The Languid Clown

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

-David Foster Wallace

The first I heard of DFW was from an ex-girlfriend in high school. I shunned him at first without knowing anything about him or his work, because, being the stubborn teenager I was, I passionately hated anything my ex seemed to even remotely enjoy. But I got over, and I eventually bought his book A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again after reading good things about it online.

Working my way around the essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing, I realized that this was no ordinary author I was getting into. No, this was something different, one of those rare moments when you sense that your perspective on the world and the people around you is on the verge of metamorphosis.

I sat there staring at 20-line-long sentences and footnote-dominated pages and thought excitedly to myself Fuck. I’m reading essays written by someone smarter than me. It’s not a particularly good or confidence-boosting feeling to have, especially after having slacked a path of least resistance through public school. But at the same time, I sort of enjoyed it. It was a (gasp) challenge to comprehend everything that was meant to be comprehended. It was hard, attention-demanding work to catch all the astute, witty remarks about topics I had never thought about. And yet it did this without digressing into pretentiousness or vapidness. From then on, I was hooked; I had become a DFW fan.

After toying with this new experience of being in over my head, I eventually put the book down and forgot about it for a while.

Months passed, seasons changed, I went to college, etc.

Until one night, while I was persevering through my seemingly-endless crusade through the gleefully-hyperlinked parts of the internet (e.g., reddit, Wikipedia, random online comics forums), I came across a link to another book of DFW’s short stories, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The name rang a bell, and I remembered that I had even watched the John Krasinski-directed film adaption of Brief Interviews while on my previous DFW craze a few years prior. The link led to a (probably-not-entirely-legal [And yes, I’m aware I’m blatantly attempting to steal DFW’s style by the way, but it’s just so fun writing like this. I’m two parens deep right now (dare I go deeper? [PARENS-CEPTION]) and it’s literally the best I’ve felt all day. I’ve also noticed that this isn’t a phenomenon that only affects me. I’ve read numerous DFW-centered reviews/blog posts/rants whose writers seemed to have also become infected with the DFW Style Virus (or DFW-SV [Hah, sounds like a police procedural TV show (OK, I’m coming out of my parens cocoon now. This should be interesting…)])]) full reproduction of the text, which I promptly downloaded. I’m still not sure whether DFW’s allure had grown within my subconscious while I had been on my interim or if it was the fact that I was slightly drunk at the time, but that strange rush of excitement, fear, determination, and reverence came sweeping over me again as I read my way through. After finishing a story and swearing to myself I could never find another that would top it, I’d finish the next one and repeat the oath. It was better than Christmas.

Anyway, the story above all of this shitty, vomited writing is the first one in the book. Despite having read it and reread it multiple times, I still feel like something about is eluding me. It’s mostly because of the last line and the repetition of “now did one.” Is it referencing the three characters, alluding to a comment about their facade-caused lack of intimacy/sincerity? That’s my best guess. I hope I’m not making DFW spin in his grave, but if I am, I can hopefully find some solace in my belief that it’s something his corpse has become used to by now…