Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again is much more than a book about cruises. It is a book about the state of the world.
Review of Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again
David Foster Wallace is the writer who hanged himself. Yeah, the one with the suicide, the headscarf, the friend of Jonathan Franken, that of “post-postmodernism” (said Leonard Lopate, in a highly recommended interview from 1996 for the publication of infinite joke, title that does not (and could well) refer to the endless footnotes of the author (as well as that tendency to put parentheses within parentheses that refer to more footnotes and hopefully an asterisk followed by its corresponding sub-asterisk)) , the legions of fans, the pynchon II…you know, all those impossible to dribble labels that one finds in all text about DFW, the fuss of data and more echoed data.
What is the point of the long four-column articles of a newspaper, or those of several sheets of Sunday supplements or already, in the extreme, those of your good bunch of pages of the The New Yorker? And a book? war dispatchesat least it's about vietnam but… a 154-page chronicle about what a guy (who didn't study journalism) experienced on board a luxury cruise ship? On the first sheet, DFW collects the highlights of the seven-night journey, making it clear to the reader that, more than a mere collection and digestion of data, this report is going to tell us a story. Non-fiction literature:
“I have noticed the smell of suntan lotion spread over ten thousand kilos of hot meat (…) I have seen five hundred posh Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have…” (p. 7) –
Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again
Foster Wallace's unique style
It happens in stories Short interviews with repulsive men and also in his novel The system broom: the one with the handkerchief is gradually sneaking your film with a narration that apparently begins as free of surprises (eccentricities, flashes) as that of any other report by any journalist, and that little by little is colored by that which is so precious and complicated to achieve, that little flavor that is so crucial (to distinguish those who are worth those that are not) that we call STYLE.
Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again It's a festival of style. The own and non-transferable world of a writer, the knack of drawing new focuses and reflections from the keyboard, scenes so bright and realistic that you think are within your reach; that could have occurred to you (ja) to you; join word with word, like everyone else, until captivating you and, in case you also dedicate yourself to lyrics, make you whisper a "what a bastard", before turning the page and continuing the captivity to which you have voluntarily decided to submit, while the omelette is already burnt, the kid is bawling for a new diaper and you just want to keep knowing about that damned 7NC mega cruiser you didn't even know existed before the oil in the pan was hot.
Foster Wallace goes on a cruise
Although the narration is diachronic, DFW begins by commenting on the information brochures and his own phobias. maritime-shark with some splashes-preview of what the reader will find from the fifth chapter, page 42, when places us in the boarding queue and the structure of the story becomes strictly chronological. As he reads the piece of paper he says:
“I don't think it's an accident that the 7NC Luxury Cruises attract mostly older people. I'm not saying decrepit, but especially people over fifty, for whom their own mortality is already an abstraction. Most of the bodies exposed during the day on the Nadir deck were in various stages of disintegration.” (Page 17)
Personalism is total, and this is very important. Being a non-fiction text, the author really plays it by adding so much humor and protagonism to his person, coming to touch the border between journalism Oenology and literature. With a mix of irony, humor and criminal analysis, DFW experiences different phases that go from initial neurotic apathy and skepticism to the false and fictitious (I hope) acceptance of abandoning that status of only-passenger-who-knows-the-embarrassing-circus to become one more of the party.
It is because of extracts like this one that follows that we say that Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again With the tips of his fingers, he almost touches the ceiling that separates information from invention...
"By now I've become a bit of a 7NC Cruises snob, and whenever someone mentions Carnival or Princess in my presence I notice my face assume the same look of elegant disgust as Trudy and Esther." (p. 94)
Something Supposedly Funny I'll Never Do Again and the Limits of Humor in Journalism
It is understood that it is nothing more than a resource, which DFW then stretches even further to, for example, teach us that even in luxury there are social scales. Regarding his own cruise, what was at first a waste of "stress produced by care so extravagant that it affects your head" it is normalized and even dwarfed to the point of being insufficient when they dock in a port along with other higher standing cruise ships:
“What I mean is that, standing here next to Captain Video, I am beginning to feel a greedy and almost lecherous envy of the Dreamward. I imagine that its interior is cleaner than ours, larger, more luxurious (...) that the ship's Gift Shop is less expensive, its casino less depressing, its shows less seedy and its chocolates on the pillows bigger. (p. 96)
The crux of the report Something supposedly fun that I'll never do again very Pantomime Fill: la boviscopophobia, the fear of being seen as a cow (herd, cattle). Through the collection of real dialogues from the passage, conversations with workers and his own caricature of his person, DFW manages to detail absolutely the entire experience and at the same time criticize it; tell us a story and make fun of the way of thinking and acting of those capable of paying $3.000 in exchange for something that he considers an unpleasant work obligation.
The potential luxury cruise client will not change their plans after reading this book. It's not made for him. More than portraying the experience of traveling on a ship with restaurants and basketball courts, what is portrayed is us, society, its mechanisms and, in this case, the machinery of one of the most popular vacation options in the world.
David Foster Wallace, Something supposedly fun that I will never do again
Translation of Javier Calvo
Depocket, Barcelona 2010
160 pages | 7 euros