A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

By tree
21 Mar 12 at 12:12 PM
In: What My Wife Is Reading

I love David Foster Wallace. He’s a genius.
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Was.
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And I’ve been procrastinating this post…

Started reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again*, oh, last week sometime, I guess. And like within the first paragraph, I was thinking, “I’m still pissed about that!” Yeah, so but then anyway….

Luckily I still have a lot of DFW’s work left to read, so I’m probably OK for a few years… but someday, I’ll never have a new DFW work to read. Ever. And I’m not happy about that. I mean, he’s a genius!
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Was.
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Anyway….

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

ASFTINDA is a book of essays, the first of which is about tennis, a sport about which I know very little. But like DeLillo (see, e.g., the first chapter of Underworld*), DFW captivates me. Even when I’m reading about things that really have no relevance to me, I’m rapt. And they really actually seem relevant to me. Weird.

But so then I thought, “I really need to post about what I’m reading.”
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“Maybe I’ll just read the next essay first, so I can do the book justice. [I won’t]”

Oh. But then so the next one’s about TV (in c.1990)… and 62 pages long. “OK, yeah. It’ll be longer before I do my post, but that’s OK.”

Finished that when we were in Springfield. I know I had my computer with me and could have written this thing before I started the essay about the Illinois State Fair. But I was in Springfield. Home of the ISF. And I was a regular at the ISF as a teenager (when I could ride my bike there and still get in for free)… Write? Read? Write? Read? Read.

So now here I am, say two-thirds of the way through. I really need to do this thing justice (I tell you, I won’t), so here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll write a post for each essay. You’re under no obligation to read any of them. And I’ll spread it out, so my posts aren’t dominating what’s really Patrick’s blog.

There. Decision made. Post complete. Good. Now I’d better start working on some drafts….

This is the first post in a series.