by Barbara D'Amato
The connection between madness and creativity – “genius is akin to madness” – has been described at least anecdotally for centuries. The ancient Greeks were well aware of it. Think centuries. Think Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace.
In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine “Depression’s Upside” [Feb. 25, 2010] David F. Cooper pulls together some fascinating research on the connection between depression and creativity.
Neuroscientist Nancy Andreason surveyed thirty writers from the Iowa Writers Workshop and found that eighty percent of them reported a mental history that met the criteria for depression. She believes that this is symptomatic of a cognitive style that favors creativity because in creation of art “one of the most important qualities is persistence.”
Professor of psychiatry Kay Redfield Jamison performed biographical studies of British writers and artists and concluded that successful individuals were eight times as likely to have suffered major depressive illness.
In an inventive experiment, Australian social psychologist Joe Forgas placed a variety of random trinkets near cash register. He kept records. On a grey day, he played Verdi’s Requiem; on a sunny day he played Gilbert and Sullivan. After the shoppers had exited, he asked them to recall the items. On gloomy days, they got more right. They were more attentive to reality.
The idea behind this as it relates to writing is that more negative people are more aware of their surroundings and more critical of what they write. They keep at it and are not easily satisfied. It is the relentless focus typical of negative depressive rumination.
You can easily imagine a happy person saying, “Well that’s good enough!” and submitting his rather sloppy short story.
Most of the people who say to me or my friends, “You must be crazy to do this!” are responding to finding out that we work months or years and make little money. Maybe we are just peculiarly persistent. I object to calling this “crazy” because it isn’t. I don’t even like depression termed a mental illness. We have some people in my family, both older and younger than I, who have depression problems. I prefer to call it a condition. But it is painful and nothing to belittle.
Showing posts with label David Foster Wallace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Foster Wallace. Show all posts
Friday, March 19, 2010
Friday, August 07, 2009
My Words But a Whisper, Your Deafness a Shout.
By Kevin Guilfoile
As I've mentioned here before, I'm spending the summer as one of the four "Guides" on the Infinite Summer site, which means I've been reading David Foster Wallace's mammoth novel INFINITE JEST, and providing a weekly commentary on it as I read. At the halfway point I'm finding the book immensely gratifying and the group approach to the novel not only great fun but (coincidentally) a valuable complement to the book's structure.
A few weeks back, however, I wrote about a section of the book that gave me pause. INFINITE JEST is very funny and on page 139 there is a comic interlude in the form of a memo between two State Farm employees. One of the insurance guys is passing along a letter from a claimant clarifying the details of an accident that occurred on the job:
That story is probably familiar to a lot of you. It's a very old joke that more recently has become an urban legend, and a promiscuous email forward. It's famous enough that a reenactment of the accident was featured on the television show Mythbusters. The particular version Wallace inserts into his book is copied and pasted, almost word-for-word, from one that can now be found in thousands of places on the internet (Wallace wrote IJ in the early-mid 90s, when the Internet was still in its infancy). The earliest published version I could track down that uses the insurance claim conceit as well as the exact words and phrases borrowed by Wallace was a 1982 column in the Louisville Courier-Journal. The columnist, longtime Kentucky journalist Byron Crawford, never took credit for it. He disclaimed at the outset that it had been passed along to him by a colleague from Georgia. The person who so carefully crafted this very funny version of the story is lost to history.
Now I'm not claiming this is plagiarism. Without going too much into the nature of Infinite Jest, I think Wallace expected that many of his readers would recognize it. Indeed urban legends are something of a motif throughout the book. And I was somewhat placated by the discovery (very minor spoiler here) that some 400 pages later it is suggested that this claim sent to State Farm was part of an insurance scam perpetrated by a minor character and so, in the layered reality of Infinite Jest, one might assume that the character is supposed to have copied this story from somewhere and presented it as his own.
But that all assumes you are a very savvy reader. Wallace never actually reveals any of that, nor does he give any suggestion that this anecdote isn't his own creation. In the comments to my post on this subject over at Infinite Summer, most readers were willing to defend Wallace's decision, even as many expressed disappointment that one of their favorite sections in the book hadn't been written by the author.
In the end I was still personally a little bothered by it. I give Wallace a pass but I don't think I would ever feel comfortable doing it myself. So I pose the question to the many writers and careful readers who hang out at this site: Do you think this is an acceptable appropriation of someone else's words? Would you be comfortable doing it yourself?
As I've mentioned here before, I'm spending the summer as one of the four "Guides" on the Infinite Summer site, which means I've been reading David Foster Wallace's mammoth novel INFINITE JEST, and providing a weekly commentary on it as I read. At the halfway point I'm finding the book immensely gratifying and the group approach to the novel not only great fun but (coincidentally) a valuable complement to the book's structure.
A few weeks back, however, I wrote about a section of the book that gave me pause. INFINITE JEST is very funny and on page 139 there is a comic interlude in the form of a memo between two State Farm employees. One of the insurance guys is passing along a letter from a claimant clarifying the details of an accident that occurred on the job:
Dear Sir:
I am writing in response to your request for additional information. In block #3 of the accident reporting form, I put “trying to do the job alone”, as the cause of my accident. You said in your letter that I should explain more fully and I trust that the following details will be sufficient.
I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, March 27, I was working alone on the roof of a new six story building. When I completed my work, I discovered that I had about 900 kg. of brick left over. Rather than laboriously carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which fortunately was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the brick into it. Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 900 kg of bricks. You will note in block #11 of the accident reporting form that I weigh 75 kg.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel coming down. This explains the fractured skull and the broken collar bone.
Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulleys. Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind, and was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of considerable pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel from the force of hitting the ground.
Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed approximately 30 kg. I refer you again to my weight of 75 kg in block #11. As you could imagine, still holding the rope, I began a rather rapid descent from the pulley down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles and the laceration of my legs and lower body.
The encounter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my impact with the brick-strewn ground below. I am sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the bricks in considerable pain, unable to stand or move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my presence of mind and unfortunately let go of the rope, causing the barrel to begin a… endtranslNTCOM626
That story is probably familiar to a lot of you. It's a very old joke that more recently has become an urban legend, and a promiscuous email forward. It's famous enough that a reenactment of the accident was featured on the television show Mythbusters. The particular version Wallace inserts into his book is copied and pasted, almost word-for-word, from one that can now be found in thousands of places on the internet (Wallace wrote IJ in the early-mid 90s, when the Internet was still in its infancy). The earliest published version I could track down that uses the insurance claim conceit as well as the exact words and phrases borrowed by Wallace was a 1982 column in the Louisville Courier-Journal. The columnist, longtime Kentucky journalist Byron Crawford, never took credit for it. He disclaimed at the outset that it had been passed along to him by a colleague from Georgia. The person who so carefully crafted this very funny version of the story is lost to history.
Now I'm not claiming this is plagiarism. Without going too much into the nature of Infinite Jest, I think Wallace expected that many of his readers would recognize it. Indeed urban legends are something of a motif throughout the book. And I was somewhat placated by the discovery (very minor spoiler here) that some 400 pages later it is suggested that this claim sent to State Farm was part of an insurance scam perpetrated by a minor character and so, in the layered reality of Infinite Jest, one might assume that the character is supposed to have copied this story from somewhere and presented it as his own.
But that all assumes you are a very savvy reader. Wallace never actually reveals any of that, nor does he give any suggestion that this anecdote isn't his own creation. In the comments to my post on this subject over at Infinite Summer, most readers were willing to defend Wallace's decision, even as many expressed disappointment that one of their favorite sections in the book hadn't been written by the author.
In the end I was still personally a little bothered by it. I give Wallace a pass but I don't think I would ever feel comfortable doing it myself. So I pose the question to the many writers and careful readers who hang out at this site: Do you think this is an acceptable appropriation of someone else's words? Would you be comfortable doing it yourself?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Remember When You Spilled Coke All Over Your Blouse?
By Kevin Guilfoile
A few weeks ago, my friend Matthew Baldwin called. He wanted to know if I had ever read the novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
It was a question loaded with guilt and shame for me. Infinite Jest came out when I was still in my twenties, when I considered myself at the edge of all things literary. I remember the hype that preceded the publication of IJ, my anticipation as the release date neared. I remember going to the bookstore to buy it. I remember how excited I was when I spotted the cover. I recall taking it off the shelf, opening to a random page.
I remember thinking, "This looks hard."
I didn't buy it that day, obviously. Over the years I became a fan of David Foster Wallace, mostly through his essays and non-fiction. I've recommended Everything and More, his book on the history of the concept of infinity. I was saddened last year when I heard that he had died. But I never read his most famous novel and when Infinite Jest comes up in conversation, I am always mildly embarrassed.
But Matthew had a cure for all that, which he called Infinite Summer. His plan was to put together a small crew of four people including himself who would read Infinite Jest between June and September and comment each week as they went along. He would also solicit essays from people who love the novel, who hate the novel, people who knew David Foster Wallace, people who were experts on the book. And, of course, he would invite anyone who was game to read along with us.
Matthew was offering me a way out of my shame. I didn't hesitate to say yes.
And it looks like we'll have company. In just one week the Facebook group for Infinite Summer has notched over 1,300 members and the project already has more than a thousand followers on Twitter. There is a renewed and rigorous discussion over at Metafilter. There are corporate and media sponsors. It's going to be a whole lot of fun.
So if you've ever wanted to tackle Infinite Jest but just couldn't quite find the motivation, please join us starting June 21. There will be no better time but this summer.
In the meantime, though, I wonder if any of you have a book that got away. A novel that you've always meant to read and have always felt a little bad that you never got around to it. A book that taunts you from your bookshelf.
Admitting it is the first step toward reading it.
A few weeks ago, my friend Matthew Baldwin called. He wanted to know if I had ever read the novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
It was a question loaded with guilt and shame for me. Infinite Jest came out when I was still in my twenties, when I considered myself at the edge of all things literary. I remember the hype that preceded the publication of IJ, my anticipation as the release date neared. I remember going to the bookstore to buy it. I remember how excited I was when I spotted the cover. I recall taking it off the shelf, opening to a random page.
I remember thinking, "This looks hard."
I didn't buy it that day, obviously. Over the years I became a fan of David Foster Wallace, mostly through his essays and non-fiction. I've recommended Everything and More, his book on the history of the concept of infinity. I was saddened last year when I heard that he had died. But I never read his most famous novel and when Infinite Jest comes up in conversation, I am always mildly embarrassed.
But Matthew had a cure for all that, which he called Infinite Summer. His plan was to put together a small crew of four people including himself who would read Infinite Jest between June and September and comment each week as they went along. He would also solicit essays from people who love the novel, who hate the novel, people who knew David Foster Wallace, people who were experts on the book. And, of course, he would invite anyone who was game to read along with us. Matthew was offering me a way out of my shame. I didn't hesitate to say yes.
And it looks like we'll have company. In just one week the Facebook group for Infinite Summer has notched over 1,300 members and the project already has more than a thousand followers on Twitter. There is a renewed and rigorous discussion over at Metafilter. There are corporate and media sponsors. It's going to be a whole lot of fun.
So if you've ever wanted to tackle Infinite Jest but just couldn't quite find the motivation, please join us starting June 21. There will be no better time but this summer.
In the meantime, though, I wonder if any of you have a book that got away. A novel that you've always meant to read and have always felt a little bad that you never got around to it. A book that taunts you from your bookshelf.
Admitting it is the first step toward reading it.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Playing through the Pain
Passover starts at sundown on April 8. We're supposed to "leave the House of Bondage." I think about the things/feelings I'm in bondage to--my fears, my obsessions--and wonder how I can leave them and enter the House of Freedom.
I just attended a concert by Leon Fleischer. Fleischer, who's 80 now, lost the use of his right hand when he was about 35, and spent the next 30 years performing the left-handed repertoire, conducting and teaching. When he was almost 70, a cure was found for the neurological disorder that afflicted him, and he's now back to performing with two hands, and playing more passionately and beautifully than anyone else I've heard recently.
He says he never was bitter, and I wonder if that's true. I wonder what the process was. I imagine panic, followed by some years of agony, and then moving to a new place in his career.
I have a friend in Houston, a poet and a woman, who was diagnosed with late-onset MS. Her first two years with the condition, she tried to work out in psycho-therapy what fears made her fall over. I wonder if a psychiatrist suggested to Mr. Fleischer that he was afraid of appearing in public and so had lost the use of his right hand. Or do those suggestions only get made to women?
The House of Bondage is often self-imposed, where Fear rules and keeps us inside. The shocking murder last week of three Pittsburgh police officers, by a man who said he was afraid that Barack was going to take handguns away from private citizens-- it's hard to imagine why he let that fear rule him so completely that he had to shoot three other people to keep himself safe.
D T Max wrote an essay about David Foster Wallace in the March 9 New Yorker, and quoted a letter Wallace wrote to Jonathan Franzen after he finished Infinite Jest. "I'm sad and empty as I always am, when I finish something long. I don't think it's very goo. [a review] called an excerpt feverish and not entirely satisfying, which goes a long way toward describing the experience of writing the thing." His sister Amy says Wallace was always afraid the last thing he wrote would be the last thing he wrote.
Those are fears that I understand; they keep me in my own house of bondage. I hope whatever fears you hold, you know a way to knock them over and find a path to the House of Freedom.
I just attended a concert by Leon Fleischer. Fleischer, who's 80 now, lost the use of his right hand when he was about 35, and spent the next 30 years performing the left-handed repertoire, conducting and teaching. When he was almost 70, a cure was found for the neurological disorder that afflicted him, and he's now back to performing with two hands, and playing more passionately and beautifully than anyone else I've heard recently.
He says he never was bitter, and I wonder if that's true. I wonder what the process was. I imagine panic, followed by some years of agony, and then moving to a new place in his career.
I have a friend in Houston, a poet and a woman, who was diagnosed with late-onset MS. Her first two years with the condition, she tried to work out in psycho-therapy what fears made her fall over. I wonder if a psychiatrist suggested to Mr. Fleischer that he was afraid of appearing in public and so had lost the use of his right hand. Or do those suggestions only get made to women?
The House of Bondage is often self-imposed, where Fear rules and keeps us inside. The shocking murder last week of three Pittsburgh police officers, by a man who said he was afraid that Barack was going to take handguns away from private citizens-- it's hard to imagine why he let that fear rule him so completely that he had to shoot three other people to keep himself safe.
D T Max wrote an essay about David Foster Wallace in the March 9 New Yorker, and quoted a letter Wallace wrote to Jonathan Franzen after he finished Infinite Jest. "I'm sad and empty as I always am, when I finish something long. I don't think it's very goo. [a review] called an excerpt feverish and not entirely satisfying, which goes a long way toward describing the experience of writing the thing." His sister Amy says Wallace was always afraid the last thing he wrote would be the last thing he wrote.
Those are fears that I understand; they keep me in my own house of bondage. I hope whatever fears you hold, you know a way to knock them over and find a path to the House of Freedom.
Friday, September 19, 2008
David Foster Wallace, RIP
by Marcus Sakey
As you can't possibly not have heard by now, last Friday David Foster Wallace hung himself.
The thing about the death of a famous person whose work you admire — or, in the case of DFW, flat-out love — is that it's a loss at once personal and abstract. I'd never met Wallace. I don't really have the right, the emotional props, to grieve for him as though he were a friend.
And yet at the same time, I knew one part of him better than I know the inner minds of some of my nearest and dearest. There are plenty of writers out there whose novels don't betray what's under their own hood, but he wasn't one of them. Reading Wallace was a singular experience, an exhilarating brush against a brain of staggering capability, that was trying, always, to reach you and tell you something about the world, maybe something deeply true and important.
His second novel, INFINITE JEST, is generally considered his masterpiece. As it would have to be; it's 1079 pages long, including about 100 pages of footnotes. It's a staggering work, satirical in the extreme, often laugh-out-loud funny, and yet also unrelentingly sad. Wallace was one of those rare writers who could short-circuit your emotions, have you swinging from misery to hilarity and back again in the space of a page. It's not an easy book, and it's one I've stopped recommending to people because it's not everyone's taste. But while it isn't easy, it's also not challenging in a force-yourself-through-it way. No, the challenge is in trying — and failing — to keep pace with a genius.
When I heard about his suicide, I picked it up again. Again, my life is wildly different; I'm married, and as of this afternoon, 229 pages into my fourth book. But I remain astonished by everything it accomplishes, and I'm loving it more this time around than any other.
I can't really give you a synopsis. It's just not possible. Let me say that it's a near-future novel about the pursuit of happiness and the near impossibility of communication. It's a wicked satire filled with joy and sadness and gleefully prescient dread.
An example.
In the book, most of which takes place in the corporate-sponsored Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, America has "given" Canada large chunks of the north of our country, and then proceeded to use those areas as our literal garbage dump, packing waste from every corner of the country into canisters and slinging it via massive catapults into a festering heap of filth and disease, around which we have built a Lucite wall topped with massive "bladed air redistributors" to blow the clouds of toxic waste back where it belongs. As a consequence of which, besides rapacious packs of feral hamsters, a notable portion of children near the Concavity, as it's called, are born without skulls, which makes life and love a little difficult. But not impossible, as a legless Quebecois terrorist, member of a much-feared organization known as the Wheelchair Assassins, discovers when he falls in love with one, and in order to get proper medical care for his skull-less wife, he works as a triple-agent betraying his comrades to the very nation that caused his wife's condition in the first place.
This is one minor thread of a very big tapestry.
Taken on its own, the above probably just comes across as silly. And there is whimsy to it, no question. But Wallace injects so much social commentary and exploration of the human condition into these ridiculous premises that as you read, his world becomes more real than your own.
I'm 200 pages into this third read of IJ, and I'm in love all over again, and it breaks my heart, because there's no more coming. Sure, there are essays that I haven't read, and a short story collection. But there's not another grand masterpiece, another cultural earthquake of a novel. And the kicker is, as brilliant as his work was at 32, can you imagine what it might have been at 60?
We lost a giant last week.
As you can't possibly not have heard by now, last Friday David Foster Wallace hung himself. The thing about the death of a famous person whose work you admire — or, in the case of DFW, flat-out love — is that it's a loss at once personal and abstract. I'd never met Wallace. I don't really have the right, the emotional props, to grieve for him as though he were a friend.
And yet at the same time, I knew one part of him better than I know the inner minds of some of my nearest and dearest. There are plenty of writers out there whose novels don't betray what's under their own hood, but he wasn't one of them. Reading Wallace was a singular experience, an exhilarating brush against a brain of staggering capability, that was trying, always, to reach you and tell you something about the world, maybe something deeply true and important.
His second novel, INFINITE JEST, is generally considered his masterpiece. As it would have to be; it's 1079 pages long, including about 100 pages of footnotes. It's a staggering work, satirical in the extreme, often laugh-out-loud funny, and yet also unrelentingly sad. Wallace was one of those rare writers who could short-circuit your emotions, have you swinging from misery to hilarity and back again in the space of a page. It's not an easy book, and it's one I've stopped recommending to people because it's not everyone's taste. But while it isn't easy, it's also not challenging in a force-yourself-through-it way. No, the challenge is in trying — and failing — to keep pace with a genius.
| I've read INFINITE JEST twice. The first time in 1998, when I lived in Atlanta, worked in television, and the woman who is now my wife was my girlfriend. Again in 2003, when I had built and then lost a million-dollar graphic design company, and was unemployed in a Chicago studio apartment, toying with my old dream of writing a novel. | DFW LINKS |
When I heard about his suicide, I picked it up again. Again, my life is wildly different; I'm married, and as of this afternoon, 229 pages into my fourth book. But I remain astonished by everything it accomplishes, and I'm loving it more this time around than any other.
I can't really give you a synopsis. It's just not possible. Let me say that it's a near-future novel about the pursuit of happiness and the near impossibility of communication. It's a wicked satire filled with joy and sadness and gleefully prescient dread.
An example.
In the book, most of which takes place in the corporate-sponsored Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, America has "given" Canada large chunks of the north of our country, and then proceeded to use those areas as our literal garbage dump, packing waste from every corner of the country into canisters and slinging it via massive catapults into a festering heap of filth and disease, around which we have built a Lucite wall topped with massive "bladed air redistributors" to blow the clouds of toxic waste back where it belongs. As a consequence of which, besides rapacious packs of feral hamsters, a notable portion of children near the Concavity, as it's called, are born without skulls, which makes life and love a little difficult. But not impossible, as a legless Quebecois terrorist, member of a much-feared organization known as the Wheelchair Assassins, discovers when he falls in love with one, and in order to get proper medical care for his skull-less wife, he works as a triple-agent betraying his comrades to the very nation that caused his wife's condition in the first place.
This is one minor thread of a very big tapestry.
Taken on its own, the above probably just comes across as silly. And there is whimsy to it, no question. But Wallace injects so much social commentary and exploration of the human condition into these ridiculous premises that as you read, his world becomes more real than your own.
I'm 200 pages into this third read of IJ, and I'm in love all over again, and it breaks my heart, because there's no more coming. Sure, there are essays that I haven't read, and a short story collection. But there's not another grand masterpiece, another cultural earthquake of a novel. And the kicker is, as brilliant as his work was at 32, can you imagine what it might have been at 60?
We lost a giant last week.
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