David Wallace - Both Flesh and Not - Essays

The smart thing to say, I think, is that the way out of this bind is to work your way somehow back to your original motivation: fun. And, if you can find your way back to the fun, you will find that the hideously unfortunate double bind of the late vain period turns out really to have been good luck for you. Because the fun you work back to has been transfigured by the unpleasantness of vanity and fear, an unpleasantness you’re now so anxious to avoid that the fun you rediscover is a way fuller and more large-hearted kind of fun. It has something to do with Work as Play. Or with the discovery that disciplined fun is more fun than impulsive or hedonistic fun. Or with figuring out that not all paradoxes have to be paralyzing. Under fun’s new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don’t want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel. Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure you will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.

The fact that you can now sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you'd first used writing to avoid or disguise is another paradox, but this one isn't any kind of bind at all. What it is is a gift, a kind of miracle, and compared to it the rewards of strangers' affection is as dust, lint.

— 1998

isochronal—equal in duration, taking same amount of time isomer—two molecules of same element but w/different arrangement of atoms isotropic—identical in all directions; invariant w/respect to direction; isotrope, isotropy jakes—latrine or privy jape—joke, make sport of journal—the part of a machine shaft or axle supported by a bearing keep(n.) — jail; stronghold of castle (he watched from the keep of the tree) keloid—a red raised scar from an injury kepi—French military cap w/flat circular top and a visor: classic FFL hat, Casablanca , etc. kerf—a groove or notch made by a cutting tool like an axe or saw kidskin—leather made from goat kill(n.) — Northern, Dutch term for a creek; Southern equivalent is “run” laciniate—fringed laconic—terse, of few words ladder(v.) — to run as a stocking does lamelliform—having the form of a thin plate lamina—thin sheet, plate, or layer laparoscopy—using laparoscope (slender, tubular pelvic endoscope) to treat endometriosis lapstrake(adj.) — nautical, “clinker-built”(?) last(n.) — mold shaped like foot used by cobbler lath—thin strips of wood in rows as substructure for plaster, shingles, tile lavabo—ritual of washing hands by priest before Eucharist lavation—washing lee(n.) — place sheltered from wind; side of ship away from wind legato—music: in a smooth, even style leptosome—frail, skinny person Levant—countries bordering eastern Mediterranean from Turkey to Egypt; Levantine levator—surgical instrument for raising depressed parts of a fractured skull; in anatomy, a muscle that raises a body part leveret—a hare less than one year old limbus—a distinctive border or edge, e.g., junction of cornea and sclera of eyeball limen—the threshold of a physiological or psychological response limnetic—of or occurring in the deeper parts of lakes or ponds limnology—study of lakes linstock—long forked stick for holding match… used to light cannons linuron—herbicide to kill weeds littoral—of or on a shore lobation—being lobed; a structure resembling a lobe (i.e., a rounded projection) loblolly—Southern for mud hole or mire lorgnette—old-fashioned eye-glasses or opera glasses with a short handle lowboy—towing device w/wheels and bed for hauling stuff behind vehicle lowery(adj.) — cloudy, overcast luteous—moderate greenish yellow luxate—to put out of joint, dislocate luxe(n.) — condition of gross luxury, a luxury macle—a dark spot or discoloration in a crystal malediction—curse malocclusion—faulty contact between upper & lower teeth when jaw is closed malpais—bad country, badlands, desert (? check before using) Maltese cross—four arrow heads joined at point; looks like ragged K lilantear maquillage—heavy theatrical makeup marcasite—ornament of pyrite marplot—stupid meddler who interferes with undertaking matrix—womb; a surrounding environment or container in which something originates mattock—digging tool that looks like flat-bladed hammer maugre—in spite of, notwithstanding

Gass’s first novel, and his least avant-gardeish, and his best. Basically a religious book. Very sad. Contains the immortal line “The body of Our Saviour shat but Our Saviour shat not.” Bleak but gorgeous, like light through ice.

This won some big prize or other when it first came out, but today nobody seems to remember it. Steps gets called a novel but it is really a collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that’s like nothing else anywhere ever. Only Kafka’s fragments get anywhere close to where Kosinski goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined.

This was Johnson’s first fiction after the horripilative lyric poetry of The Incognito Lounge. Even cult fans of Jesus’ Son often haven’t heard of Angels . It’s sort of Jesus’ Son ’s counterpoint, a novel-length odyssey of mopes and scrotes and their brutal redemptions. A totally American book, it’s also got great prose, truly great, some of the ’80s’ best; e.g., lines like “All around them men drank alone, staring out of their faces.”

Don’t even ask.

W’s M is a dramatic rendering of what it would be like to live in the sort of universe described by logical atomism. A monologue, formally very odd, mostly one-sentence ¶s. Tied with Omensetter’s Luck for the all-time best U.S. book about human loneliness. These wouldn’t constitute ringing endorsements if they didn’t happen all to be simultaneously true — i.e., that a novel this abstract and erudite and avant-garde could also be so moving makes Wittgenstein’s Mistress pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.