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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments |  | Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Back Bay Books
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $7.66
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Seller: a1books
Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 5152
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 0316925284
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9780316925280
ASIN: 0316925284
Publication Date: February 2, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
David Foster Wallace made quite a splash in 1996 with his massive novel, Infinite Jest. Now he's back with a collection of essays entitled A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. In addition to a razor-sharp writing style, Wallace has a mercurial mind that lights on many subjects. His seven essays travel from a state fair in Illinois to a cruise ship in the Caribbean, explore how television affects literature and what makes film auteur David Lynch tick, and deconstruct deconstructionism and find the intersection between tornadoes and tennis. These eclectic interests are enhanced by an eye (and nose) for detail: "I have seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled what suntan lotion smells like spread over 21,000 pounds of hot flesh . . ." It's evident that Wallace revels in both the life of the mind and the peculiarities of his fellows; in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again he celebrates both.
Product Description
This exuberantly praised--and uproariously funny--first collection of nonfiction pieces by one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time--the author of "Infinite Jest"--"reconfirms Mr. Wallace's stature as one of his generation's preeminent talents" ("New York Times") 5-city author tour. Print ads .
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 98
This man was (was, unfortunately) very smart and funny April 19, 2009
Tanner Griffins (Québec)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
DFW has a peculiar way of writing, with incomprehensible abbreviations and footnotes that are not really footnotes but mini-essays within essays. Every observations he makes is extremely accurate, often piss-in-your-pants funny and very well couched. His sentences often run for a whole paragraph and will send you to your dictionary many times over. Sometimes you'll have to make out the words for yourself as they are not in the dictionary and were ''collaged'' together by DFW.
The title essay, `A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' is one of the best humour piece I've ever read. That one alone was worth the price of the book, as people say (and I say it too) for its accurate social observation and self-deprecating humour. In this essay, David Foster Wallace was delightfully neurotic; the snotty intellectual, semi-agoraphobic, sensitive to imbeciles, hyper self-conscious and socially aware undercover writer who goes on a cruise for the wealthy and, we assume, superficial people. I couldn't stop laughing every single page, even in the subway. Another piece tells of DFW visiting the Illinois State Fair. Now he is slightly more in his element because he is back to the area in which he grew up but just as snotty and funny as in the title essay.
Other pieces discuss David Lynch's work using tidbits of trivia and personal observation of one of his movie set (did you know Lynch pisses in the open air all the time?), an analysis of self-referential TV and fiction in the age before internet and two essays on his experience of learning tennis in windy Illinois and of watching a tennis competition in Montreal, my hometown, where I realized that his observation that we call pop `gazeous beverage' in French is right on but sounds weird in English.
You might not be interested in all essays (the ones on tennis left me rather indifferent) as they are widely varied journalistic pieces that were put together for this book but, surely, at least two will grab your attention even if you don't know the last things about raising pigs in Illinois. Also, for those who want to tackle Infinite Jest, this will give you an idea of DFW's style before you commit to the 1000 pages brick. So, 5 stars for the title piece but 4 stars for the whole thing.
David Foster Wallace, I hope you are happier where you are now. Too bad you are gone.
 Four stars, we should all be madam psychosis for this guy February 27, 2009
Lynne (Santa Barbara CA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I already new I loved this author (DFW) I bought this for a gift this time. He's the best author of his generation and is better than Pynchon who is of the similar style, but a little raunchy for my taste, Wallace had beautiful big glowing standards without being superior with any high minded morality and never preaches and doesn't go over the top with all the dark black empathetic self pitying sentimentality (like Denis Jonson who gets a little gooey, which there is nothing wrong with and he was my favorite next to Pynchon until DFW) but DFW still flagrantly enjoys all the narcissism, makes you feel like narcissism is almost the only thing holding society together, which I guess that's my darkest fantasy. The best novel to start with with Wallace is Broom of the System if you enjoy novels. I was completely hooked and read everything he did after that. Infinite Jest is a work without equal in scope and style and I can't be glowing enough about this guy. It's not just the humor, which I'm a complete sucker for, but that seems secondary, it's just everything about him. I keep looking around for anyone of his caliber alive or dead and can't find anyone. I saw him with a panel of other authors on Charlie Rose and I think he was with the guy who did Everything is Illuminated which I loved but he did rip off Saul Bellow a little, but the Everything is Illuminated guy is better, I thought. No one comes close to Wallace though, he did just what he set out to do with the caviar for the average reader and was just a brilliant success. I've gone back to Samuel Becket in despair, which is comfortable but I need something else. I've tried Cioran but that's too much antiquated thinking, but I like the fervent rashness of Cioran I just prefer someone a little more cerebral. I wish Wallace just kept ignoring how bad life sucks and discovered how relentless pessimism really can save us all if he were just alive at least all his fans could be giggling at all this negativity.
some great essays from a brilliant mind December 23, 2008
Todd B. Kashdan
There are 3 fantastic essays in here:
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"
"Getting Away from Being Pretty Much Away from It All"
and the essay on Michael Joyce.
Its extremely sad to see such a talented writer die young. This is a good book but not great only because there are a few doozies in here. Definitely, definitely read the three chapters above for a hilarious look at cruise lines, an anthropological study of "white trash" at the Illinois State Fair, and a behind the scenes look at tennis stars who never hit the spotlight. Dead on.
Who should read Wallace? December 15, 2008
Jeffrey C. Swenson (Garrettsville, OH USA)
To whom do you recommend David Foster Wallace's _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again?_ Literary theory geeks? There's only one short essay for them, "Greatly Exaggerated," and it reeks of mid-`90s deconstruction fervor. Tennis players? Perhaps, though in "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" Wallace writes about tennis with the same bludgeoning style he claims to play with. Midwesterners? Um, no. The flat, hot, ignorant and obese Midwestern state fair Wallace describes in "Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Being Away from It All" is a distortion of the kitsch-riddled, cheese-curd soaked fair I loved as a kid. Still, the title essay of this collection, a simultaneously operatic and encyclopedic exploration of Wallace's experience on a vacation cruise, is so good as to make me want to recommend this collection to everyone from meth addicts to lapsed Catholics. Read it, and it will change your view of Love Boat, suction toilets, and binge eating forever.
 If we remember David Foster Wallace, it won't be for this December 10, 2008
Colm Flynn (Seattle)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I am reading, or rather trying to read, this collection for my book club, and I'm not enjoying it in the slightest. I knew little of David Foster Wallace before I heard of his suicide. I was excited to read something by a writer so highly regarded, but so far I am very disappointed. It's unkind to criticise the man so soon after his death, so I'll limit my remarks to this early collection of, frankly, immature writing.
Four essays in, and I still can't see much of a point to any of this. Wallace wrote all these essays in the early to mid-1990s, but they already seem very dated. The chosen subjects are, in the main, deliberately slight - TV, youth tennis, pop culture. With a collection of free-form commentary like this, Wallace invites comparison to other writers such as: Hunter S. Thompson; PJ O'Rourke; Gore Vidal; and from a somewhat earlier era, George Orwell (just to pick four that I'm familiar with). He compares poorly to all.
Wallace is less ambitious than any of those writers. He avoids tackling BIG subjects like politics directly. But Orwell, for instance, could write about making a cup of tea, or his favorite pub, and turn out a classic. Wallace by comparison is too jaundiced - his essays offer only a weary air of resignation. His prose is capable, but not nearly limpid or entertaining enough by itself to sustain my interest throughout these generally very long pieces.
It reads like the work of a talented young man, who was still trying to find his voice as a writer, and who did not, at this point in his life, have anything particularly interesting to say.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 98
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