Dispatches from the Culture War
A quick update to my pining legions.
The Reader is on a roll. Seventeen books read since Christmas, and almost every one of them a real corker. Two more underway, plus a fourth sojourn through Infinite Jest.1Somebody come pull me out if you don’t hear from me for a while. I’ve tied a rope around my waist just in case. Here’s a quick consumer guide to fuel your bibliophilistic indulgence.
References
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
We’ve been on a roll here in the vineyard. So far this year, the Writer has read 18 books1Perhaps explaining the paucity of postings here!, many of them worthy of considered comment. But you’re stuck with me. Alas. Here’s the first of a series of chin-strokers inspired by the readings.
References
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
– Rogers/Hammerstein
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there. – Bob Dylan
I recently ordered the book pictured above, a in-depth investigation of how the radical right has gained power over the past 30 years. Alongside the essential trilogy by Rick Perlstein (reviewed favorably by an obscure blogger here), Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right fill in the blanks on one of the pressing questions of our time:
Sept 12 – David Foster Wallace died 7 years ago today. Maybe died isn’t the right word, though it’s at least partly true. He killed himself; took his own life. This fact still makes me sad and angry and scared all at once.
The best way to counter these feelings is to read some of his work.1If for no other reason than that his work is the only part of him that we have any legitimate claim to. Angry at the guy? Shit. I owe him. His essay from the January, 1996, issue of Harper’s, which became the title piece from his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, is the single funniest and most “readable”2Readable here connoting ‘something not too weird or difficult’. In fact, everything I’ve read by DFW – which is pretty much everything that’s been published plus a glimpse of a few of his notebooks at the Whitney Biennial – is terrifically readable and worth every second it takes to look up unusual words, refer to yet another footnote, or just to re-read certain sentences over and over because they are just too wonderful to take in at once. piece in his entire output. I’ve just finished it for the eleventieth time and it’s got me hungry for more. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” is up next,and it’s sort of an essential piece for anyone interested in culture and the challenge of retaining our humanity amidst a dazzling array of shiny objects.
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