Infinite Jester (Tom Laskin, Isthmus, Feb 7 1997)

TL;DR (plain-language summary)

A short Madison-alt-weekly feature keyed to Wallace's February 1997 appearance on the A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again tour — done by phone from Bloomington. It is mostly an essay-collection promotion, so it bears on Infinite Jest only obliquely: Laskin's lead calls the novel "A brutally funny examination of American addictions" and has Wallace spending a good deal of it "gazing with fascination at America's love affair with corporate hype," the same pleasure-culture critique the nonfiction pursues. The interview's own substance is Wallace on the ethics of writing accurate nonfiction about real people — the elitism charges the cruise and Illinois State Fair essays drew, his conviction that "anything mean or funny" in the book "is absolutely true," and his resulting wish to retreat to fiction. Useful mainly as a period reading of Infinite Jest's pleasure theme and as a statement of Wallace's discomfort with the nonfiction persona. Not in Burn's anthology.

Key claims

• The framing is essay-tour weariness: "the self-described shy-boy sounds a little weary talking about the book tour" for A Supposedly Fun Thing. Wallace jokes that although he told Little, Brown he "didn't want to do a paperback tour," the ASFT hardcover launch coincides exactly with the Infinite Jest paperback — "it's beginning to dawn on me that the hardcover is coming out at exactly the same time as the paperback of 'Infinite Jest,'" so the tour's real engine is the novel.
• Laskin gives a period placement of Infinite Jest: "one of the big literary events of 1996", a novel that drew favorable comparisons to Gaddis, Pynchon and Sterne, "A brutally funny examination of American addictions".
• The interview's core is the ethics of nonfiction. The cruise and Illinois State Fair essays provoked "you elitist asshole" reactions; Wallace holds that "anything mean or funny in 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' is absolutely true" but concedes responsibility for the fallout — after the cruise piece his correspondence with fellow passengers ended, and "you know deep down that you are because you're the one doing the writing, and they didn't mean it for public consumption."
• On the Illinois State Fair backlash: he insists the intent was not condescension — "the point of the stuff was certainly not to make fun of what idiots people in the Midwest are. It's more like: God, what idiots we all are when we decide to have fun with a capital F" — but the local newspaper's charge that "this elitest butthead goes off to this Eastern school and then comes back and makes fun of the people he grew up with" stung: "That really hurt. If that's true, then I did a poor job."
• Upshot: Wallace says he "really doesn't have the stomach for nonfiction" and, with a recent grant, hopes to return to fiction full-time after the tour — though Laskin doubts his sincerity ("The guy's too good at nailing the culture to the wall...and he knows it").

Theories & evidence

THEORY: Wallace's nonfiction is bound by a truth-that-hurts ethic — the meanness is inseparable from the accuracy, and the writer, not the exposed subject, bears the responsibility

• Crux: nonfiction-fictionalization (also bears on nonfiction-persona)
• Stance: advances
• Evidence:
  • [author] "What's weird is that anything mean or funny in 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' is absolutely true".
  • [author] the writer's own responsibility: "But then you know deep down that you are because you're the one doing the writing, and they didn't mean it for public consumption."
  • [author] the intent behind the fair essay: "the point of the stuff was certainly not to make fun of what idiots people in the Midwest are. It's more like: God, what idiots we all are when we decide to have fun with a capital F."
  • [author] the cost: the Springfield paper's "elitest butthead" charge — "That really hurt. If that's true, then I did a poor job."
• Notes: oeuvre-scoped (the nonfiction): Wallace here defends the meanness as inseparable from the accuracy — his own side of the larger question of how fictionalized his nonfiction is. Counter-current on record: Wallace's stated conclusion is a retreat — Laskin reports he "really doesn't have the stomach for nonfiction" and wants fiction — and Laskin openly doubts the retreat is sincere, so the ethic is stated alongside Wallace's wish to stop practicing it.

CONNECTION: The determined pursuit of pleasure that Wallace anatomizes in the nonfiction is the same American preoccupation Infinite Jest dramatizes

• Crux: eup-connection
• Early text: n/a (interview) — Laskin: Infinite Jest spent "a good deal" of its length "gazing with fascination at America's love affair with corporate hype," and A Supposedly Fun Thing "bites down hard on various American preoccupations, particularly the determined pursuit of pleasure"; Wallace's own gloss on the fair is "God, what idiots we all are when we decide to have fun with a capital F."
• IJ echo: the pleasure/entertainment critique the novel executes — the "fun with a capital F" that curdles into compulsion is the affective core the Entertainment literalizes.
• Weight: shared-preoccupation
• Notes: the IJ half of the link is Laskin's reading (secondary), not Wallace's; Wallace speaks about the nonfiction and the state fair, so this is kept as a CONNECTION of preoccupation rather than a claim he makes about the novel.

Themes

Nonfiction ethics and the writer's responsibility (the truth-hurts credo; the elitism charges; the wish to retreat to fiction); the pursuit of pleasure ("fun with a capital F"; America's "love affair with corporate hype"); the book-tour / literary marketplace (the paperback tour Wallace didn't want, driven by the Infinite Jest reissue).

Cross-references

• wisconsin-state-journal-wineke-1997 — the near-twin: Wineke interviewed Wallace in Madison the same tour fortnight (Feb 23 1997) and got the same nonfiction-ethics material in a blunter form — his stated preference for fiction, where one is not writing about living people; read the two together as one tour stop.
• wiley-minnesota-daily-1997 — the same-month Minnesota interview that carries the fuller pleasure/entertainment thesis; the Isthmus "fun with a capital F" is the compressed, nonfiction-facing version.
• dfw-last-interview-expanded — the same ASFT-tour period; corroborates the tour-weariness and the fiction/nonfiction boundary.
• burn-conversations-with-dfw — this feature is not among the 22 pieces Burn collected.

Notable passages

Verbatim from the archived feature. Locators are 1-indexed line numbers in isthmus-laskin-1997.txt (see the note on the scheme below). Direct DFW quotation is marked (DFW); otherwise the span is Laskin's prose.

• (DFW) "I told Little, Brown that I didn't want to do a paperback tour" [L34]
• (DFW) "it's beginning to dawn on me that the hardcover is coming out at exactly the same time as the paperback of 'Infinite Jest,'" [L37-38]
• (DFW) "What's weird is that anything mean or funny in 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again' is absolutely true" [L54-55]
• (DFW) "But then you know deep down that you are because you're the one doing the writing, and they didn't mean it for public consumption." [L58-59]
• (DFW) "It's more like: God, what idiots we all are when we decide to have fun with a capital F." [L63-64]
• (DFW) "That really hurt. If that's true, then I did a poor job." [L67]
• (Laskin) "A brutally funny examination of American addictions" [L22]
• (Laskin) "gazing with fascination at America's love affair with corporate hype" [L30-31]
• (Laskin) "particularly the determined pursuit of pleasure" [L47]
• (Laskin) "the self-described shy-boy sounds a little weary talking about the book tour" [L27-28]