Reviews for Understanding David Foster Wallace

The average rating for Understanding David Foster Wallace based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-01 00:00:00 Kristofer Heim The problem with Boswell's book can be summed up in this quote: "Therefore, in the same way that a coherent reading of The Broom of the System first demands a familiarity with Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, a cogent interpretation of Infinite Jest first entails a brief encounter with Lacanian theory." EXACTLY the kind of high-academic pretension that puts people off reading DFW. If I'd thought I first had to read Wittgenstein, and whatever supplemental material needed to help me understand Wittgenstein, I'd have never gotten around to Wallace. And Lacan, the man Boswell describes as having "bewilderingly difficult theories about desire, pleasure, subjectivity, and infantile preoccupations with mothers"? Would a "brief encounter" even be enough? And why does he make it sound like an unfortunate office party incident? Otherwise, Boswell's arguments -- though often dry as parchment -- are generally sound and he offers a decent primer for anyone interested in the deep theory stuff Wallace was into. Just know it's not mandatory to have a PhD to enjoy Wallace: the guy knew fiction's real frisson happens on a relatable human gut level. P.S. Understanding DFW is riddled with typos and errors; it's as though there wasn't even a cursory proofreading. Editorial sloppiness on this scale is weird in a professor's work. Pray his students don't have it on hand at term paper time.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-19 00:00:00 Jared Elliott I read David Foster Wallace for many reasons, really too many to name here. But chief among them is how his work challenges me as a reader, making me feel smarter and actually making me smarter, and by smarter I mean both in the traditional sense but also smarter as in more aware, of the world around me, of the people in this world. His ability, through his language, to make me feel a little bit less alone in this modern world. Marshall Boswell has done DFW fans like me a great service. Just when I think I am starting to figure out the many, many complexities of DFW's fiction, Boswell comes along and says, "You think you know but you have no idea." Ok, maybe that was the tag line for MTV's Diary, but still, it applies. In Understanding David Foster Wallace, Boswell goes through all of Wallace's published fiction (The Broom of the System, Girl With Curious Hair, Infinite Jest, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men) and pretty much dissects the narrative, all without boring the reader. Well, he didn't bore me anyway. But seriously, if you've ever read any of Wallace and thought to yourself, "There's something here I'm not quite getting, I know there's more behind this, etc," then Boswell is the man for you. He explores Wittgenstein's language games in Broom, he highlights the many parodies, criticisms, and declarations of Girl With Curious Hair (Did you know 'Little Expressionless Animals' had to do with John Ashbery's 'Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror'?). Of course the best chapter is on Infinite Jest, and the more I read about that massive "novel" (I use quotes because it's more than a novel), the more I want to go back for a second reading. Wallace was responding to French psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan's "bewilderingly difficult theories about desire, pleasure, subjectivity, and infantile preoccupations with mothers"? But that's also another great thing about Wallace, is that he does all this stuff below (and not so below) the surface, but you can enjoy his fiction just as good story telling, or amazing use of language, or or or or. You don't have to know Lacan's theories to enjoy Infinite Jest. Hell, I didn't even know who Lacan was let alone that Wallace was responding to his theories. This is all to say that Boswell does an amazing job adding to the growing realm of Wallace Studies, and we've got to give him credit for being one of, if not the first to recognize Wallace's depth. astronaughtcaveat.blogspot.com