What To Read Instead #4: Wallace vs. Pratchett + Waugh + Allende -- Garbo

Still glad to be doing this series of shorter blog posts. Also glad I am able to do this particular book comparison instead of a potential Facebook rant, which in turn will make my Facebook friends glad, I'm pretty sure. 

My personal reading preferences sometimes veer toward the dark. Sometimes very dark. Morbid even. I'll seek out and read work by an author who is feeling discouraged, cynical, bitter, flecked all over by bits of despair. But I'm not a fan of nihilism and I don't like writers being all free and easy with the gift of life. I can't stand the whole "You might as well be dead as alive" school of writing. There's a difference between dark fiction and the "it's all crap" stuff.

 

Book to Skip:  Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. 

Why to skip:

Wallace's outlook is so very jaded. The author's formal diagnosis was depression, but reports of his erratic behavior make me wonder if Wallace perhaps had bipolar disorder. Nothing that there's anything wrong with that, as they used to say on "Seinfeld." Of course I'm not saying a bipolar person can't be a great writer. This post is is less about the author than about his champions. I'm really talking about responses of readers, critics, and reviewers. and I'm saying it's easy to conflate mania with insightful genius, and severe bouts of depression with a profound understanding of life's basic terribleness.   

I think it's important to say that, for many years, Wallace was subject to suicidal ideation. Sadly for him,  he'd been taken off and put back on his meds, and ten or fifteen years ago, medical science didn't yet realize what drastic consequences those adjustments could have. People can suddenly be plunged into a brain-chemical-induced abyss;. Look at what happened to Robin Williams. David Foster Wallace took his own life in 2008, at age 46. 

Just to reiterate, I'm truly not saying to avoid Infinite Jest (or Wallace's other work) because the author killed himself. Poe effectively did the same thing with drugs and alcohol, and I think Poe's work is amazing. But the reader who wishes to maintain good mental health must be constantly aware, while plowing through Infinite Jest, that they are taking on the worldview of someone tormented by constant urges toward self-destruction. And I do feel angry that mentors urge Wallace's work on young adults who are adjusting to the harshness and difficulty of daily life because life is hard. 

I have trouble with not just the author, but this specific book. Infinite Jest is simply much too long, with meandering text, an unfocused storyline, and jolts of And Now for Something Completely Different. A Times review ( for another of Wallace's books) described this writing style as "embracing discontinuity."

Furthermore (you knew there would be a "furthermore"), the whole pages-and-pages-of-endnotes thing is just self-indulgence, in my opinion. Parts of the book are funny as hell;, I'll give you that. The idea of corporations buying a calendar year and renaming it for their products, as though shared time was a brand-named athletic stadium, is hilarious. But are the funny parts enough to make this monster of a book readable? Not sure they are. 

The graphic above really ought to say "Read these instead," because I've got a small pile of books here to substitute for the Wallace selection.

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Mort, Reaper Man, Hogfather, and Soul Music, all by Terry Pratchett

Why read these?

Well, you want magical realism, discontinuity, and general weirdness? The House of the Spirits has all that and it's deliberate and concise. 

Seeking a jaded point of view? Try Evelyn Waugh.  English guy comes to the States, and gets a load of Forest Lawn and elaborate pet cemeteries in L.A.

And Terry Pratchett wrote an entire series of comic novels with Death as the main character. 

And to be blunt, I feel that Pratchett was a better person than Wallace, who grew up comfortably middle-class in a college town, and who got all kinds of appreciation for his work, teaching jobs, and a MacArthur grant. He also, after making elaborate preparations, hung himself inside the house so his wife would find his body. 

Pratchett grew up working class, had a day job working in the energy industry, and wrote his way into becoming one of Britain's most popular authors. Then, at age 59, he had an episode misdiagnosed as a stroke, but later revealed to be early-onset Alzheimer's. He lived eight years longer, and his illness forced him to adapt to an inability to type. At times, Pratchett dictated his manuscripts, and at other times he used speech-to-text technology. As his illness progressed, Pratchett took steps to advocate for his right to end his own life before unbearable suffering set in. But the symptoms stopped worsening and Pratchett decided to tough things out and he kept writing until Alzheimer's took him at age 67. 

I started this post saying that I like dark fiction, and I really do. Dark films as well. But I prefer book and movies which depict both the grim and the beautiful. The image at the top today is of course from "Harold and Maude." In the "Odorifics" scene, Maude is encouraging Harold to breathe in the essence of a snowy day in New York City. Harold, who began the movie with a hanging-himself stunt to get his socialite mother's attention, begins to breathe in a bit of -- I started to say "life's goodness," but of course it's city air. But air is good. Breathing is good.

READING TIME COMPARISON

Infinite Jest    33 hours

The House of the Spirits + The Loved One + Mort +Reaper Man + Soul Music + Dogfather      34 hours

[Add the last book in Pratchett's Death  series, Thief of Time at a reading time of 7 hours, for 41 hours total.]

Disclaimer:  I suggest skipping books, but there's always a substitute offering in these posts. I never suggest skipping a book and playing more video games or spending more time doomscrolling. And I am not banning, condemning, harming, or trashing the books I recommend skipping. There's nothing wrong with the titles I suggest skipping; it's just a matter of making choices with limited time to read in a busy, busy world.