Thinking about the randomness of things right about now.
Here is what happened.
I think I went to ‘I write like’ and pasted in my prose and
it spat back “David Foster Wallace.”
I think I had heard the name somewhere but couldn’t recall
the context.
I went to the library and took out his novel The Broom of The System and loved it. I
loved the humor and I loved the stories within the stories, and the references
to philosophy, especially the tale of the barber who shaves himself. I loved
this because I translated that during my undergraduate symbolic logic class. I
think it goes like this:
There is a small town and in this
town every man is shaved by the barber. So I think the sentence to translate in
class was something like for the barber shaves every man who doesn’t shave
himself. The problem, or question, based on the sentence (as Bertrand Russell
so brilliantly pointed out) is who shaves the barber?
I think I did some research and discovered that Wallace
studied philosophy and English during his undergrad and actually wrote The Broom of The System during his
undergrad. I also learned that Wallace killed himself and suffered from
depression.
That Christmas, I got a kindle. The first book I wanted on
the kindle was, wait for it…Infinite Jest. I loved it. It went nowhere and
there was no closure and I didn’t care. The intelligence, the depth of ideas,
the pain conveyed in addiction was like nothing I’d ever read. Or will read, I
think.
This set off a bevy of reading I had not done since my
undergraduate days.
I lost my job at one college and got a job at another
college as an online advisor. At this new college I decided to look at some of
the online English course offerings and read the books. I started off with
American Lit since 1945. This put me in touch with Vonnegut, In Country, White Noise, The Crying of
Lot 49, On the Road, and Everything Is Illuminated to name a few.
From here I moved on to Madness in Lit which put me in touch with Catch 22, Breakfast of Champions, Foucault, Girl Interrupted and…wait for it…back to David Foster Wallace.
I am currently reading Every
Love Story is a Ghost Story by D.T. Max and am riveted. Reading about his childhood
and especially his undergrad at Amherst has me thinking about my intellectual
past and future. I revel in the fact that he really liked The Crying of Lot 49 and White
Noise. And it also has me thinking about madness. I am eager to learn what “tripped”
things for Wallace and if his genius made things too easy. Or was it “simply”
depression? If this is the case, isn’t it just random, random that some people
suffer from depression while others don’t despite similar circumstances? What
randomness awaits me?
