chelseamartinez 's review for:

Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace

4.0

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I tried to read this at a bar in Monument this weekend; a man at the bar said "whatever you do, don't sit there and read a book at the bar, jeez." So I talked to him and his friends for a while while drinking a sour beer (with which was provided a shot glass of syrup, in case I am a person who orders a sour beer and then gets mad when it is sour), and listen to them talk about how Chelsea Clinton was born of a loveless marriage to prove something, but that she'll probably be president someday. This man indicated that his children's math teacher, a great teacher despite having Asperger's, he said, was at the bar too, and I met him, and he said he tried to read some DFW but it wasn't for him; I described this particular book, and he said "oh sure, a money grab," which indeed it is. I spoke with this teacher a bit more; he asked me nothing about myself, which is exactly what I'd like from a person I talk to at a bar, and told me about summer math camp in the mountains for teachers. He said it's his third year teaching, and the other two years, when it was this many days out from the end of the school year, he had started to miss the kids, but this year no; and because it was germane I shared some of what my mom says about the necessities of a summer break and every group of students being different. His son was watching Mary Poppins on a little foldable dvd player at a table in the corner.

It's good to get out of the house sometimes.

Anyhow, I love the tennis articles always; "Back in New Fire" seems uncomfortably at many points like it will crack me over a sharp aluminum mixing bowl's edge of orthodox values before blessedly ending with a poing of generosity, for which I had desperately hoped. I haven't seen Terminator 2 and now I know I don't need to (weird to think of a world before Titanic, is my pathetic thought). Fictional Futures, and Deciderization, I hope I remember to read again someday.