How much wit can a writer display before loosing his grasp on their readers? David Foster Wallace certainly walks that razor-thin line with this novel... if we still care to call it that. For this book is more about fiction than a fiction itself. (If it weren't, why would it be called metafiction, anyway?)
Was that last statement too annoying? Perhaps. But that's the tone Wallace affords, with more mastery of the technique of writing, of course, I do not intend to say I can write as well as him. For, first and foremost, he is a magnificent writer, and a very funny one, by the way. With his droll intellectual riddles and attacks on psychology, literature and religion, I could envision him as a pomo Woody Allen. (Minus menschness, natch).
As any really creative writer, though, his ingenuity seems to get out of hand at times. Observe the "Gilligan's Island" theme bar the characters patronize at the city of Cleveland. He goes for broke milking this concept, where all the servers have been hired for their passing resemblance to Bob Denver, and once every hour one of them will perform a pratfall and have the patrons reward him with an "Aww, Gilligan." There's good comment on the entertainment culture of America here... but it feels overwrought. And thus becomes tedious rather than fresh. (A sad state of affairs, mind you.)
And the overarching theme of the novel dangerously dances on that edge itself. Ah, yes! The "Self vs. Other" issue, the hygiene anxiety, the permeability dilemma. Or, in layman terms, "the fear to whatever is beyond you". That's the driving force of this book, a subject he investigates at length, but perhaps with too much "Am I not so intelligent?" showmanship. I can understand why another reviewer cried "Masturbation!" at this intellectual overkill. I don't think Wallace was simply getting off on all the mind acrobatics: he is trying to make a point. But the messenger muddles the message. (Oy!)
In the end, it seemed to me there was too much Other invading the Self. Wallace sets up an increasingly complex plot, only to forego it at the very end and let us draw our own conclusions. That is not a bad thing in itself, but he leaves us grasping at shadows instead of at substance. Again, he has a point to make from it... but pounding you with it as hard as possible. On closing, this is one helluva anti-novel: one that is a lot more fun to dissect as a lab frog than to read. (If there are any fellow dissectors who would like to share their observations, please do write me.)
(Had enough of parenthesis-enclosed wisecracks?)
Postscript: After "The Broom of the System", I don't feel like reading another stridently long David Foster Wallace work in the foreseeable future. I will give it a crack to his shorter writings, though. Following a friend's suggestion (Hi, Laura!), I've brought home a copy of "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never do again". Maybe I'll find more focus in smaller doses of Wallace than in the largest.
