David Foster Wallace wrote some of the most highly loved American literature of the early twenty-first century, hipster literature, for better or for worse, including his famous novel Infinite Jest and collections such as Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The story "Forever Overhead" resonates ever more mournfully in light of Wallace's suicide four years ago. One of my favorite lines from the piece, among many, occurs in the context of the main character standing on the ladder, in the wind, with the rungs hurting his feet. The word "rungs" sounds so painful, and it is repeated in my chosen line: "The solid man under you is looking through the rungs into the contained space the woman's fall will pass through." With this line, Wallace frames our lives in terms of sight, pain, geometry. The pool is a system, just like the world, and we are all always in a nearly mathematical relationship to it. The word math comes from the Greek, mathema, a word that signifies knowledge and learning, and Wallace connects to the ancient human desire to understand the world, as well as the ancient human tragedy that we have little power to understand the world outside of our binary systems. "Hard or soft? Silence or time? / The lie is that it's one or the other."
Thursday, September 27, 2012
David Foster Wallace: "Forever Overhead" and "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, B.I. #40"
David Foster Wallace wrote some of the most highly loved American literature of the early twenty-first century, hipster literature, for better or for worse, including his famous novel Infinite Jest and collections such as Girl with Curious Hair and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The story "Forever Overhead" resonates ever more mournfully in light of Wallace's suicide four years ago. One of my favorite lines from the piece, among many, occurs in the context of the main character standing on the ladder, in the wind, with the rungs hurting his feet. The word "rungs" sounds so painful, and it is repeated in my chosen line: "The solid man under you is looking through the rungs into the contained space the woman's fall will pass through." With this line, Wallace frames our lives in terms of sight, pain, geometry. The pool is a system, just like the world, and we are all always in a nearly mathematical relationship to it. The word math comes from the Greek, mathema, a word that signifies knowledge and learning, and Wallace connects to the ancient human desire to understand the world, as well as the ancient human tragedy that we have little power to understand the world outside of our binary systems. "Hard or soft? Silence or time? / The lie is that it's one or the other."
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I admire that David Foster Wallace's stories are so rich with detail that the plot becomes less of the focus. This is very notable in “Forever Overhead” as the entire story tells a moment. Not only do I like the fact that the details are so concrete, but they are so believable. I'm sure everyone can recall the last time they were at a public swimming pool and saw an older lady wearing a bathing suit which revealed a little too much. And while the story is about this boy on his thirteenth birthday, we never get a real description of him.
ReplyDeleteEven with the second story, it is evident that Wallace is more interested in details that work to define the characters. We learn a whole lot about Johnny Onearm without him telling anything about himself other than his arm. And likewise with the boy from the first story, we learn a lot about his feelings and this sense of change as he's now thirteen. This is a technique that I'm sure not every writer would be able to pull off which is what makes Wallace all the more rewarding to read.
The story “Forever Overhead” is one of those stories that I think will always stick with me, even if I forget the details here and there it’s the feeling I get while reading it that I remember most. I just love this story so much. One thing I noticed rereading it this time that I hadn’t noticed much before is how the structure and rhythm of the language shifts over time. What I mean is, in the beginning the narrator is addressing the boy in a very matter of fact way. The narrator says “Your thirteenth is the chance for people to recognize that important things are happening to you. Things have been happening to you for the past half year.” And the way the narrator describes is a specific mix of bluntness and beauty, like just the whole description of the boys’ sudden months of wet dreams (“toe-curling scalp-snapping jolt of feeling from an inside deeper than you knew you had”), the way David Foster Wallace approaches the private and often untouched subject of puberty is done so well.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the language shift, while the tone is pretty consistent to me, the language begins to shift the most when the boy’s at the diving board. The suspense is built. The lines get shorter compared to the beginning of the story (“Metal flowers bloom on your tongue. No more time for thinking. Now that there is time you don’t have time”). Although there are lines like the one that begins “Forever below” that somersault; even though the lines are broken up they still feel like they’re tumbling. We can see the boys’ thoughts churning and churning until the very end, when they almost seem to not make sense anymore (“So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?”) because he is so overwhelmed with this crazy mixed feeling of epiphany and terror. David Foster Wallace gets us so deep into the boy’s head I don’t even question who the narrator is anymore addressing the boy, or why his thoughts have become so heavy. I hope this post made sense. This might be one of those stories I try to talk about why I love it and how it works but I can’t ever make any sense.
I really love David Foster Wallace for his attention to detail and for his “I’m not going to go right out and tell you” plotlines. “Forever Overhead” is a perfect depiction of these two aspects. He makes amazing metaphors in this story that I wouldn’t even begin to argue with such as, “metal flowers bloom on your tongue,” “veined with the sad near-pink color of bad candy,” and many others. I love the second person narration in this. I think it’s interesting how it almost goes unnoticed. I made it a good way through the story, the first time I read it, without noticing it was written in second person and I think this is because of all of the details that he crams in there, it is difficult to notice the occasional “you.”
ReplyDeleteThe entire focus of “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” is the physical description of the man’s arm. I liked how the interviewer’s questions were left out of the story, because we sort of get an idea as to what the interviewer was asking, without needing the questions to be included. In relation, I also like David Foster Wallace’s unique form (in this case, the interview set up). He also plays with different unique forms in other short stories in his book, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” in stories such as, “The Depressed Person,” where he uses footnotes that I really admire.
I love how David Foster Wallace can poetically describe a young boy hitting puberty. He just adds detail upon detail instead of just saying, “This is how it feels when…” One of my favorites sections of the story is one page 619: “The clouds are taking on color by the rim of the sky. The water is spangles of soft blue, five o’clock warm, and the pool’s smell, like the other smell, connects with a chemical haze inside you, an interior dimness that bends light to its own ends, softens the difference between what leaves off and what begins. Going off of what Burroway says about place and setting, I think that a public pool is the perfect setting for the story. The idea of puberty connects well to the pool because the narrator’s son is at the age when he starts to notice girls a little more and emphasizes the feelings that go along with the awkward stage.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sarah about the effectiveness interviewer’s questions being left out of “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” We get to hear the whole story from the perspective of the unnamed man and see how he struggles with his self-confidence because of it. At some parts the man with the deformed arm almost reminded me of Cyrano from Cyrano de Bergerac. Both men have a part of their body that makes them really self-conscious and they find that it sometimes hinders them from making deeper connections with women. I also liked how conversational the narrator’s voice was throughout the story.
I was really impressed with David Foster Wallace's sense of place in "Forever Overhead". A public pool is such a mundane setting, but through his use of details and metaphors it really feels like he elevates it beyond a public pool. I felt like I was actually at the pool getting ready to jump off the high dive (even if I was just sitting in the lobby of my dorm). I think in a way the place almost become it's own character in the story. The use of second person also really helped immerse me in the story and helped put me in the head of a thirteen year old boy.
ReplyDeleteI loved how simple Wallace's plots were too. "Forever Overhead" focuses on just a few minutes of the narrator's- which isn't the term I'm looking for, but it's close enough- thirteenth birthday, but I was able to get a good sense of his character through all of the wonderful details. In addition in "Interviews with Hideous Men" even though we're only hear about one aspect of Johnny Onearms life- how he uses his deformity to get women to sleep with him- we learn so much about his character.
I really enjoyed the second person narration in "Forever Overhead". I have heard a lot of people say that second person makes them feel like the reader is talking to them personaly, but to me I completely hear it as the narrator or character talking/thinking to himself. I felt Wallace brought me completely inside the head of this thirteen-year-old boy. I love the way the story is detailed as well. Being inside of a thirteen year old boys head is bond to have its awkward moments and thoughts and I feel like Wallace depicts these images vividly.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of what we read on Burroway, Wallace really brings his scenery and setting to life. As Francesca said above, I too felt like the images of the public pool was so vivid, I could picture myself standing on the wet diving board, and breathing in the heavy scent of chlorine.
“Forever Overhead” is one of those stories that has basically one event—the boy’s anticipation to jumping off the high dive—but is drawn out so cleverly that I don’t feel like I want to say “Come ON, already!!!” David Foster Wallace is the perfect example of the importance of place. Burroway writes that “Setting is never neutral through the eyes of a character” (172). This is so true with the character of this story; we read that the smell of the pool is like “a bleached sweet salt, a flower with chemical petals” (618). As he’s climbing up the ladder, the birthday boy notices everything from the loud sounds of the music playing to the woman’s veins in her legs to the painful rungs of the ladder. Through all of this description, Wallace enables us to be at the pool too.
ReplyDelete“Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” reminded me of O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and Hulga with her artificial leg and the barber in Saunder’s “The Barber’s Unhappiness.” Wallace seems to use that same additive style when he writes “They’ll get this look on their face like Oh You Poor Little Fella You’re Being Too Hard On Yourself You Shouldn’t Be Shameful Of The Arm.” I got that same spontaneous feeling when reading this. But I like how Boyle writes in his introduction that when reading this interview, we can’t help but wonder if under the surface this person feels bad about his deformity. Through dialogue, we understand the character to say one thing but we are also urged to consider something else that is not on the page.
I have to agree with Fran that David Foster Wallace did an excellent job establishing place in "Forever Overhead." It's just a simple public pool where the story takes place, but it seems to be so much more than that, so much more meaningful, the way he describes it. The use of second person as well really put me inside the story and inside the head of the narrator, and it just made the place even more real to me.
ReplyDeleteIn the second story, "Interviews with Hideous Men," I thought it was interesting how the questions were left out. I don't think it detracted anything from the story though. Instead, it was probably better that they weren't included because then the reader is allowed to focus entirely on Johhny Onearm and his character. I also loved the conversational tone of the narrator as he talked.
What I enjoyed most about "Forever Overhead" was the details that David Foster Wallace included. I got a great sense of place with details such as "the pool has a strong clear blue smell." Even though one could argue that the color blue doesn't have a scent, I still believed Wallace's description. I felt that the second person narrative was an effective way for me to see into the boy's mind, and experience what he was going through with him.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed "Interviews with Hideous Men" for its unique set up, with the interviewer's questions being omitted. I thought that this was an effective way for us to understand the character of Johnny OneArm (how he is a little defensive, and almost brags about his "Asset." His defensiveness led me to feel that he is most likely depressed about his missing limb.
Well, I am definitely a fan of David Foster Wallace. He is so blunt and sarcastic at times, it made me laugh. I especially loved the detail in "Forever Overhead." Somehow, this made it not awkward when talking about the thoughts of a pubescent kid. Sentences such as "...you can't believe comes from anything you made inside you" do a great job of explaining basically the unknowing nature of a child going through puberty. I felt like Wallace captured that so well in this story. Overall, his details were fantastic. The ones at the pool were great; he used the senses to capture my attention. The view out from the diving board, the smells, the feel of the rungs. It was all very real and I could imagine myself up there.
ReplyDelete"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" seriously made me laugh. I loved that each stage he went through with women was capitalized, as if it were a real thing. And he was just so nonchalant about the arm. I got the feeling that he was so tough because his thinking was "Oh, my arm isn't really there? That's okay, because I get a lot of ass." He kept talking about other peoples' reactions to his arm, but never really touched on his own, which made me believe he tried thinking of it in a positive light, but it was even hard for him. I thought it was interesting we had to interpret what we thought the questions might be that are asked, but I kind of liked the mystery of it and of formulating the questions on my own, especially for the last sentence of the story.
When I read Wallace's “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” it faintly reminded me of Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” because of the use of a disability to describe a character. In Wallace’s story, Johnny One-Arm is discussing how he uses his disability/lack of a fully developed left arm as a way to maneuver his way into bed with numerous woman who feel pity for him which I kind of found hysterical. I do not necessarily understand why I found it so funny, I just really loved how he called it “the Asset” and how he quilted girls into his bed by playing the “I’m so shameful of the way my arm looks” card. I mean I, personally, would have expected more out of the girls than to just casually give into pity or whatever they felt just because they did not want to make him feel bad. I would hope that occasionally they would realize he has done this a thousand times before, but I guess not. I found that story to be slightly disturbing but also funny at the same time, especially when he says “More pussy than a toilet seat, man. I shit you not (629).”
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