Friday, March 10, 2006
The Lobster Considered
Although I'm not privy to the arcana of current literary reputation I know David Foster Wallace has it. “It” being a good rep: he is usually said to be smart, very smart, or often, brilliant. When the world's least reliable, most predictable critic, Michiko Kakutani in the NYT, recommended Wallace's recent collection of essays culled from magazine pieces, Consider the Lobster, I was sure I wouldn't like it — she's infallible.
I am about two-thirds through the book and it is tough going. Wallace is not easy to read, except in tidbits, which do indeed turn out to be impressive. Wallace's penchant for playing with form and keeping himself at a safe distance is off-putting. Wallace overcomes the deficits because he is a shrewd, clever writer. As his appearance not long ago on Charlie Rose made apparent, he is self-consciously contemptuous of a crowd he wants very much to impress without showing he wants that approval. He had a disheveled, restrained manner on Rose — nothing of his brilliance was on display — which is partly the fault of the interviewer. Wallace's posturing had a juvenile aspect though, diminishing him.
Wallace is worth reading not just because his skillful prose is a reminder about how well language can be manipulated, or of how entertaining rhetorical devices can be when well implemented, but because, behind the showboating, Wallace makes a lot of sense. His densely worded review of Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage is wonderfully informed. He understands the nuances percolating below the surface; he brings these insights to dry material, infusing it with human context. Wallace admires Garner's skill in proactively evading the inevitable attacks, generated by the culture wars, that abound in matters of language. Wallace well describes the players: The Descriptivists, 60's lefties who use political correctness as a sledge hammer to gain power (thought control police), using the familiar tactics of post-modernism: scientism and liberal guilt; and The Prescriptivists, dogmatists who from the outset give up their power in an obnoxious paleo-elitism that is both offensive as well as hypocritical in its own version of thought control — manifested as “decency” protestations.