The David Foster Wallace Experience

My purpose in grabbing "Consider the Lobster, And Other Essays" off the sale rack was to see if I'd be into this whole thing and willing to tackle "Infinite Jest" (a considerable investment) at some point in the near future.  Thanks to snippets of hearsay, I'd always been intimidated by Foster Wallace's writing and presumed it was exceedingly cerebral, etc etc.  But he's actually funny!  See:

This is probably the place for your SNOOT reviewer openly to concede that a certain number of traditional prescriptive rules really are stupid and the people who insist on them ... are that very most contemptible and dangerous kind of SNOOT, the SNOOT Who Is Wrong.
(p.100, Authority and American Usage)

Though the above-cited funniness is buried in the midst of one of the denser essays.  There were two particularly brilliant essays:  "Up, Simba" and "Host" that I will enthusiastically endorse to anyone who will listen to me.

In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.
(p.187, Up, Simba)

... The single biggest reason why left-wing talk radio experiments ... are not likely to succeed, at least not on a national level, is that their potential audience is just not dissatisfied enough with today's mainstream news sources to feel that they have to patronize a special type of media to get the unbiased truth.
(p.316, Host)

It's these moments of  'WHY, YES!' clarity, combined with weird humor and amazing linguistic gymnastics ("Dostoevskynalia") that made me fall in love with David Foster Wallace.  And he writes like this about everything!  Lobsters, Kafka, 9/11, the dictionary, porn, whatever!  The total high of gleefully connecting with a new author is countered in this case with the fact that he's dead now and I missed all his book talks and I really feel that no one else is currently writing like this.  Some parts of Dave Eggers, Franzen at the end of "The Corrections" maybe, and definitely not Jonathan Safran Foer.

Well.  Looking forward to settling in with "Infinite Jest" at least.