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i’ve got me a case of the howling fantods
by mg at 05:40 PM on August 07, 2002
I wanted to warn you now that you are all in for a world of shit. The next couple weeks around here are going to be painful to read.
No, its not some existential crisis I’m trying to work out in front of you all. I don’t think I’m slowly turning into a giant bug and as a result the writing here will swiftly shift from my normal elegant prose into a series of “kmjkjn” and “dfxsl,kdxvc” and “iower4sexd ns9”as I slump my body, now covered in a chitinous exoskeleton, against the keyboard in vain attempts to express myself.
No, it’s definitely not that.
But it’s damn close.
The real reason I say you are in a world of shit is that I am in the middle of reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest, from my short time with the novel, can best be described as what would happen to Salinger’s Glass Family, if the rest of the story was told by William S. Burroughs.
But, seriously, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. The actual story of the story is of no concern to this story. What is of concern, and believe me, you should all be stunningly concerned, is Wallace’s writing style.
If you’ve never noticed (but I hope you have), I’ve got kind of a unique writing style. It is this weird combination of formal and informal that seems really indicative of the type of personality who got a degree in technical writing but uses the things he learned to mostly write boob and scatological jokes. Which sort of makes sense considering I got a degree in Technical writing and do make quite a few boob and scatological jokes.
I don’t really know Wallace’s biography, but I’m guessing from his prose that he has a degree in Technical writing (or something worse, like Rhetoric), and makes a lot of boob and scatological jokes. He just has this way about his words that make it pretty obvious that he knows the rules, god damnit, and that’s why he’s breaking them. You know?
Any way, as much as I am the way I am with my prose, Foster is ten times more so. Perhaps it only seems that way because, though I am 160 pages into Infinite Jest I am still got 900+ pages to go, including nearly 100 pages of footnotes. To a novel. Footnotes.
Foster has a style that isn’t for everyone. I’d venture to say it isn’t for most people. As much as even I’m digging on David Foster Wallace right now, I imagine even I might get sick of him somewhere around page 753, especially if I find myself constantly flipping back and forth between narrative and sometimes painfully parenthetical footnotes and errata.
To tell the truth, my writing style annoys me often. I wish I could be formally formal, or informally formal. But I’m stuck being formally informal. Or is it informally formal? Regardless, I annoy myself sometimes and I imagine I annoy others sometimes.
So, Foster’s got a similar writing style, it’ll take me about a month more to get all the way through the novel (which has 100 pages of footnotes. Did I mention the footnotes?), and I’ve got this habit of falling into the same vocal patterns as those around me. Take all those facts together, stir them together on this here website, and I’ve set the stage for some potentially irritating prose.
And I just wanted to warn you.
comments (8)
EVERYONE thinks they have a unique writing style that combines formal and informal in ways that have never been done before. This is especially true of "bloggers."
by D00d at August 7, 2002 10:20 PM
No no no no no. If I gave the impression that I thought I was unique in a good way, man am I sorry, because that certainly wasn't my intention. I just meant that my writing does exhibit a unique voice – I’ve written things anonymously for other websites and had people know it was me – and is an inappropriate mixture of poor grammar, anachronistic word choice and weird parenthetical references that only someone who’s shared brain space with me could understand.
For example, when I was back in school and writing critiques of Marshal McLuhan's Global Village Theory I'd throw in stupid and unseemly jokes. Or how when I wrote a Photoshop manual for the woefully computer-illiterate students from the College of Education I added all these personal stories that I'm amazed made it through to the final draft. And in informal situations, like this silly little website or emails to friends, I still use that stilted language of Academia.
But, I’m no David Foster Wallace. I’m not even Bananas Foster.
by mg at August 7, 2002 11:59 PM
If you were Bananas Foster, I'd have someone airmail you to me. aaahhhhhhhhhhg bananas foster.... DOH!
On another note, Infinite Jest nearly killed 2 good friends of mine, so beware! Beware!!
by Linz at August 8, 2002 9:06 AM
Oh deary, I could come up with so many jokes about sending you my banana, and whatnot, which I'll just email you to avoid publicly embarassing myself.
RE: Infinite Jest, how'd it almost kill two of your friends? Did it fall on them or something?
by mg at August 8, 2002 12:51 PM
Obvious Advice: never begin reading a book which has a title beginning with "Infinite."
by snaggle at August 8, 2002 2:10 PM
*waits impatiently for banana email*
by Linz at August 8, 2002 2:54 PM
Did you finish the book? What did you think? After reading the whole damn thing I discovered that the joke was on the reader, that after slogging through decent humor and some really disgusting passages, that there is no reward to finishing the book. You can stop anywhere (like where it gets disgusting) and not be any less informed about the plot. I guess that ties in to the "infinite" part. Bah.
by Sean at August 26, 2003 10:04 AM
I don't know, I think the reward was that it was just really entertaining. Does a plot have to wrap up to be entertaining?
by Linz at August 26, 2003 10:50 AM