Customer Rating:  
Summary: some great essays from a brilliant mind
Comment: There are 3 fantastic essays in here:
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"
"Getting Away from Being Pretty Much Away from It All"
and the essay on Michael Joyce.
Its extremely sad to see such a talented writer die young. This is a good book but not great only because there are a few doozies in here. Definitely, definitely read the three chapters above for a hilarious look at cruise lines, an anthropological study of "white trash" at the Illinois State Fair, and a behind the scenes look at tennis stars who never hit the spotlight. Dead on.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Who should read Wallace?
Comment: To whom do you recommend David Foster Wallace's _A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again?_ Literary theory geeks? There's only one short essay for them, "Greatly Exaggerated," and it reeks of mid-`90s deconstruction fervor. Tennis players? Perhaps, though in "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" Wallace writes about tennis with the same bludgeoning style he claims to play with. Midwesterners? Um, no. The flat, hot, ignorant and obese Midwestern state fair Wallace describes in "Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Being Away from It All" is a distortion of the kitsch-riddled, cheese-curd soaked fair I loved as a kid. Still, the title essay of this collection, a simultaneously operatic and encyclopedic exploration of Wallace's experience on a vacation cruise, is so good as to make me want to recommend this collection to everyone from meth addicts to lapsed Catholics. Read it, and it will change your view of Love Boat, suction toilets, and binge eating forever.
Customer Rating:
Summary: If we remember David Foster Wallace, it won't be for this
Comment: I am reading, or rather trying to read, this collection for my book club, and I'm not enjoying it in the slightest. I knew little of David Foster Wallace before I heard of his suicide. I was excited to read something by a writer so highly regarded, but so far I am very disappointed. It's unkind to criticise the man so soon after his death, so I'll limit my remarks to this early collection of, frankly, immature writing.
Four essays in, and I still can't see much of a point to any of this. Wallace wrote all these essays in the early to mid-1990s, but they already seem very dated. The chosen subjects are, in the main, deliberately slight - TV, youth tennis, pop culture. With a collection of free-form commentary like this, Wallace invites comparison to other writers such as: Hunter S. Thompson; PJ O'Rourke; Gore Vidal; and from a somewhat earlier era, George Orwell (just to pick four that I'm familiar with). He compares poorly to all.
Wallace is less ambitious than any of those writers. He avoids tackling BIG subjects like politics directly. But Orwell, for instance, could write about making a cup of tea, or his favorite pub, and turn out a classic. Wallace by comparison is too jaundiced - his essays offer only a weary air of resignation. His prose is capable, but not nearly limpid or entertaining enough by itself to sustain my interest throughout these generally very long pieces.
It reads like the work of a talented young man, who was still trying to find his voice as a writer, and who did not, at this point in his life, have anything particularly interesting to say.
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Summary: A Great Jumping Off Point for a Brilliant, Humane Writer
Comment: For those new to DFW, perhaps aware of him due to the tragic news of his recent death, this is a great place to start. This book collects essays he wrote for Harper's, Premier Magazine, and others. After DFW made his fiction bones, some genius editor (Lewis Lapham maybe?) guessed that he would make a very interesting journalist, which was an inspired call. The first, best known, reporting effort by Mr. Wallace is also the title essay, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" which recounts his experience and observations during a week spent on a cruise.
Not to be missed though, is the article DFW wrote on assignment for Premier magazine involving 3 days spent on location with David Lynch during the shooting of "Lost Highway". DFW does his usual genius take, hilarious but totally without snark, on the experience of being on a big budget movie, but also, along the way, he dissects, with brilliance, David Lynch's entire body of work, and slowly reveals how crucial one Lynch film, "Blue Velvet" was to his own artistic development. It is a genuine classic, one artist describing the clear debt of gratitude he owes to another. This book is not to missed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just Okay
Comment: David Foster Wallace's short essays can be amusing at times, but the descriptions can get tedious (see 500 footnotes for examples) and he rarely seems to connect with the people he's describing.
I haven't read the DFW novels, but for hilarious and cringe-inducing non-fiction commentary, Sedaris is THE master, with Dave Eggers, Sloane Crossley and others far ahead of DFW.
Sorry, I wanted to like the book more, especially with his untimely death.
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