IJ study archive

Why The End of the Tour isn't really about my friend David Foster Wallace

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TL;DR

Glenn Kenny — a film critic who edited Wallace's David Lynch essay for Premiere, was thanked in A Supposedly Fun Thing as "The Mollifier", and spent a 1998 weekend with Wallace at the AVN awards (later Big Red Son) — argues that The End of the Tour "gets everything wrong". His case is personal and ethical: the film, adapted from David Lipsky's road-trip memoir, flattens the friend he knew into "Wallace the eventual suicide", a "celebrity writer dude" the estate (Karen Green, Pietsch, Nadell) explicitly disowned. Kenny faults Jason Segel's performance as "a feast of Heavy Indicating" and the physical portrayal as simply wrong, and he laments that many self-professed fans "don’t have much use for people who actually knew the guy". This is an essay about the ethics of the biopic, not about the novel; it offers no reading of Infinite Jest's plot or open questions. Its one interpretive thread is a corrective about Wallace and irony — that he opposed "cheap, reflexive irony, not literary irony", not irony as such. It stands with Christian Lorentzen's essay (which Kenny cites) as the critic-and-intimate revolt against the biopic's softening of Wallace.

Key claims

  • The estate's objection, and the fan reflex against intimates. Pietsch wrote that "David would have howled the idea for it out of the room had it been suggested while he was living"; Karen Green: the film "all turns him into a celebrity writer dude, which I think would have made him wince, the good part of him." Kenny's observation: since the 2008 suicide, "a lot of self-professed David Foster Wallace fans don’t have much use for people who actually knew the guy" — the same reflex that greets Franzen's "pained but unsparing observations about his late friend". Maria Bustillos's Awl piece "The Dead Cannot Consent" is his foil.
  • His standing to speak. Kenny "knew him well enough" to call Wallace "my friend" in print; Wallace "granted me the nickname The Mollifier in the acknowledgements" to A Supposedly Fun Thing, and "called a version of me “Dick Filth”" in Big Red Son. Their last talk was May 2008.
  • The film gets Wallace wrong. Segel's performance is "a feast of Heavy Indicating" — "A tic here, a tic there. Much brow furrowing" — in which "Wallace the artist and Wallace the conversationalist take a distant back seat to Wallace the eventual suicide." Physically, too: the film's "bulky, lurching, elbowy" Wallace contradicts Kenny's memory of "a physically imposing but also very nearly lithe and graceful person" who "spoke precisely, almost formally," his terminal gerund "Gs" landing softly, not dropped (against Lipsky's "disappearing G’s"). Kenny's summary phrase for the performance: "ghoulish self-aggrandisement".
  • The sanitized Wallace. "The Wallace who would suggest intense immersion in pornography as an alternative to self-castration never rears his head in The End of the Tour." Nor does "the author of the impossibly knotty short story Octet, whose vertiginous finale begins: “You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer.”" The film is "for those people who cherish This Is Water as the new Wear Sunscreen".
  • The irony correction. Against the LA Times's claim that Wallace was "fiercely opposed to irony": "What Wallace was opposed to was cheap, reflexive irony, not literary irony", but neither the Lipsky book nor the film is "terribly concerned with the literary" — "they present a Wallace happier to talk about Alanis Morissette than John Barth."
  • The Lorentzen alignment. "The literary critic Christian Lorentzen noted, in a recent New York magazine essay, that the movie manages to betray Wallace’s thought in Wallace’s own words, and that’s almost exactly true." Kenny's close: the film's "reverence actually works in reverse; it’s stifling", delivering "a “celebrity writer dude” portrait on an admittedly very tasteful plate". "Too soon," indeed.

Theories & evidence

This essay advances no theory about Infinite Jest's plot or interpretation (it is about the ethics of the biopic; see TL;DR). Its single interpretive thread — a corrective about Wallace's relation to irony — is recorded below.

THEORY: Wallace was opposed to cheap, reflexive irony — not to literary irony — so the "fiercely opposed to irony" flattening misreads him

  • Crux: cynicism-naivete
  • Stance: complicates
  • Evidence:
    • [inference] "What Wallace was opposed to was cheap, reflexive irony, not literary irony," yet the film and its source book aren't "terribly concerned with the literary". [¶ irony]
    • [secondary] The evidence Kenny cites for the un-sanitized Wallace: the porn-vs-self-castration provocation and the "impossibly knotty" Octet ("You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer") — a Wallace the biopic omits. [¶ irony]
  • Notes: A corrective, reception-level engagement with the anti-irony reputation, not an IJ-internal reading; recorded as complicates (grants Wallace's anti-cheap-irony stance, disputes the "opposed to irony" simplification). The cheap-vs-literary distinction is the one Wallace himself drew in E Unibus Pluram. The essay otherwise makes no interpretive claim about the novel.

Themes

Reception and the ethics of the biopic (the estate's non-consent, Bustillos's "The Dead Cannot Consent", fandom vs. intimates); the flattening of Wallace into "the eventual suicide" / "celebrity writer dude"; the sanctification the film accelerates (This Is Water as "the new Wear Sunscreen"); irony and sincerity (cheap vs. literary irony); memoir, fabrication, and portrayal (Segel's "Heavy Indicating", the mis-remembered voice and body). The essay's texture is biographical/personal (Kenny's own friendship, the Lynch essay, Big Red Son), not IJ-interpretive.

Cross-references

Notable passages

Verbatim from the essay (curly quotes and en-dashes preserved).

  • The thesis: "The script, the angle, Segel’s performance – it gets everything wrong".
  • Pietsch (via Kenny): "David would have howled the idea for it out of the room had it been suggested while he was living". Karen Green (via Kenny): "It all turns him into a celebrity writer dude, which I think would have made him wince, the good part of him."
  • On the fans: "a lot of self-professed David Foster Wallace fans don’t have much use for people who actually knew the guy."
  • On the performance: "a feast of Heavy Indicating" … "Wallace the artist and Wallace the conversationalist take a distant back seat to Wallace the eventual suicide." The summary phrase: "ghoulish self-aggrandisement".
  • The sanitized Wallace: "The Wallace who would suggest intense immersion in pornography as an alternative to self-castration never rears his head in The End of the Tour." Nor "the author of the impossibly knotty short story Octet, whose vertiginous finale begins: “You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer.”"
  • On irony: "What Wallace was opposed to was cheap, reflexive irony, not literary irony" … "they present a Wallace happier to talk about Alanis Morissette than John Barth."
  • The Lorentzen alignment: "the movie manages to betray Wallace’s thought in Wallace’s own words, and that’s almost exactly true."
  • The close: "a “celebrity writer dude” portrait on an admittedly very tasteful plate".

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