Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
by David Lipsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: David LipskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2010-04-13
ISBN: 030759243X
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
Book Review: "My big worry is that I won't enjoy this..."
Summary: 5 Stars
Whole books have been written to analyze and understand the complex genius of David Foster Wallace. It's been said, to me, that to really understand Wallace's high octained writing, one must "get to know him" first. So, before undertaking the monolithic and labyrinthine work that marked his short career, Infinite Jest, I determined to "get to know" him as best I could. This work by Rolling Stone writer Lipsky, I've discovered, is a contemporary and important piece of the Wallace puzzle and provides, in a clear work of love and admiration, the motivation I was looking for. At times jumbled and misguided, Lipsky undertook an interview with Wallace in 1997 at the end of the Infinite Jest reading tour, recording their sometimes spacey conversations and feelings for use in a proposed article for the magazine. The article never was written as Lipsky was soon reassigned to "finding heroin addicts in Seattle", but he often went back over these tapes while following the slow downfall of this literary icon. After Wallace was found dead in September of 2008, a suicide that shocked the literary world, Lipsky determined then to go back to these heady days for solace. Realizing that a revelatory work was, in fact, in these transcripts, Lipsky shares them here, warts and all, for all Wallace fans, while adding details of Wallace's death that greatly add to the overall melancholy and sadness that Lipsky and others felt.
This work is at times very hard to read and understand as we get the full Wallace effect in an informal and hurried setting. Lipsky basically provides transcripts of these talks that covered 3 or 4 days in 1997, probing Wallace for deeper meaning on the importance and relevance that fiction writing plays in contemporary society. The answers Wallace provides show the mind and thought processes he went through to formulate cohesive observations, but are at times really fractured and incomplete. Lipsky, however, seems to recognize this as he then provides contemporary insights into these conversations which are meant to show the hyper character and uuber-intelligence that made up the Wallace icon.
In the end it's hard not to love Wallace and feel the total loss and affinity most held for him. Also, it's now clear to see how his life ended in such dramatic and tragic form. Showing an abounding care and absorption for seemingly all things in life, Wallace seemed to worry and stress about everything, even worrying about worrying. Couple this with the revelation that Wallace had been diagnosed as clinically depressed in 1989 and that the meds he took for this (Nardil, an older anti-depressant "tugging a boxcar of side effects") added somewhat to his overall demise, it is clear to me that suicide was certainly a possible outcome. What makes this book work is the knowledge of how it ends..."Suicide is such a powerful end, it reaches back and scrambles the beginning. It has an event gravity: Eventually, every memory and impression gets tugged in its direction."
"...Becoming Yourself" is a magnificent introduction into the world of David Wallace and contemporary literature. I would recommend this book, flaws and all, certainly to all his fans, but moreso, to all who would become fans. Read this and watch some of the revealing videos of Wallace on-line and, I'd challenge, you'll come on board also.
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