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bayrayj's review
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
lil_juulnieb's review
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
This book is about me minus the obsession with taxes, but maybe I just have yet to develop one.
grantkramer's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
mattinthebooks's review
3.0
I’ll keep this simple: if you like David Foster Wallace, you’ll love this novella.
The Good stuff: its about fate and what that means. It’s about the individual struggling to voice his experience and communicate that to other people without feeling stupid. Its about the consequences of living nihilistically in action versus in theory. Its about finding what you love and about calling.
Drawbacks: its also about advanced tax law
The Good stuff: its about fate and what that means. It’s about the individual struggling to voice his experience and communicate that to other people without feeling stupid. Its about the consequences of living nihilistically in action versus in theory. Its about finding what you love and about calling.
Drawbacks: its also about advanced tax law
lijennyt's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
adam613's review
5.0
A while back I attempted to start Infinite Jest and after about a hundred pages or so, I succumbed to indifference and impatience and put the book down and will probably never end up reading it. This turn of events left me conflicted in feeling like a failure at one of the biggest tomes of modern literature and also very curious about how I would enjoy DFW in a more palatable size. I am glad to say that I don't see myself as a reading failure and secondly, I purchased a copy of Something To Do With Paying Attention while browsing the McNally Jackson in NYC during our honeymoon.
Wallace walks the line beautifully satirizing post-modernity's emptiness in the life of the unnamed narrator who is coming of age. The protagonist is the prototypical youth of Generation X that many people stereotype as a slacker, or in DFW's narrator's own words, a wastoid. Through a haze of Obetrol and Ritalin, his youthful nihilistic spirit leaves his relations with his family and others unfulfilling all the while trying to stay in school or even to pick a major. Eventually, as many of us, the protagonist stumbles upon a life-changing event. This is the part of the book where DFW's writing really takes off when exploring fate, ambition, and mindfulness, awareness, and accounting.
Like many men, the narrator is self-righteous while being insecure caught up in his existential dread until thankful he finds his place in the work force. How absurd is that? We have to work to live? How did we end up in this horrible kind of predicament? The way DFW shifts seamlessly amongst all sorts of thought-provoking philosophizing in such a short book is nothing less than impressive. Being born myself at the tail end of Gen X, there were many personal and cultural reference points that helped me to really enjoy this book on top of the engaging writing. I saw and connected myself to the narrator and was full engaged, immersed and involved for the entire book. I am very pleased to say that even though I will not get to IJ, there is still plenty of wonderful work by DFW left to explore.
"I'm not sure I even know what to say. To be honest, a good bit of it I don't remember. I don't think my memory works in quite the way it used to. It may be that this kind of work changes you. Even just rote exams. It might actually change your brain. For the most part, it's now almost as if I'm trapped in the present. If I drank, for instance, some Tang, it wouldn't remind me of anything-I'd just taste the Tang."
"I think the truth is that I was the worst kind of nihilist-the kind who isn't even aware he's a nihilist. I was like a piece of paper on the street in the wind, thinking, 'Now I think I'll blow this way, now I think I'll blow that way.' My essential response to everything was 'Whatever.'"
"Everyone I knew and hung out with was a wastoid, and we knew it. It was hip to be ashamed of it, in a strange way. A weird kind of narcissistic despair. Or just to feel directionless and lost-we romanticized it."
"I remember almost none of early childhood, mostly just weird little isolated strobes The more fragmented the memory is, though, the more it seems to feel authentically mine, which is strange. I wonder if anyone feels as though they're the same person they seem to remember. It would probably make them have a nervous breakdown. It probably wouldn't even make any sense. names.
I don't know if this is enough. I don't know what anybody else has told you. Our common word for this kind of nihilist at the time was wastoid."
"But based on my experience during the thing time, most people are always feeling something or adopt some attitude or choosing to pay attention to one one part of something without even knowing we're doing it. We do it automatically, like a heartbeat. Sometimes be sitting there in a room and become aware of how much effort it was to pay attention to just your own heartbeat for more than a minute or so-it's almost as though your heartbeat wants to stay out of awareness, like a rock star avoiding the limelight. But it's there if you can double up and make yourself pay attention. Same with music, too, the doubling was being able to both listen very closely and also to feel whatever emotions the music evoked-because obviously that's why we're into music, that it makes us feel certain things, otherwise it would just be noise-and not only have them, listening, but be aware of them."
"But that analogy sounds too cheap, like a cheap witticism. It's hard to explain, and this is probably more time than I should take to explain it. Nor am I obviously trying to give any pro-drug-abuse message here. But it was important. I like now to think of the Obetrol and other subtypes of speed as more of a kind of signpost or directional sign, pointing to what might be possible if I could become more aware and alive in daily life. In this sense, I think that abusing these drugs was a valuable experience for me, as I was basically so feckless and unfocused during this period that I needed a very clear, blunt type of hint that there was much more to being an alive, responsible, autonomous adult than I had any idea of at the time."
"The ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it's a choice. I'm not the smartest person, but even during that whole pathetic, directionless period, I think that deep down I knew that there was more to my life and to myself than just the ordinary psychological impulses for pleasure and vanity that I let drive me That there were depths to me that were not bullshit or childish but profound, and were not abstract but actually much realer than my clothes or self-image, and that blazed in an almost sacred way-I'm being serious; I'm not just trying to make it sound more dramatic than it was-and that these realest, most profound parts of me involved not drives or appetites but simple attention, awareness, if only I could stay awake off speed."
"Anyhow, it's all just abstract speculation at this point, because I never really talked to either of my parents about how they felt about their adult lives. It's just not the sort of thing that parents sit down and openly discuss with their children, at least not in that era."
"I think the truth is probably that enormous, sudden, dramatic, unexpected, life-changing experiences are not translatable or explainable to anyone else, and this is because they really are unique and particular-though not unique in the way the Christian girl believed. This is because their power isn't just a result of the experience itself, but also of the circumstances in which it hits you, of everything in your previous life-experience which has led up to it and made you exactly who and what you are when the experience hits you. Does that make any sense? It's hard to explain. "
"I don't mean any sort of humanities-type ironic metaphor, but the literal thing he was saying, the simple surface level. I don't know how many times I'd heard this that year while sitting around watching As the World Turns, but I suddenly realized that the announcer was actually saying over and over what I was literally doing. Not only this, but I also realized that I had been told this fact countless times."
"Actually, in hindsight, the substitute have been the first genuine authority figure I ever met, meaning a figure with genuine 'authority' instead of just the power to judge you or squeeze your shoes from their side of the generation gap, and I became aware for the first time that 'authority' was actually something real and authentic, that a real authority was not the same as a friend or someone who cared about you, but nevertheless could be good for you, and that the authority relation was not a 'democratic' or equal one and yet could have value for both sides, both people in the relation. I don't think I'm explain- ing this very well-but it's true that I did feel singled out, spindled on those eyes in a way I neither liked nor didn't, but was certainly aware of. It was a certain kind of power that he exerted and that I was granting him, voluntarily. That respect was not the same as coercion, although it was a kind of power. It was all very strange. I also noticed that now he had his hands behind his back, in something like the 'parade rest' military position."
"Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality-there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth-actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested."
"Part of me was frightened that I'd actually become galvanized and motivated too late and was somehow going to just at the last minute 'miss' some crucial chance to renounce my nihilism and make a meaningful, real-world choice."
"It didn't feel feckless, though it also didn't feel especially romantic or heroic. It was more as if I simply had to make a choice of what was more important."
Wallace walks the line beautifully satirizing post-modernity's emptiness in the life of the unnamed narrator who is coming of age. The protagonist is the prototypical youth of Generation X that many people stereotype as a slacker, or in DFW's narrator's own words, a wastoid. Through a haze of Obetrol and Ritalin, his youthful nihilistic spirit leaves his relations with his family and others unfulfilling all the while trying to stay in school or even to pick a major. Eventually, as many of us, the protagonist stumbles upon a life-changing event. This is the part of the book where DFW's writing really takes off when exploring fate, ambition, and mindfulness, awareness, and accounting.
Like many men, the narrator is self-righteous while being insecure caught up in his existential dread until thankful he finds his place in the work force. How absurd is that? We have to work to live? How did we end up in this horrible kind of predicament? The way DFW shifts seamlessly amongst all sorts of thought-provoking philosophizing in such a short book is nothing less than impressive. Being born myself at the tail end of Gen X, there were many personal and cultural reference points that helped me to really enjoy this book on top of the engaging writing. I saw and connected myself to the narrator and was full engaged, immersed and involved for the entire book. I am very pleased to say that even though I will not get to IJ, there is still plenty of wonderful work by DFW left to explore.
"I'm not sure I even know what to say. To be honest, a good bit of it I don't remember. I don't think my memory works in quite the way it used to. It may be that this kind of work changes you. Even just rote exams. It might actually change your brain. For the most part, it's now almost as if I'm trapped in the present. If I drank, for instance, some Tang, it wouldn't remind me of anything-I'd just taste the Tang."
"I think the truth is that I was the worst kind of nihilist-the kind who isn't even aware he's a nihilist. I was like a piece of paper on the street in the wind, thinking, 'Now I think I'll blow this way, now I think I'll blow that way.' My essential response to everything was 'Whatever.'"
"Everyone I knew and hung out with was a wastoid, and we knew it. It was hip to be ashamed of it, in a strange way. A weird kind of narcissistic despair. Or just to feel directionless and lost-we romanticized it."
"I remember almost none of early childhood, mostly just weird little isolated strobes The more fragmented the memory is, though, the more it seems to feel authentically mine, which is strange. I wonder if anyone feels as though they're the same person they seem to remember. It would probably make them have a nervous breakdown. It probably wouldn't even make any sense. names.
I don't know if this is enough. I don't know what anybody else has told you. Our common word for this kind of nihilist at the time was wastoid."
"But based on my experience during the thing time, most people are always feeling something or adopt some attitude or choosing to pay attention to one one part of something without even knowing we're doing it. We do it automatically, like a heartbeat. Sometimes be sitting there in a room and become aware of how much effort it was to pay attention to just your own heartbeat for more than a minute or so-it's almost as though your heartbeat wants to stay out of awareness, like a rock star avoiding the limelight. But it's there if you can double up and make yourself pay attention. Same with music, too, the doubling was being able to both listen very closely and also to feel whatever emotions the music evoked-because obviously that's why we're into music, that it makes us feel certain things, otherwise it would just be noise-and not only have them, listening, but be aware of them."
"But that analogy sounds too cheap, like a cheap witticism. It's hard to explain, and this is probably more time than I should take to explain it. Nor am I obviously trying to give any pro-drug-abuse message here. But it was important. I like now to think of the Obetrol and other subtypes of speed as more of a kind of signpost or directional sign, pointing to what might be possible if I could become more aware and alive in daily life. In this sense, I think that abusing these drugs was a valuable experience for me, as I was basically so feckless and unfocused during this period that I needed a very clear, blunt type of hint that there was much more to being an alive, responsible, autonomous adult than I had any idea of at the time."
"The ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it's a choice. I'm not the smartest person, but even during that whole pathetic, directionless period, I think that deep down I knew that there was more to my life and to myself than just the ordinary psychological impulses for pleasure and vanity that I let drive me That there were depths to me that were not bullshit or childish but profound, and were not abstract but actually much realer than my clothes or self-image, and that blazed in an almost sacred way-I'm being serious; I'm not just trying to make it sound more dramatic than it was-and that these realest, most profound parts of me involved not drives or appetites but simple attention, awareness, if only I could stay awake off speed."
"Anyhow, it's all just abstract speculation at this point, because I never really talked to either of my parents about how they felt about their adult lives. It's just not the sort of thing that parents sit down and openly discuss with their children, at least not in that era."
"I think the truth is probably that enormous, sudden, dramatic, unexpected, life-changing experiences are not translatable or explainable to anyone else, and this is because they really are unique and particular-though not unique in the way the Christian girl believed. This is because their power isn't just a result of the experience itself, but also of the circumstances in which it hits you, of everything in your previous life-experience which has led up to it and made you exactly who and what you are when the experience hits you. Does that make any sense? It's hard to explain. "
"I don't mean any sort of humanities-type ironic metaphor, but the literal thing he was saying, the simple surface level. I don't know how many times I'd heard this that year while sitting around watching As the World Turns, but I suddenly realized that the announcer was actually saying over and over what I was literally doing. Not only this, but I also realized that I had been told this fact countless times."
"Actually, in hindsight, the substitute have been the first genuine authority figure I ever met, meaning a figure with genuine 'authority' instead of just the power to judge you or squeeze your shoes from their side of the generation gap, and I became aware for the first time that 'authority' was actually something real and authentic, that a real authority was not the same as a friend or someone who cared about you, but nevertheless could be good for you, and that the authority relation was not a 'democratic' or equal one and yet could have value for both sides, both people in the relation. I don't think I'm explain- ing this very well-but it's true that I did feel singled out, spindled on those eyes in a way I neither liked nor didn't, but was certainly aware of. It was a certain kind of power that he exerted and that I was granting him, voluntarily. That respect was not the same as coercion, although it was a kind of power. It was all very strange. I also noticed that now he had his hands behind his back, in something like the 'parade rest' military position."
"Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality-there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth-actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested."
"Part of me was frightened that I'd actually become galvanized and motivated too late and was somehow going to just at the last minute 'miss' some crucial chance to renounce my nihilism and make a meaningful, real-world choice."
"It didn't feel feckless, though it also didn't feel especially romantic or heroic. It was more as if I simply had to make a choice of what was more important."