Why I Haven’t Read Infinite Jest or Thoughts on the Occasion of David Foster Wallace’s Death.

David Foster Wallace's recent suicide has produced what is to me a surprising number of highly laudatory reflections on the man and his work. I'm not surprised that people who write about him loved his work, but I am a little surprised at the sheer volume of these reflections. For a writer who has not been particularly prominent on the cultural map for roughly a decade (though he never disappeared), his work seems to command a great deal of respect. No doubt this respect is well earned and appropriate, and I am not here to claim otherwise, although it seems a bit of stretch to me to call him a "great novelist" or "the most important novelist of his generation" (Boston Globe) since he wrote only two novels, one of which is not often read. Indeed, the bulk of his work (in pieces, not pages) has been short stories--and more recently—essays, while the bulk of his fame rests on his opus Infinite Jest. I have no opinion on whether he was a great novelist or not, since I haven't read more than a few sentences of his work, and therein lay my thoughts at this moment.

There are a variety of putative reasons that I never cracked Infinite Jest. Certainly its capaciousness contributed, although I am not typically terrified of long novels. Then too there are the footnotes, an affectation that I found more than a little ridiculous, although his footnoting addiction perhaps resembles my thought process more than I'd like to admit. But in actuality, there's only one real reason that I've not read Wallace. It is an unfair reason, one that blames the artifact for its artifice--to be sure--but I think it's worth discussing, particularly since it has largely been ignored in the recent considerations of Wallace's work. Infinite Jest suffered two related stigmas in my view. First, it was heavily marketed. Second, it was heavily marketed to a certain niche market, what was then called "alternative" culture.

The novel, through no fault of its own or of Wallace's, became kind of a cultural marker for alternative/slacker/Gen X-Y subculture, in the same way perhaps as Lollapalooza I-III attendance did. It was the chosen book for hipster douchebags to pretend they were reading in the coffee shop while they were picking up women. Posters for it were plastered all over downtown Seattle, and it was hailed by the target audience just as much as the critics as a novel of the "now" generation. Now, none of this is to say that it's not a great book, and again this reception is not Wallace's fault, and I know plenty of people who read the book, enjoyed it, thought about it, and didn't think of it as a signal moment in counter-culture of the 1990s. But I chafe at the thought of being told what defines me, and I was frankly tremendously annoyed by the book's omnipresence. I will have that orange and blue jacket with clouds on it burned into psyche for the rest of my life.

For me, and again this is unfair to the book itself, Infinite Jest belongs indelibly to the era of fashion designers selling plaid flannel shirts, the endless Time/Newsweek articles on Generation Y and "alternative culture," the beginning of the cult of tribal tattoos, etc. It always struck me as a book that developed a cult following not through word of mouth, but through marketing and its position as a symbol of status. This may be entirely false, and groundswell may well have driven the novel's marketing strategy, but I speak here only of my impressions, not of the facts of the matter which are unknown to me.

As a result of what I felt, and honestly still feel, was the cynical marketing of Infinite Jest and its historio-cultural place as a symbol for the mainstreaming of late '80s to mid '90s "alternative culture," I've always avoided it. I think probably enough time has passed that I can and should put this prejudice aside and read the damned thing. I intend to, some day. But I insist that we not forget that this particular book has a wealth of cultural baggage associated with it, whether Wallace meant it to or not. The marketing of this book, separate but yet inseparable from its existence, has meaning and resonance beyond the book itself, and it deserves very much to be brought to bear when we speak of Wallace's legacy. Wallace was no doubt a smart and talented man, and someday perhaps I will be able to offer an opinion of him as a writer. Until then, I will continue to insist that we not forget that he and his work were offered up as sacrifices to the disingenuousness of the culture machine which he apparently so reviled. This may be the nature of the art object in the age of mechanical reproduction; it may be the inevitability of culture industry at work; it is certainly not the fault of the author or his work. Nonetheless, it marks a change in American sub or counter-culture; indeed it marks the end of "alternative" culture as a DIY development (of course some would argue it never was that, a view that can be supported, but which I think is flawed nevertheless) and its subsumption into the mainstream. It also in some ways shows the power of the (sub)cultural talisman, and perhaps its emptiness and the emptiness of its culture as the artifact absorbs the artwork. These moments, issues, and complications continue to be a central part of the impact of Infinite Jest and its author.

Sherman Alexie/Harlan Ellison

I was just thinking in the shower (which is where I do most of my thinking.... That's right, about 10 minutes a day) about why I don't really like Sherman Alexie's work very much, and it struck me that he and his work remind me a lot of Harlan Ellison. Both are smart-asses, both are arrogant, both excel at shorter work, both have very little faith (if any) in humanity.

Beyond this, both strike me as very "thin" writers. This is an aesthetic point, not an analytical one, but I think it is important. It's as if I want to like to them, as if I understand that they are "important" in some way, but I'd argue that neither are very interesting stylists, and more importantly that neither really has much richness or depth to what he does (or did). I might go as far as to argue that each writer's respective arrogance retards their work. That is, neither seems capable of understanding people other than themselves, and their work reflects this. They both strike me as a bit hollow at the core. I get the feeling from both of them that they are smart but not very deep thinkers, perhaps this is what bugs me about their work. Clever, yes, but kind of obvious, even cliched at times.

In June of this year, the Onion AV Club posted an interview with Ellison. This is the link to the second page of part two: http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/harlan_ellison_part_two/2 . In it you will find an anecdote of Ellison's regarding a Jesuit literary scholar's paper on an Ellison story. Ellison was in the audience and took the guy to task. This is nothing shocking for a writer to do, particularly one as irascible as Ellison. It reminds me a lot of something Alexie might do as well.

Now of course as a blossoming literary critic, you might think that my annoyance with this anecdote has to do with Ellison's attacks on academic criticism. But I am the first to admit that academic criticism is largely a load of BS (yes, mine too). Instead I want to focus on the fact that Ellison really has no idea what he's even talking about when he drops "deconstruction" in there. He hasn't even bothered to try to understand, nor to acknowledge that there are few if any Jesuit deconstructions out there (in fact, there are very few deconstructionists at all, I'd wager). Even more importantly, he totally ignores the vitally important open-endedness of literature by browbeating this scholar. Ellison wants his work to mean exactly what he wants it to mean; it's kind of the anti-Bob Dylan stance. But of course, no work does this. Let's bypass "sign/signifier" talk and just focus on interpretation. The very richness of art is that it allows, even encourages, idiosyncratic readings. Even if a work is meant to be dogmatic or pedantic, readings of it will always be unstable (NB: This is not, as it may first appear, a so-called postmodernist stance. It is, you might say, a hermeneutic stance, one that in this argument does not necessarily rely on history, and it is descriptive of what intellectuals do with intellectual traditions. Indeed, mainstream Anglo-American philosophy thrives on such a practice, cf. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12925). In Barthes-ian terms, I'd argue that both Ellison and Alexie dislike the idea of the "readerly" text. The problem here is two-fold. First, this makes the texts more about the authors than the texts (the thinness I mentioned above). Second, neither are particularly writerly writers in my view.

Back to the point at hand, although I have lots more to say about how these two might be very much reinforcing the culture that they critique in their literary practices, what this implies to me a lack of good faith intellectual effort, indeed a lack (dare I say it) of depth in both writers. This, I think, is the source of the thinness I find in their work.

Are the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot… again?

I am a proud man, I admit it, but this flaw has the benefit of making me fairly comfortable with admitting I am wrong. Indeed, I must do it often. I note this because I think it's important regarding politics in America. In 2000, I saw little difference between Democrats and Republicans; little enough that I didn't vote and probably had a soft spot in my heart for Ralph Nader. Call it cynicism, or call it realism, but I firmly believed that politicians are politicians first, not people with policy ideas or concerns with important issues. To a large extent, I still believe that, but the last 8 years woke me up to the reality of the situation. While politicians of all stripes are no doubt self-serving hypocrites first and foremost, and while the system certainly seems broken, my naïve theory that things wouldn't be much different with Bush than with Gore has proven earth-shatteringly wrong. How many people have died, both American and non-American? How far backward have we gone internationally and environmentally, and perhaps even more importantly how much have our civil liberties been gutted?

All this to say two things: first I still distrust politics and politicians, and second that I am firmly a Democrat, for lack of another viable option. That said, I am not particularly sanguine that Barack Obama really represents change in any substantive way, other than possibly being the first black person to hold the office of President of the U.S. In fact, the system (as we all should remember from high school government class) is build to resist substantive change. The only way to affect it is to do what FDR, Reagan, and Bush/Cheney have done—semi-legally consolidate executive power and attempt to bypass the legislative branch. The only other change Obama promises is change from this current state of American affairs, one which I'm sure most people would like changed. McCain of course offers, as we have heard ad nauseam, more of exactly the same as the last 8 years.

In theory, Obama should be light years away in the polls, right? The two complications are no doubt his abundance of melanin and the job the Republicans have done painting him as an elitist, a tried and true (and effective) GOP tactic. But I want to suggest that there's something else at play here: a problem the Dems have had for as long as I can remember. Democrats, in national races, don't want to get their hands dirty. The Sarah Palin issue is the current prime example of this. Let's face it, she's a right-wing kook and probably a big old chunk of moron as well. She's a typical right-winger from the "real" West (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, etc): anti-environment, pro-creationism, gun-toting, private property freak, pro-big business, vicious nutbar. If you grew up in a Western state, you are familiar with the type. She also went to 6 colleges to finish her undergrad degree (in Journalism), has an unmarried pregnant daughter, "ties" to bizarrely anti-Semitic preacher, possible ties to secessionism, etc., etc. She is a terrible, terrible candidate and one that should be torn down, publically.

Now I may sound mean-spirited here, but I am not. I am merely making an argument that since the very idea of politics as we know it began, with the Greeks, politics has been a dirty business. It requires ad hominem attacks, it requires strident debate, and it requires tawdriness. Have we learned nothing from Karl Rove? Palin's own speech was full of mean-spirited innuendo, yet her family life is "off-limits." The VP nominee from the "family values" party's daughter is off-limits? We don't want to hurt their feelings? Fuck that. Presidential politics is life or death both for candidates and more importantly, for citizens of this country. If the Obama campaign is unwilling to call bullshit on an extreme right-winger, they could well lose this election. Democrats have been shockingly unable to call bullshit for a long time, and in my view this has dramatically hurt them.

The GOP loves to play dirty, and it works, but beyond platitudes about an eye for an eye, let me be clear about one thing: the idea that there is a moral high ground in politics is a fallacy. Politics is a shouting match, a competition, an ugly battle. Its very nature precludes the clean hands approach favored by the Dems. Sure, you seem petty if you attack people personally. And yet, the 'Pubs have done so consistently since at least Nixon, attacking the patriotism and character of every Democrat in every election (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, anyone?), local, state, and national. No one will question John McCain's wartime activities the way they did Kerry's. No one will attack Palin on her record (what little there is), her views, her hypocrisy, her personal failures, or the fact that this fucking freakshow of a person might be, as the cliché goes, one bullet away (or more likely heart attack) from being PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Sarah Palin is a huge liability for the McCain campaign. Exploit it. That's what politics is about. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise. There are more important things at stake here than someone's hurt feelings or looking petty. "Hope" does not win in politics, indeed it only fires up those who have already been converted.

It's a common complaint that Democrats have been on the defensive for as long as most of us can remember, at least on the national stage. Yet we see the Obama campaign in danger of falling into that trap again because they are not willing, yet, to do the dirty work. I hope this changes. If it doesn't, the Dems may blow their biggest chance in a long time to gain the White House… again.

Why the Grateful Dead Well and Truly Suck.

I've recently been unpleasantly surprised by the indie/hipster media's re-assessment of the legacy of the Grateful Dead. At least in the case of Pitchfork, it seems that it is now—shudder "cool" to like the Dead. This is, in my humble opinion, a horrific tragedy. The Grateful Dead were truly and utterly awful, and I say this with no reservations.

There seems to be a few things going on to explain this recent apology for rock's most stunningly useless band. First off, the hipsters of today were largely too young to experience the living Dead, if you'll excuse the pun. Jerry Garcia died in 1995, meaning that if you are 20 years old right now, you were born in 1986, and were 9 years old when Jerry passed on to the great big trip in the sky. Now, it's patently unfair to judge the quality of a band by its fanbase—as I will discuss below—but, the music geeks of today are truly blessed by never having interactions with real Deadheads and/or Dead tours.

Secondly (and this is one reason I kind of despise the hipster/indie scene), there must apparently be a new "re-discovery" every couple of years: the arbiters of culture have to find a new band wagon to hop on. Now, often this is important work and forgotten artists may finally experience some appreciation. But this kind of thing is, at the same, a mania of the indie rock world; one that mirrors the endless search for the Next Best Thing in mainstream pop music which all too often results in a "one album wonder" from a band you will never hear of again. The indie taste-makers seem blissfully unaware of their absolutely horrible track record in predicting the Great Band of the future, and this is one reason I largely lost interest in the indie scene. In my more cynical moods, it just seems like an endless hunt for fresh meat—perhaps even more so than the much more criticized hip-hop subculture. If an average career in hip-hop lasts less than 10 years, I'd bet that the average indie star is nearly forgotten in five years.

Now, a useful example of the re-assessment of legacy concerns the recent attention Bob Marley has been getting. With the box set release of his Studio One recordings, it seems that each review has to express a righteous indignation about the state of Bob Marley fandom in the U.S., and go on to note a variation on the theme of "Hey, he wasn't really that bad." In both respects, I agree. It is unfortunate that a bunch of hemp-necklace wearing frat boys have ruined Marley's credibility in the States. However, "Legacy" is one of the most over-played albums of all time. And so the gut—and unfair—reaction by many is to say "I hate Bob Marley" because of his often idiotic U.S. fanbase, and the overexposure of "Legacy." Of course, there's no accounting for taste, and I'm not going to try to convince anyone who hates Bob Marley not to hate him. However, keep this in mind…. Bob Marley was not only a great R&B-styled singer and a powerful songwriter, but he was about the most anti-establishment, rebellious motherfucker that popular music has ever seen, all "love" aside. He got shot for his beliefs, for god's sake. To quote from Wikipedia, "In 1976, just two days before a scheduled free concert, 'Smile Jamaica', that Marley and Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley had organized in the run up to the general election, Marley, his wife Rita, and manager Don Taylor, were shot inside the Marley home. Marley received minor injuries in the arm and chest. Don Taylor and Rita were seriously injured, but fully recovered. Marley's purpose for 'Smile Jamaica' was to lessen tension between two warring political groups. It is believed that the shooting was politically motivated as the concert was seen as being in support of Michael Manley. Surprisingly, Marley, who was still injured, performed at 'Smile Jamaica'." How punk is that?

Anyway, the point is that we shouldn't judge a musician by his fanbase. If we could judge an artist so, this article about the Dead wouldn't have to written. Deadheads are hopeless, and I have nothing nice to say about them. But it's unfair to blame the band for this.

The last reason, in my estimation, for the press the Dead are getting comes back to one man: Ryan Adams. I have no opinion on Mr. Adams; I don't think I've ever heard anything of his. But even if the indie scene has a love/hate relationship with Adams, they tend to pay attention to him. He has publicly proselytized for the Dead for the past few years, and so rather than just having Phish/Widespread Panic/Blues Traveler fans talking about the Dead, now we have to read smarmy indie kids singing the praises of "American Beauty."

The Dead are guilty of all sorts of transgressions against what have become, and I think for good reason, guidelines for rock music. First of all, they are guilty of the worst kind of song over-length, at least in the live setting where they are supposed to have thrived. Of course we all know that rock songs should only very rarely swing past the 6 minute mark, unless they are "prog." And almost all prog (except extreme metal prog, that is) is generally bad anyway. But the Dead weren't even prog. It's like not they were testing out their jazz chops, or trying to create some kind of bombastic pseudo-classical music. Oh no, they were just noodling. Couldn't even lock the rhythm section in to a good groove to back up their noodling. Blech.

And the singing on Dead tunes is terrible. Off-key lead vocals, strangled harmonies, and a hopeless lack of personality.

But finally, in my opinion, it comes down to this: The Dead saw themselves as interpreters, like it or not, of American roots music—folk, county, blues. This kind of thing was a well-spring for many of the great rock bands of the 60's and 70's, so the Dead were far from alone (or original) with this take. Their treatment, however, of roots music sets them apart.

Much like my complaints about many of the films in PBS's "The Blues" series, the Dead lacked any basic understanding of roots music. Now, I don't mean to say they didn't love the music they drew inspiration from. However they had no sense of what is compelling about it. The power of roots music comes from the expression and emotion which is often as not found in the rough, dangerous edges of the music itself. While there was plenty of roughness (or perhaps sloppiness) in the Dead's music, there was no edge at all. In fact, they took American roots music and sanitized it, de-sexualized it, and made it into hippy chill-out music to "twirl" to.

In his discussion of "postmodern" literature, Fredric Jameson defines "pastiche" as follows: "Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs." Jameson here addresses what he sees as the fundamental difference between parody and pastiche in literature—parody keeps an edge, a value beyond just smirking at, say, a reference to TV's "Small Wonder." So, how does this relate to rock/pop?

I argue that instead of a line being drawn between parody and pastiche in pop music we have a line between expressive emotion and the aping of such. The great satiric example of this is the fictional band Blues Hammer in the film "Ghost World." And more so than any other genre, the blues has been subject to the inequity of 40-year-old suburban white dudes singing about "pickin' cotton in the Mississippi sun." Blues Hammer clearly, and for ironic purpose in the film, perform a sort of pastiche of American roots music. And this, of course, is precisely what the Dead did.

The Dead adopted American roots music, and to be fair, played it back in "their own way." So, in this sense they were never just a cover band. But the problem is that "their own way" sucked. It was a pastiche, totally "amputated" of any of what lies at the very heart of American roots music, passion and emotion. This vital and powerful music was reduced to impotence, emptiness, and performativity. It became, in Garcia and Co.'s hands, "a statue with blind eyeballs," utterly devoid of life and power.

I want to be clear that the pastiche/Blues Hammer phenomenon does not necessarily result from all "classicist" enterprises in pop music. You don't have to be black, poor, or from a rural background to play the blues "with feeling." But you DO have to have a feeling for what it is that made roots music powerful. When I think of a band that succeeded at doing nearly the same thing as the Dead tried to do—a synthesis of American roots music—I think of The Band.

"Music from Big Pink" is a prime example of how something like this can be done without the pastiche. The work of the two groups is similar in a lot of ways: shambling, and a bit sloppy. But the passion is evident in "Music from Big Pink." That album just breathes lust, sadness, loneliness. The Dead—on the other hand— just jam, man. Their aesthetic vision was an empty one, lacking simply everything that makes rock'n'roll and roots music great. Screw the Dead, and screw their newfound indie cred. The Dead sucked. Always did, always will.

By way of explanation....

I'm going to repost some stuff I've written as notes on Facebook here, just for shits and giggles. As a result, there'll be a bunch of posts here all of a sudden. Most won't be about music.