Reviews

Uma Coisa Supostamente Divertida que Nunca Mais vou Fazer by David Foster Wallace

Only show reviews with written explanations

guppyur's review against another edition

4.0

I've wanted to read David Foster Wallace for a while now, ever since I read a course syllabus he wrote in a set of famous authors' essays posted in... Slate? The Atlantic? Something like that. He's most famous for Infinite Jest, of course, but I'm a little intimidated by that. I finally found someone who's actually read him and asked how to get started. They recommended either Infinite Jest (if I wanted fiction) or this (if I didn't).

This is a collection of seven essays, widely varied in topic and tone. Included, among others, are some experiential travelogues, musings on David Lynch's film career, and literary metacriticism. The travelogues remind me a bit of a better-written David Sedaris not written by a fuckup; the others have more to do with exploring the point of other creative expressions. Consistent throughout is DFW's smart writing.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. DFW has a couple other essay collections, and I will probably seek them out. Nota bene: DFW has a penchant for, shall we say, uncommon word choices. I enjoyed it because (a) I rarely encounter words with which I'm not acquainted, and kind of like it when I do, because I am a dork; and (b) I was reading an ebook version and thus had a dictionary a highlight away. Not everyone will share both of these traits. Favorite new word: "otiose."

bryanzhang's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

I lied, I didn't actually read this. So don't take this review too seriously.

I had previously read the final 2/7 essays online, and off that I decided to pick the book up. I managed to get through the first 1.5/7 essays before giving up.

For the back-half two essays that I had already read, Wallace picks interesting subject material and makes some worthwhile commentary with a dry humor that I enjoyed.

However, I was disappointed by how masturbatory the first 1.5 essays read: he masturbates about himself, his vocabulary, and, I feel, the ways in which he considers himself better than or smarter than other people. Sometimes his writing comes off as exercises that ought to have remained either unpublished or unread - they are unnecessarily verbose and complicated, and for the first few demonstrations of his writing prowess, one admits that he is very impressive, but it quickly becomes tiring trying to slog through paragraphs that take a long time to say little, only to be faced with the same renewed circumstances upon turning the page.

I wonder if the reason that I enjoyed the other two essays from before is that I had read them online, allowing me a more casual attitude where I felt more comfortable brushing past boring nonsense and spending more time appreciating the better or more insightful parts of his writing.

No doubt I still respect David Foster Wallace's writing, and I may want to revisit this book again in the future and try again, but for now, I am somewhat regretting enthusiastically buying this book new at full price.