Thursday, September 18, 2008

dfw

today, i went downtown to walk around in one of the few remaining, warm days of the fall. i was on the hunt for a book that i never did find, but i found a book by david foster wallace that i haven't had the pleasure of reading. for those of you who are unawares, david foster wallace killed himself last week. for those of you who don't know who he is, revel in the fact that wikipedia exists and google him.

i walked all around tanum books which is right down the street from the royal castle. i wandered around, read clips, and stumbled across consider the lobster.
after reading a few pages i bought it, headed home and read for about an hour and quickly sent an email to my friend who is viscerally pained by the passing of who he adoringly refers to as dfw.

"i started it. and i got this weird feeling. have you ever noticed the way you feel when you read the work of a young (or merely a living) writer -- it feels as though you are tapped into a reservoir that is somehow hanging above your head. gravity helps the flow of content just pour out in front of you and you lap it up in sort of a bacchanal celebration of things like the internet and water. but when you read something of tolstoy or dostoevsky that you have never read (or saved for later) you are slowly eating morsels of brilliance. maybe cookies your grandmother made last night, before she died this morning. and you savor them because you know that what was once a reservoir of immeasurable (and why would you ever even think of measuring it, even if they could?) contents is now limited, dry, and archived. thats how i feel while reading consider the lobster."

1 comment:

kb. said...

i just got the last mitch hedberg album. i took me a week to listen to it because i wanted it to be perfect and finally the perfect moment happened and i had just poured two glasses of wine and we were cooking dinner and i didn't want it to end. i actually thought about listening to half and saving the second half for later.

...bet you didn't know i read your blog.

...katie bell.