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Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace (2010)

by David Lipsky(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

030759243X (ISBN13: 9780307592439)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Broadway

review 1: Nothing in life will gain a person more admiration and respect as much as his death. In the days and weeks following the death of a well-known public figure, it seems nearly impossible to get any real perspective of what the person was actually like on a day-to-day basis. What gets glossed over in most posthumous accounts of a famous person is the fact that despite their accomplishments, most of their lives are like anyone else's: long stretches of the banal punctuated by moments of success and recognition. This is what sets David Lipsky's account of his time spent with David Foster Wallace apart from your garden variety retrospective look at an accomplished person's life.Lipsky, then a writer for Rolling Stone, spent five days with Wallace - every waking moment of them - ... moreduring the height of Wallace's fame. The book really is nothing more than a set of transcribed conversations that Lipsky has with Wallace during the last week of his book tour for Infinite Jest. We get to follow Lipsky and Wallace through their week together, listening to their tobacco and junk-food fueled conversations in restaurants, taxis, planes, hotel rooms, rental cars, and even Wallace's home.What follows is an honest, true to life account of what Wallace was actually like. Lipsky does a masterful job of asking Wallace some questions and guiding the conversation and then getting out of the way to let him talk. This book is Wallace in his own words and he takes full advantage of the opportunity, speaking lucidly and at length on a variety of topics in which he has authority. The conversation over the course of the five days twists and turns, as Wallace talks about the craft and business of writing, movies, his depression, education, art, entertainment and America's relationship with it (the core theme of Infinite Jest), and other assorted topics.Wallace, in speaking to Lipsky, is rarely as explanatory as much he is thought-provoking, and that's where the gems are in this book. When he is talking about Infinite Jest and it's central theme - our relationship with entertainment - he is at his most poignant. The analogy that Wallace uses to explain our relationship to entertainment is that of candy to our diet. When 75% of your calories come from candy, you get the sensation of having eaten something without actually getting the necessary nourishment your body needs to be healthy. Entertainment, then, is candy for the mind.Unlike some more rabid entertainment/media critics, Wallace doesn't endlessly wail about the pernicious effect that it can have on our minds. He knows that just like it's okay to have candy once in a while, it's okay to enjoy passive entertainment in front of the TV every now and again. Mindless entertainment is fine in moderation, but when it comes to entertainment, particularly on TV, moderation is a rarity.So why can't we stop watching TV? That's the big question that Wallace wrestles with in Infinite Jest and in his conversations with Lipsky. "...there's something about the machinery of our relationship to it that makes low doses - we don't stop at low doses...it's about the questions of why am I watching so much s***? It's not about the s***, it's about me." For Wallace, it isn't enough to say entertainment is bad. It's a two-way relationship. What is it about us that makes us so susceptible to long bouts of passive consumption? How does that effect us? How can we put a limit to our passive consumption?Wallace's musings on entertainment, what art can do for us, and his experiences as a writer are similarly valuable, and make up the other best parts of the book. Even getting a chance to listen in on more mundane parts of his life, such as ordering at a Denny's or reading the safety pamphlets on the airplane are enjoyable, reflecting the more playful side of Wallace.Unfortunately, as the book is basically an unvarnished transcription of everything Lipsky could fit on a tape recorder, there are parts that are just flat out boring. I know that just a few paragraphs ago, I praised this book for presenting Wallace as he actually was whether it was boring or not, but some of the conversation really could have been edited out and the book would be no worse off for it. The reader would be better served skipping some of these more plodding sections of the book, as the good stuff is well worth finding.I would recommend this to people who have at least some exposure to Wallace's work and personality. I can't see someone who isn't already a fan, or at least familiar with Wallace enjoying this very much. From Lipsky's extremely touching afterword, to the conversations and situations we find them in over the course of the book, if you want to see David Foster Wallace as he actually was, David Lipsky's week with him could be a very valuable place to start.
review 2: This book is basically 300 pages of a very bright person thinking out loud. I had many moments where I put the book down and had to pick it back up to marvel at what I'd just read. There are explanations (some of them coy) of themes and characters from Infinite Jest, thoughts on fame and its trappings, and incredible honesty about what it means to be human.None of this is done to romanticize Wallace, his life, or his death. Lipsky is apt to point out the inevitable problem readers of this book face: "Suicide is such a powerful end, it reaches back and scrambles the beginning. It has an event gravity: eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in its direction." True as that may be, nothing can degrade the difficult and essentially banal thoughts that made Wallace one of the most incredible thinkers and writers of his generation. less

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