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David Foster Wallace

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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: David Foster Wallace Paperback – 5 Feb. 1998

by Foster Wallace (Author), David (Author)

4.4 1,359 ratings

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A collection of insightful and uproariously funny non-fiction by the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST - one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING... brings together Wallace's musings on a wide range of topics, from his early days as a nationally ranked tennis player to his trip on a commercial cruiseliner. In each of these essays, Wallace's observations are as keen as they are funny.

Filled with hilarious details and invigorating analyses, these essays brilliantly expose the fault line in American culture - and once again reveal David Foster Wallace's extraordinary talent and gargantuan intellect.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Abacus
Publication date

5 Feb. 1998
Dimensions

15.3 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

0349110018
ISBN-13

978-0349110011
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Product description

Review

It's the kind of book you can't even put down while brushing your teeth. He's damn good. I take my hat off to him. ― GUARDIAN

Enviably good. ― SUNDAY TIMES

Like sea air, David Foster Wallace is so bracing. ― GLASGOW HERALD

Brilliant. ― MAXIM

Book Description

*Razor-sharp cultural commentary and hilarious social observation from the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Abacus; 1st edition (5 Feb. 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0349110018
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0349110011
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.3 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 29,378 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 13 in Hair Loss
- 48 in Biographies about Essays, Journals & Letters
- 203 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights

Customer reviews:
4.4 1,359 ratings

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David Foster Wallace

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David Foster Wallace wrote the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl With Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes the essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and the full-length work Everything and More. He died in 2008.

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4.4 out of 5

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MR M DOWNING

Funny, wise and thoughtful.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 October 2023

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Funny and thoughtful about American culture and politics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2018

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I picked this up after reading Wallace's brilliant, sprawling Infinite Jest earlier last year, having seen recommendations of his non-fiction writing. Half a dozen articles range over subjects from the films of David Lynch and the tennis player Michael Joyce to the Illinois State Fair and a week on a luxury Caribbean cruise. So it's a mixed bag: I greatly enjoyed his wry, cheeky take on the fair and the cruise, but found his semi-scholarly article on television and U.S. fiction too long to be coherent (its most memorable characterization of irony as "the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage" comes from another author), although it probably made more sense at the time (it's twenty-five years old).

Anyway, there are many gems to be treasured here, including his closely-observed description of the young girls' baton-twirling contest at the fair which had me snorting with laughter at his comic timing - e.g., "A dad standing up near the stands' top with a Toshiba viewfinder to his eye takes a tomahawking baton directly in the groin and falls forward onto somebody eating a Funnel Cake and they take out good bits of several rows behind them" [p117]. And his extensive, brilliantly-written discourse on the cruise contains a thought-provoking analysis of the way in which the cruise is constructed as "various fantasies of triumph over [...] death and decay" [p264], pointing out how the ship is being continually ravaged by what it floats in, and yet is kept in pristine condition by an army of staff. The fact that this insight is sparked by a newspaper story of a youth who committed suicide whilst on an earlier cruise is arresting (and sadly ironic, given the author's demise).

Whilst reading this entertaining collection (which I strongly recommend), I bought his Consider The Lobster anthology, and look forward to consuming that in due course.

5 people found this helpful

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An Attentive Reader

A Book I Will Read Again

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 September 2014

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David Foster Wallace's roaming eyeball of a reporter sets out to see what it can see ... at the state fair, on a cruise ship, playing tennis, considering irony in the age of the television .... Nothing can prepare the unwary reader for what lies in store: you basically have to surrender and let him lead your field of vision where he will. And if you do, it is a truly reorientating and strangely uplifting experience.

For what it's worth, I think Wallace's collected essays (of which this one of three volumes, see also Consider the Lobster and Both Flesh and Not) are the most accessible and persistently enjoyable of his books. If you like these, try the short stories next, notably Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and (though only occasionally) Girl with the Curious Hair. Then you are probably ready to try one of his three novels, the third of which was incomplete at his death. Most famous of those is Infinite Jest, which is enormous but engrossing. I actually think the essay on tennis in this book (Supposedly Fun Thing) is a helpful thing to have read before trying to get too far with Infinite Jest. He captures the relentlessness required of those who would play tennis, which is later cross-compared to a kind of drug addiction in his novel.

The three famous pieces in this collection include his irony essay, which is pretty persuasive but somewhat close to the world of the academic essay on literary criticism, so possibly not for everyone. But the state fair account captures perfectly the sense of someone dislocated from what appears to be passing for normal fun and enjoyment, and yet unable to believe that they are the one who is lost. If you've ever been there, which is to say if you are a human being in the late-capitalist Western world, you will enjoy it. And if you do, then the concluding title essay will give you the words to describe the kind of life we are living. A personal opinion: this is the most poignant but funny account ever written of the pressure to have fun. Rightly a classic.

As, indeed, is the whole book.

9 people found this helpful

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Tourist40

Master of the wry

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2017

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Such a shame David Foster Wallace is no longer around to bestow more of his wonderful wry, dry, sometimes sardonic view of the world. This collection of some of his essays does not disappoint so far that I have read. Despite sometimes sailing a bit over my head with passages of abstruse terms and americanisms I still sort of see what he means. While searching and thoughtful in their analysis of the particular subject the pieces are entertaining and hilarious in places to the extent that laughter just erupts at times. As an example take this from the intro to one that is typically entitled "getting away from already pretty much being away from it all" where he reports on his somewhat reluctant mission to the Illinois State Fair as a member of the press:-
"Why exactly a swanky East-Coast magazine is interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at these magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90% of the United States lies between the Coasts and engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish." . . . .which gives an idea of the vein. He is accompanied by a lady to whom he refers as "Native Companion" throughout and who provides him with her own female slant on the show. He records how, far from being affronted for example by being deliberately swooped upside-down terrifyingly in a cage on one of the rides so that her dress falls about her head to the gratification and merriment of the rednecks operating it, she howls with delight at the hair-raising nature of it when she emerges, oblivious to their unsavoury intentions. This may not do the book justice though as it is not all levity but there are gems on almost every page and mark it as one of the few works to be read or dipped into, again and again.

3 people found this helpful

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alimcl24

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 January 2018

A lot about tennis

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2022

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This is a great collection of Foster Wallace's essays. Recommended especially for people unfamiliar with his work or lacking the patience to read Infinite Jest.

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