David Foster Wallace Is A Literary Genius

After reading hundreds of different authors in my life (I'd love to have a list of them all, in fact I often daydream about when I die there being my very own nook in heaven filled with statistics on my life: top ten dinners I ate, top ten bands I listened to, top ten happiest moments in terms of how big my smile was etc) I've recently come across somebody who writes in a way that I've never seen before, a way that I never thought could possibly be entertaining, that shakes up everything I held true about writing. David Foster Wallace wrote half the time as if he was compiling a very sober textbook, and the other half as if he was making more detailed and studious footnotes for that same book, but somehow the end product is magnificent. In Oblivion, a collection of short stories published shortly after his death, everyday concepts and bizarre setups I never would have considered interesting enough to write about entwine to form a compelling collection of stories, and page after page words that I've never heard before, and am so sure I'll never hear again I don't bother to look them up, slide seamlessly into his elegant sentences and make perfect sense.

I absolutely loved the book, and have since found out that many of the stories within aren't even considered his best, so I'm looking forward to discovering more. My favourite was Mr Squishy, a story about a focus group for a new Twinkie-like cake, with a very sinister member among them. Most of it entails ridiculously in-depth statistical analysis of people's perception of cream and so on, but God, it's so interesting. I don't think there can be a much better endorsement of how good Wallace is than the fact that when you describe what you love about his work it just sounds awful! If you haven't read him, track something down and be amazed.

He's My Favourite Author, I've Read One of His Books

I recently read an article discussing how odd it is for people to proclaim authors as being brilliant, or among their favourites, when they had read just a tiny amount of their output, usually only one or two novels. I have been doing this myself for years, mostly with writers that I liked while I was at university. For example, I often cite Joseph Heller as being one of my favourite authors, when what I should really say is that Catch-22 is one of my favourite books. Even though Catch-22 absolutely blew me away when I first read it, and has done the same after three re-readings, even though it's easily the funniest novel I've ever read, one of very few to make me genuinely laugh out loud, and on nearly every page too, I have never read anything else by Joseph Heller, and at this point in time I don't intend to. This is one of the funny things about literature: if I hear a brilliant album by a band, there's no way I could leave the rest of their repertoire unheard forever, but I'm perfectly comfortable doing this with Heller, and plenty of other authors whose books I've really enjoyed. I'm not sure exactly why this is. Of course, I've heard that Catch-22 is by far and away Heller's best book, but still, I usually would like to see for myself if his others are any good rather than just accepting this as fact, especially considering how much I love Catch-22. There just seems to be some invisible brain-switch that flips when I get to the end of a novel that tells me, regardless of the quality of that particular book, whether I want to read more by this author or not.

Just recently, I've begun to get into a couple of authors and actually feel the desire to read a number of their books, to immerse myself in their thoughts and feelings and worldviews, and devour their entire publishing history. Haruki Murakami is the best example of this, perhaps even more so because I didn't actually love the first two books of his that I read, they just really made me want to see more of what this intriguing novelist had to say. I kept going and came to The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which encapsulated everything that I thought could have been amazing about the first two books I'd read but was just slightly missing, and Wind-up Bird was so good it's encouraged me to make my way through his canon until I've taken in every word he's ever printed. At the moment I'm reading 1Q84, his latest work, and with each chapter I feel as if I'm understanding him more as an author and person. I'd love to go back and read the first two books I read by him, because I'm sure now that I'm a devoted fan, I'd like them all the more.

So it's odd: some authors are lost inside their greatest works and you feel no need to go any further, while others produce a body of work that holds together and elevates each individual piece to a level that it cannot reach alone. I'll have to stop thinking of Joseph Heller as one of my favourite authors, and just leave Catch-22 alone on its pedestal as one of my favourite books.

Being Married

Apologies for my silence over the past few weeks, I've been busy getting married so have had no time for anything else. Even now everything's official, it's hard to fit anything in as I keep getting distracted and entranced by the ring on my finger. I took it off earlier and my hand looked ridiculous: bare and cold and miserable. Getting married is the greatest thing I've ever done, I've never felt so happy or excited. It feels strange to me that usually when you do something brilliant, like visit an exciting new country or see a great film, you can always experience that event again if you want to, but getting married is the most fun I've ever had and I'll never be able to do it again. Well, I don't want to anyway. It was a blast.

All this has meant that I haven't been able to write or think about writing very much, so I still have a story that's 90% done and I need to get over the finish line with, and a novel that hasn't been worked on for ages. But I now know what it's like to get married, to go on honeymoon, and to be a newlywed, so all off this knowledge can surely only make me a better writer. Next time I sit down I'll have all these new emotions and experiences to draw from, and then I'll be unstoppable!