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A review by js_warren
Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace
5.0
Full disclosure: DFW is my favorite author, so I'm highly biased.
I've seen some lukewarm reviews of this essay collection, but I was quite pleased with it. I get it, though. His literary reviews, such as "The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s Wittgenstein's Mistress," are challenging reads and aren't terribly accessible to casual readers. Wallace can get pretty cerebral--the word "genius" gets thrown around a lot, but in this case it's well-warranted--and he can lose me when he really digs deep and plumbs the depths of a topic. But if you don't mind having your intellectual limits tested, then this won't be an issue.
That said, most of the essays in this collection don't reach that level of difficulty. His take on "Terminator 2," for instance, might go against the popular grain, but it's spot on. And while the essay "The Best of the Prose Poem" had me scratching my head at first, it actually ended up being one of my favorites in the collection.
If you're familiar with Wallace, you know how much he loves tennis, and the two tennis-related essays are particularly good, especially "Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open," my favorite of the collection. It's peak DFW: insightful, passionate, and intensely funny in his subtle, idiosyncratic way.
This probably isn't a great collection to start with if you're unfamiliar with Wallace (you're better off going with "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," or maybe "Consider the Lobster"), but if you're a fan of Wallace then you'll get what you expect: the work of an intelligent, funny man with a unique take on life and the human condition.
I've seen some lukewarm reviews of this essay collection, but I was quite pleased with it. I get it, though. His literary reviews, such as "The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s Wittgenstein's Mistress," are challenging reads and aren't terribly accessible to casual readers. Wallace can get pretty cerebral--the word "genius" gets thrown around a lot, but in this case it's well-warranted--and he can lose me when he really digs deep and plumbs the depths of a topic. But if you don't mind having your intellectual limits tested, then this won't be an issue.
That said, most of the essays in this collection don't reach that level of difficulty. His take on "Terminator 2," for instance, might go against the popular grain, but it's spot on. And while the essay "The Best of the Prose Poem" had me scratching my head at first, it actually ended up being one of my favorites in the collection.
If you're familiar with Wallace, you know how much he loves tennis, and the two tennis-related essays are particularly good, especially "Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open," my favorite of the collection. It's peak DFW: insightful, passionate, and intensely funny in his subtle, idiosyncratic way.
This probably isn't a great collection to start with if you're unfamiliar with Wallace (you're better off going with "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," or maybe "Consider the Lobster"), but if you're a fan of Wallace then you'll get what you expect: the work of an intelligent, funny man with a unique take on life and the human condition.