolving, intimate, and often humorous relationship with language.”
—The New Yorker
“Wallace’s work impresses itself on you on many levels, perhaps none more piercingly pleasurable than in this fussy, old-fogy-to-the-point-of-crankiness way he wants to get things right, while also acknowledging the impossibility of doing so.… If there has ever been a laureate of difficulty and its virtues, of not just accepting what things seem to be but fighting toward the ‘very important truth,’ it’s David Foster Wallace.”