Writing
Lately, I’ve been thinking a bit about my lack of contributions to this site.
I created this blog as a landing page for long-form thoughts, establishing a voice as a writer outside of obligatory term papers and endless e-mails.
I can’t say that my lack of contribution is due to lack of contemplation. I continue to fill my notebook with assorted thoughts, and mark the hell out of books (now mostly done electronically, due to my newly-acquired Kindle), with the intention of expanding on these thoughts and recollections. The thoughts continue to fester inside my head, until I move on, ruing my lack of enthusiasm for putting pen to page.
As I see it, dedicated time for uninhibited thought is split between consuming (reading books, blogs, news, commentary, etc.) and producing (writing.) In my life, this interplay is almost entirely one-sided, as I’m seldom seen without a book in hand, laptop open, or headphones tuned to the daily batch of new podcasts uploaded onto my iPod. This accessibility of information, and the respective tools used to consume this gluttonous habit, seems to be both a blessing and a curse. Interesting and educated opinions are more accessible than ever before, and I develop peripheral knowledge on the day’s current events and debates along with the rest of the so-inclined technorati. However, I’m often found guilty of recanting the thoughts and opinions of these authors without having taken the time to develop my own point of view – I fear that these opinions come to the detriment of my own.
I continue to play the seemingly never-ending game of whittling down my Google Reader to a manageable state to this day. Although I enjoy being “in the know,” It leaves me unfulfilled, and my desire to create remains, to tip the producing/creating scale a bit to allow for right brain-encompassing, creative thought.
My relationship with writing is complex, to say the least. Although I love to write, my stubborn commitment to sentence-craft and my scattered thought process makes the process extremely arduous and time consuming. I have always considered writing to be a part of my future: at what capacity is another conversation entirely. As it currently stands, it’s safe to say that my romantic ideal of creative output idea through writing overshadows my actual writing. It is much easier to hide behind the infallible words of my books, acknowledging that my ability and knowledge isn’t anywhere close to the level and quality of media that I consume daily.
With the help of the excellent blog Daily Routines (now long defunct, in Internet years), I have come to realize that writers do not write on inspiration alone. My work on this site, and habits as a writer in general, has been almost entirely based on this inspiration, committing several hours to a single post, setting it aside for the next day for a second edit, before washing my hands from it entirely. Talented authors commit to their craft daily, honing their ability through an endless cycle of drafts and reappraisals – often ridding themselves of painstaking hours of past work in the process.
Roger Ebert posted an interesting piece of advice given to him by an acquaintance, recollected from a conversation almost 30 years ago:
“Begin with a proper sketch book. Draw in ink. Finish each drawing you begin, and keep every drawing you finish. No erasing, no ripping out a page, no covering a page with angry scribbles. What you draw is an invaluable and unique representation of how you saw at that moment in that place according to your abilities. That’s all we want. We already know what a dog really looks like.”
What I guess I’m getting at in all this is the acknowledgement that a change needs to be made. There are no limits on the amount of words you can put to page over the course of your life. The fact is, I need to begin treating writing like the art that it is: requiring technical proficiency, continuous revision and painstaking years of practice. 10,000 hours, here I come.
Learning, online: contd.
In the spirit of the scientific method, I begun a course on the internet: a truly positivist musing. Rather than rely on my own biased stance, or subjective analysis of players embedded in the argument, I have cast myself directly into the fray, to pursue higher learning, online.
Academic Earth is a website which features online courses from America’s leading universities, including Yale, Stanford, and MIT. The content comes from real classes taking place inside campus lecture halls. All participating students must fill out a waiver to allow their likeness to be displayed online. Prospective students have the option of choosing a particular lecture, or undergo the comprehensive course, as I am choosing to do. For the especially ambitious, a syllabus, in addition to copies of the course examinations and their respective solutions, are attached.
The title of my course is Game Theory, taught by Benjamin Polak, the Chairman of Yale’s Economics department. Game theory has been an personal curiosity for some time due to its many applications, seen across the realms of finance, politics, and behavioral economics.
Two lectures into the course, I have yet to find a notable difference between my “Yale” experience and that of any of my classes in large-capacity lecture halls, albeit with a better seat: the comfort of my own couch. What about the ability to participate, you may ask? As any college student knows, a very small minority regularly participates in these mega-lectures. I rarely (if ever) participate in the class discourse, preferring to use my notebook as a venue for revisiting and reviewing any particulars of the lecture I may have missed. In fact, Academic Earth’s lectures are malleable, with the ability to fast-forward, rewind, and pause as you wish. Try asking a professor to repeat himself in a class of 800 without feeling the collective glare of 799 annoyed cohorts.
Within the confines of the brick-and-mortar campus, I may be disposed to visit a teacher during his office hours. Yet, there are countless resources online that could easily assist me at any time online, which I use just as much when enrolled in a physical class. If anything, the open-source nature of the lectures are more tailored to me: I optimize my learning time by making sure that I’m not tired, distracted, or hungry during the online lectures.
I can unequivocally say that I am enjoying Game Theory. As I get to know Professor Polak better, I’m beginning to laugh at his jokes, and understand where his lectures are heading. Although he’ll never know my name, neither will the countless instructors who are commissioned to administer introductory knowledge to thousands of students each semester.
The primary caveat I see at the moment: I am genuinely interested in gaining footing in game theory, and have chosen this particular curriculum as such. Had the topic strayed dramatically from my interests, I imagine I would find myself hard pressed to remain immersed throughout the 1 hour, 20 minute lecture, void of supervision. Again, this follows my assertion of convergence above: my biggest lectures have mostly been a mixed bag, with the omnipresent variable being my interest in the subject at hand.
The crux of my argument remains: the discourse and argument seen in smaller lectures cannot possibly be re-created with Academic Earth’s recorded format. Although I’m sure the option exists to log onto live video streams, with an embedded chat function allowing for communal discourse, the opportunity for distraction and inability to truly engage in the Socratic method remains. Consider this version 1.0: I have no doubt that the model will continually improve.
In addition to these open-source classes, Academic Earth is a portal for the online bachelors and masters degrees, in addition to the ability to obtain credit for courses completed. I imagine this is Academic Earth’s main revenue stream. In an extreme example, one could theoretically obtain a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics in three years without ever stepping foot across the pond. Tuition is $5,000 USD, without the price of books. Room and board? Well, that depends on your home-country’s cost-of-living index…
Learning, online
Cannot say with certainty whether I’m back on the horse or not. My time has been spent somewhat productively interning, working on my Portuguese, and trying to get my personal finances in order.
I am captivated by the immense popularity of the “online courses” used to fill out a student’s schedule, a notion that seems personally absurd. A majority of my tertiary learning, to date, revolves around the rapport one gains with the professor and the communal engagement experienced while participating in a lecture. If anything, my collegiate courses have been one of my few escapes from the cognitive effects of hours and hours of daily scatterbrained web-surfing (see: pro and con arguments.) While I certainly strive to devote my internet use to self-improvement and education, the type of learning I do on the internet strays considerably from the meticulous note-taking, research, and application necessary for semester-ending success. Far from nuanced, I’d argue that the two types of learning are night-and-day.
Upon further analysis, I came across a startling realization: more so than a solution for the lazy, prospective students across the globe can receive an accredited B.A. or B.S. from many of the United States’ most popular and well-known colleges without stepping foot in America.
To the dismay of 4-year-students everywhere, the advent of the world campus is likely here to stay. In many of the same ways that online banks have been able to carve out a dedicated following over their brick-and-mortar counterparts, online colleges provide an attractive option: all of the frills, bells, and whistles of the much-sought-after American degree, without any of the frivolous overhead. As more and more colleges see their endowments shrink, universities will continually seek out more lucrative sources of income. Drawing on this conclusion, the online space will expand dramatically, regardless of backlash.
Students and professors alike share numerous concerns with respect to the possible implications of the online degree. However, my internship experience has shaped my perspective in a contrasting, and surprising light: you may be better cognitively conditioned for the corporate world via an online education than the current collegiate learning model.
Learning to be productive online is one of the most important tasks for anyone working in the internet age. Companies institute draconian internet filters to prevent employee distraction, and the web is saturated with blogs and apps providing tips and tools for focusing while “wired.” The ability to succeed in an online degree-program requires focus and singular thought, all in front of a computer monitor. This ability is a requisite that many children of the internet age do not have. I personally can attest to the internet’s utility as a convenient escape in the midst of a particularly arduous paper.
While I still feel as if there is no substitute for the 4-year-institution, I am curious to see how the online education space continually evolves and adapts, ultimately being able to provide an almost identical service at a substantially reduced rate.
Blu + Radiohead + Godard
I normally like to restrict this forum to words, but I had to make exception for the amalgamation of three of my favorite artists.
Blu flips Radiohead’s You and Whose Army?, edited over one of my favorite films (by one of my favorite directors), A bout de souffle.
Self-Educating
Despite being impossibly busy between curricular and extra curricular activities, in addition to the incessant and omnipresent quest for a summer internship, I have begun a new challenge, hopefully something that I will be able to tangibly track on this blog.
Partially inspired by this post (the other two parts being a complete pillage of my uncle’s college textbooks, in addition to a friend’s recent quest to become Gordon Gekko), I have begun a quest to self-educate myself on selected topics. Why, you might ask? Despite the fact that I already dual-major and minor (for inquiring minds: Finance/International Political Economy, Latin American Studies), I find myself yearning additional stimulation.
After a minuscule amount of internet researching, I thought I would open this up to community discourse. Below are the subjects I have narrowed my interests down to, in addition to a rationale behind each one, with the materials I have at my disposal in parenthesis.
I am looking for a) additional subjects that may be deemed essential to my “rounding” that I may have missed out on.
b) tips/resources to implement a self-education regimen.
c) essential resources in addition to the ones I have listed below, whether it be books, websites etc.
I’m not sure whether I can realistically dedicate myself to all 6 of these subjects, and I fear intermittent study would prove more detrimental to anything. The key, as I see it, is to develop a routine: maybe an hour of the day cordoned off for self-education, regardless of any other commitments I may have that day. No doubt, this may be increasingly easier to implement over the summer. I’ll have to begin experimenting, and check back in.
- Chess – The game of Chess has always interested me. As young as elementary school, I played Chess both with my father and during a lunch time Chess club. However, I never significantly committed myself to the game beyond the occasional recreational game. I think the thought processes behind the game could prove vital across many disciples. (Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess)
- The Classics – I love to read. As it stands, reading takes up a significant part of my day. However, I find myself seeking out increasingly recreational reads as my curricular load has grown (although I’m currently LOVING Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball.) I would love to begin delving into some of the “classics,” specifically Don Quixote. This is an area where I could use more recommendations. (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare)
- Lynda.com (Internet-y stuff) – As a student, we have complete access to the Lynda.com library. As Howard Lindzon recently gushed over Twitter, Lynda is the real deal. There are a TON of tutorials that I’d likely find valuable, but some of the ones that I’ve keyed into include Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver (CSS), and Microsoft Excel advanced applications. Again, any recs? (Lynda.com)
- French – A language that I have decent application in. However, like they say about languages, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is where I grabbed a majority of my booty, I now have a small army of mid-70′s French textbooks at my disposal. (A small army of mid-70′s French textbooks)
- Portuguese – My third language (not counting English), and probably the one I need to study the most, being as I’ll be in Brazil this time next year. I’ve taken all three Portuguese classes that Penn State’s lackluster program has to offer (ahem). I’m considering auditing the most advanced class that I’ve already taken, although I’m unsure whether I’ll find it overly repetitive and/or below my level. I’ve yet to be impressed by the Rosetta Stone series I’ve procured (sorry, impossibly expensive on a student’s budget.) (Ponto de Encontro + Workbook, my college notes, Rosetta Stone)
- Economics – An area that I’ve already pursued somewhat in my curriculum. It seems like between my two areas of study there may be a small information gap, one that I’m happy to fill independently. Moreso macro than micro. (A dated 70′s Macroeconomics textbook that seems pretty comprehensive)
Again, I’m really looking for some assistance on this one. Any tips and/or recommendation would be greatly appreciated.
The Classics
People read Kafka. and Twain. and Dickens. These are facts of life, like the sun rising and setting with each coming day. Their collective body of work will be read, taught, written on, and scrutinized until the end of time.
These “classics” are (rightly) presumed to have a vast influence on western culture, its authors, and its artists, and as such, are vehemently read.
Despite the fact that the oeuvre of these three individuals are a world’s apart, their work is often categorized within the singular, “classics” section: Huck Finn’s ephebian adventures rests comfortably next to Tolstoy’s complex War and Peace at big box retailers across the US. Obviously, these books do not pertain to the ordinary methods of classification, and deservedly so.
Reading Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, I couldn’t help but delve deeper into this notion of “the classic,” its influence, and its prevalency across various mediums of art.
The Trial itself was a pleasure to read: a good, well-written book with a poignant message. Kafka systematically guides the reader through protagonist Joseph K’s initial clear-headedness and rationality through various stages of baseless paranoia, concluding with the insane psyche of the once-sharp-witted bank clerk.
Obviously, Kafka’s talent lends a serious cause for reverence toward the author himself. Kafka’s prevalent theme, the obfuscation of the modern day man and the society in which he lives, characterize Kafka’s two most famous works, The Trial and The Metamorphosis, and has, in turn, manifested itself into an free-standing adjective.
The sheer quality of literary “classics” allows them to stand the test of time, and in turn, they are continually consumed to this day. This trend carries itself over various mediums, as impressionist painters and classical composers have remained household names as their work is perpetually digested and debated. Their oeuvre, like that of the authors mentioned at the beginning of this post, are not going anywhere soon.
Upon further analysis, I think it’s safe to conclude that film does not follow the “classics” paradigm. Although most people may be able to recycle American titles such as Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, few people could aptly tell you who directed these films, let alone have actually viewed them themselves. Even more disconcerting is the relative anonymity of foreign films and their filmmakers, true artists who have managed to convey overarching themes and ideas through a camera lens. However ironic, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy, one movie which could be considered an exception to the “rule,” draws distinct plot parallels with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, a fact acknowledged openly by Lucas himself.
Watching Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Godard’s Breathless, or Kubrick’s 2001, one cannot help but deduce the influence of these “godfathers of film” on modern day directors. It is difficult to conceive why film takes on such a dramatically different cultural role within contemporary society without discounting movie-going today as a largely passive experience. The rabid popularity of ultra-violent, substance-lacking films like 300 and Saw further illustrate this point, without even touching on the current vampire craze.
The open-ended conclusion of No Country for Old Men was almost universally panned, despite the fact the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel strayed minimally from the book (this review describes it as “an unusually tight adaptation.”) No doubt, the two different mediums placed similar expectations towards the two audiences, to differing reactions. Movie viewers obviously wanted an open-and-close two-hour experience, while readers expressed little uproar, as open-ended conclusions subject to debate and discussion are the norm within literary canon.
While one may have no sympathy for my cultural snobbery, the fact remains: movie making is a business. It’s a business that has seen less and less creativity as high-budget, high-risk films have failed to meet their bottom line. In lieu of the recent success of low budget thrillers like Paranormal Activity and Taken, creative ventures like James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster Avatar, which the New York Times jokes has audience expectations comparable to “the arrival of technicolor,” are likely a dying breed. Going forward, creative blockbusters like Avatar, Watchmen, and the less-recent Forrest Gump will likely be glossed over in favor of more economically feasible, audience-friendly viewing. (Edit: looks like it’s already begun)
Crush It!, and Getting Things Done
Those of you who know me personally know that I like to read a balance of “business” books and literature. In the past month, I have read two business books that have provided me with differentiating levels of call-to-action inspiration.
Above all, the two have substantiated the claim that with most business books, value exists in the expediency in which they are read relative to their date of publication[1]. As such, one of the tangible calls-to-action that I can take away from this experience is the importance of keeping up-to-date with the most recent business books. If anything, this goes almost directly against the commonly-held adage of reading the “classics” of literature, a statement that I plan on following up on in an ensuing post. Two of this year’s blockbusters, Jeff Jarvis‘ What Would Google Do? and Chris Anderson‘s Free created seismic tremors across the blogosphere around their publication dates, complete with comments and followups by the authors themselves. While reading these books today would still enable you a wealth of additional resources, reviews, and discussions online, the ability to promote your opinions within the public forum has more or less disappeared as the enthusiasm of book’s release and subsequent press dissipates [2].
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! reads as a veritable account of one man’s rise to success leveraging the world of social media through passion and hustle. The book reads more like a long blog post than a book: complete with tons of links and references to online tools. This is by no means an insult: Gary Vee will be the first person to tell you that writing is far from his forte, and I’ve gained plenty from my daily Google Reader visits. Obviously, there is no way to currently account for the disparity between the current print market and the ability to hyperlink, an issue that I think is universally acknowledged as something that will be addressed as technology progresses.
Vaynerchuk begins the book by offering readers a history of his entrepreneurial exploits: shoveling snows in his preteen years progressed into selling baseball cards at trade markets, which flourished as he matured into an adult through his undying passion and love for the family business: wine. In doing this, Vaynerchuk has created a legitimacy to his grandiose claims: he truly walks the walk. Gary Vee has an almost intuitive sense of the webspace, providing readers with an elementary blueprint of the world of social media while referencing countless bloggers, whom I imagine have no relationship with the author himself, to bolster his thesis. From the beginning of the book, Gary admits that the purpose of his now infamous website, Winelibrary.tv, was never about selling wine, rather about building brand equity around his love for wine. Crush It! does almost the same thing for social media by exposing the virtues of WordPress, Tumblr, Flickr, and Twitter to unfamiliar readers, giving them the tools to crush it themselves. Amazingly, discussing this book with fellow cohorts, I got the sense that the average college student has no conception of these tools, despite the fact that our generation should theoretically be most in tune with the technology.
Vaynerchuk is a strong proponent of the “death of the résumé,” explaining that your online body of work presents itself as a much greater case for employment than any “tidy list of where you’ve worked and for how long.” I think Gary hits the nail on the head with this assertion. He continues “developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your résumé every second that you’re working.” Unfortunately, the powers that be within the undergraduate business curriculum continue to exult the virtues of the résumé: they are just as out of touch as the corporate recruiters scrutinizing a stack of uniform CVs [3]. Every potential internship I’m pursuing requires a resume. However, as Gary Vee himself preaches, patience pays, and I will continue to produce content on my blog and elsewhere to bolster my virtual portfolio.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done has long been considered “the” productivity method by respected bloggers and friends alike. Although I consider myself to be a fairly productive individual, I was intrigued enough to pick up a copy of the manual. Allen slowly builds the reader up to implementing his system, encouraging readers to only execute the portions of his method that work for the individual.
The book itself was written in 2001, and shows heavy sign of age as a result. Had Allen written an updated version, I have no doubt that he would update his process to create a more seamless, technology-based system incorporating scanners and one of the many task managing web apps available today [4]. Obviously, neither of these things were fiscally available for the average reader in 2001, and as such, were omitted from the book.
I cannot wholly recommend this book to my generation, as I think that Allen himself would retort that the book is not intended for younger people. One aspect that I took especially to heart, however, dealt with managing long term goals with more dynamic, day-to-day requirements of a student. At one portion of the book, Allen suggests his readers devote a single piece of paper for each “project” you’d like to develop further (whether it be tomorrow, next week, or next year.) After hitting a road block early on, I ended up with somewhere around 50 different, individuals goals and projects on 50 different pieces of paper, all of which I’d like to complete. Allen goes on to provide the reader with a method to categorize the projects, as well as a system for keeping up with them. Obviously, it’s too early to tell if the aspects of Allen’s system I’ve incorporated into my own routine will prove fruitful, but if my frequency of posts suddenly increases exponentially, you’ll know something is working.
—
[1] Obviously, there are some notable exceptions: books that have managed to permeate the overarching ethos of business. Of the top of my head, Liar’s Poker, The Black Swan, and The Tipping Point are three examples of this.
[2] A word to the wise: keep abreast of the waiting lists for new books at your local library.
[3] Albeit in different shades of white
[4] Google Tasks does the trick for me, although I’ve heard good things about Remember the Milk.
I’ve Been Busy
My absence from this blog for the past few weeks has been due to real-life school obligations and activities. Apologies aside, I have been busy. The type of busy that has more or less uprooted my daily routine, including my running and reading regimens. Needless to say, blogging has also fallen by the wayside.
Despite my recent busyness, I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy, or even the least bit stressed. My whirlwind weeks have given me little time to ponder, leaving me focused and goal oriented: truly living in the moment.
I recently spoke with a friend who has expressed feelings of stress, unhappiness, and depression, largely due to existential, “What am I doing with my life?”-type issues. I have received similar calls from many friends over the course of this past semester. All of them are currently attending college, and none of them have found it particularly taxing to this point: they’ve been relatively free to enjoy themselves at their own discretion. As such, they have created new friends and experienced new things: lived life. Bringing these facts to their attention, they were largely dismissive, casting their issues as “more fundamental,” more big picture.
Although I didn’t say this to her (or for that matter, any of them), I automatically assumed that she was bored. The novelty of college parties has largely worn off, and her lack of a daily grind has left her with too much time to ponder exactly what she’s doing with her life, taking classes hundreds of miles away from home.
Busyness is a fundamental aspect in the lives of successful people. Ben Casnocha has recently blogged about two individuals (James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy) who have taken the notion of being busy to an obsessive level. As such, they have remained productive and creative, and their output has been consistently well-received.
When Daily Routines stopped posting, I was crushed. The blog was littered with tales of the world’s foremost artists crafting daily routines with zen-like proficiency: making the most out of every one of their waking hours. Although my daily routine isn’t quite as static as the featured icons, I took solace in their strict attention to a busy regimen, keeping their body and minds active in order to achieve their lofty goals.
Serendipity
Life as a college student isn’t always as easy as it’s cracked up to be. Take today, for example.
Class started at 8am, necessitating a 7:24 wake-up. Class continued until 11am, at which time I proceeded to continue studying for my Business Ethics test over a medium coffee and an everything bagel. The test itself was conveniently scheduled for 1pm, allowing for 2 hours of unadulterated study. Post-test, I had docketed a half-hour between test time and my next class, set for 2:30, for an important phone call.
The test concluded, finishing a half-hour early, and I sought out a quiet spot for my phone call. Although my mind was swimming with the tenets of Friedman(s) and Erber, I attempted to clear my head, placing my ear to the phone’s receiver in preparation for Ethan-centric discourse.
I soon came to the realization that the person on the other end of the line was not going to pick up: an oversized monkey-wrench thrown into my fragile plans. Setting my phone aside, I realized that it was a beautiful day outside. I sought out the New York Times, provided for free to all University students here on campus. I soon deduced that it was Tuesday, and cast Sections A and B of the newspaper aside on a park bench, seeking out the Tuesday Crossword.
***Brief disclaimer: Since my senior year of high school, I have been attempting the Will Shortz-edited New York Times’ Crossword Puzzle almost every Monday and Tuesday. To most Crossword snobs (including myself) the New York Times Crossword Puzzle is the only crossword puzzle worth solving. The Times’ Crossword increases in difficulty each day: starting with the (relatively) innocuous Monday puzzle to the vaunted Sunday puzzle. Of the weekly output, I can consistently complete ~50% of Monday and Tuesday’s offerings. To this date, I’ve fully completed 3 crosswords (1 Monday and 2 Tuesdays, strangely enough.) While one might scoff at this extremely low success percentage (something like .0001), I am extremely proud of my un-abetted puzzle mastery.
Reaching The Arts (Section C) of the Times, two articles on the front pages immediately caught my attention before I could begin to perform the ceremonious “crossword fold.” The first was a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “newest” book, What the Dog Saw, a compilation of articles written for the New Yorker (a la Consider the Lobster.) I remembered that coincidentally, I was planning on giving a presentation on Gladwell next Monday, as cast the article aside in my memory bank for later reference. The second article was a discussion of the relevancy of Political Science, a field that I just so happen to major in here at college. Again, coincidentally, I was tapped for a meeting with a university Political Science professor just the next day, and made an additional mental note of this article, no doubt planning on referencing it within tomorrow’s conversation.
Finally, I set out to delve into Tuesday’s crossword puzzle. Alas, it was 2:27, and accounting, my next class, was in 3 minutes! Sitting on a bench outside the lecture hall, I found myself hard-pressed to skip a class I was literally sitting outside of. Disappointed, I tucked the Arts section under my arm and headed into class, preparing my already-exhausted mental state for rote accounting-related acumen.
I sat down as the teacher was beginning his lecture, sitting in the same seat I religiously occupy each Tuesday from 2:30 to 3:45. On my lap sat the empty crossword, begging further inspection. I conceded, and decided to dedicate the rest of the class period to the crossword. The result is available below: my fourth completed crossword of my life. Another Tuesday, too.
Normally, I don’t submit to superstition, luck, or any other forces of chance. However, the serendipity stemming from one phone call, or the lack of one, is remarkable.
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
Yes, another post about David Foster Wallace. I preface this post by emphatically promising that this will be my last DFW-related post for a while (maybe.)
David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, is a collection of essays written over a ten year period. Like Infinite Jest, the essays are not in chronological order, rather, they are deliberately ordered for maximum effect and efficiency. Similar to Chuck Klosterman’s IV, publications as varied as Harper’s, The Village Voice, and Gourmet hired the services of David Foster Wallace as a freelance journalist, seeking a DFW-esque touch on their magazine through his book reviews, events, and essays.
Consider the Lobster was my second exposure to David Foster Wallace, after a lengthy experience reading DFW’s Infinite Jest. Attributes of DFW’s writing have become increasingly clear as I continue to work my way through his oeuvre: transparency between his life and his work, literary segues in the form of lengthy footnotes, and an incredible attention to grammatical precision. However, one resounding difference I was surprised to find was that I learned much more about David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster, a collection of nonlinear essays, than Infinite Jest, seemingly a personalized piece of fiction.
First and foremost, David Foster Wallace was a firmly entrenched, anti-establishment provocateur. This is more than apparent from his finished products, shown pre-publication in their unedited and unadulterated form throughout Consider the Lobster. In 2004, the now-defunct Gourmet magazine hired DFW to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, one of the largest regional culinary festivals in the United States. Very little coverage ensued surrounding the actual festival. Instead, DFW filled 7 full, text-laden magazine pages (19 in its Consider the Lobster‘s pre-edited form) providing his personal views on mass tourism [1], before wrestling with the ethics of killing lobsters, going so far as to reference the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA.) Gourmet‘s readers, whom I imagine enjoy their lobster, as well as other ethically-questionable culinary vices from time-to-time, were met with a literary “punch-in-the-gut,” so effective in its argument that I, a carnivore, will be hard pressed to enjoy the crustacean in the near future. Rolling Stone tapped DFW to cover John McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign, hoping for (I imagine) a finished product similar to Hunter S. Thompson’s coverage of George McGovern’s 1972 bid for Democratic nomination [2]. Instead, what Rolling Stone received was a staggering account, in which Wallace manages to extol his reverence towards the “techs” of the various network news outfits, while purposely distancing himself from the rest of the mainstream media covering the campaign. In fact, the draft which DFW submitted to Rolling Stone would, by his own admission, “take up most of Rolling Stone‘s text-space and might even cut into the percentage of the magazine reserved for advertisements,” In both instances, I chuckle at the thought of the editors of their respective magazines receiving drafts from DFW, hoping for an inspired piece of journalism on the topic-in-question, obviously aghast when receiving something that so obviously strayed from their initial intentions.
Secondly, David Foster Wallace casts himself as an everyman: a champion of the blue-collar American. At several points in the book, DFW goes out of his way to poke fun at aristocracy, old money, and “yachty” culture, while espousing the virtues of the working class. From “his anything-but-New York-intellectual author photo” on, DFW makes no attempt to shield his readers from his own political, philosophical, and societal beliefs [4.] The most profound example of this is found in the longest essay of the book, a 67-page “review” of a dictionary, Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern America. During this essay, DFW manages to cast a dichotomy between the different dialects found within the English language, including (but not limited to,) “Black English, Latino English, Rural Southern, Urban Southern, Standard Upper-Midwest, Maine Yankee, East-Texas Bayou, [and] Boston Blue-Collar [5].” DFW then segues to his personal experience as a professor, in which he recounts a speech he’s often given to black students who were ” (a) bright and inquisitive as hell and (b) deficient in what US higher education considers written English facility [5].” The speech itself is inherently incendiary: he begins by explaining the dichotomy of American dialects seen above, before informing the student-in-question the difference between Standard Black English (SBE,) their “native” dialect, and Standard Written English (SWE), the dialect used in college English classes. Professor Wallace proceeds to concede that while SWE could be interpreted as Standard White English (still, SWE), as it was developed and largely enforced by educated white people, “anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE.” By no means is this recounted dialogue remotely PC, and DFW cedes that he’s received an official university complaint as a result of his diatribe. However, DFW makes a point to include these personal experiences on his readers, in turn imparting his personal societal philosophies upon them concurrently. Remember this all stemmed from a book review, of a dictionary, no less.
I’ve made no secret of my personal feelings towards David Foster Wallace as a full-blown literary genius. In past posts, I’ve additionally explored the nature of genius, before concluding there is no resolute definition of genius. DFW and I seemingly shared this extended interest in the nature of genius, a nature that David Foster Wallace explicitly explores in the form of several character studies during Consider the Lobster. Out of the ten essays that collectively compile Consider the Lobster, at least three of these essays directly deal with individuals that DFW himself to be geniuses [6]: Tracy Austin’s prodigious techné in the sport of Tennis, Bryan A. Garner’s comprehensive grammatical prowess, and Dostoevsky’s unrivaled literary mastery. For those of you keeping score at home, the three individuals DFW coins as geniuses overlap with three major themes of DFW’s life: Tennis, grammar, and literature. Again, DFW makes no attempt to hide this transparency from his readers.
I believe that there is, and will never be, any need for a biographical account of David Foster Wallace, as his literary style is such that reading his body of work chronologically would prove more telling than any author’s attempt to chronicle DFW’s life. Witness DFW’s 1996 essay, Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky, a review of Stanford professor and Dostoevsky scholar Joseph Frank’s collection of Dostoevsky biographies, an account of 60 years (1821-1881) in the life of Dostoevsky, split amongst five seperate books, totalling 2,507 pages. Dostoevsky, of course, is the author of notoriously long-winded, unapproachable masterpieces such as The Idiot, The Brothers’ Karamazov, and Crime & Punishment [7]. Putting the implied effort of completeing this comprehensive body of work aside, DFW literally gushes his affection for Dostoevsky across the landscape of this essay. DFW marvels at Dostoevsky’s ability to create real-life characters and juicy stories, explaining to his readers that “Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that’s really important.” He proceeds to lament the current state of the literary world, ceding that emotionally powerful literature is no longer possible due to “certain cultural experctations that severely constrain our own novelists’ ability to be “serious.” [8]” DFW concludes
“So he – we, fiction writhers won’t (can’t) dare try to use serious art to advance idealologies. The project would be like Menard’s Quixote. People would either laugh or be embarassed for us. Given this (and this is a given), who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? But they wouldn’t (could not) laugh if a piece of morally passionate, passionate moral fiction was also ingenious and radiantly human fiction. But how to make it that? How – for a writer today, even a talented writer today – to get up the guts to even try? There are no formulas or guarantees.”
Again, for those of you keeping score at home, this essay was written in 1996, the same year Infinite Jest, another notoriously long-winded, unapproachable masterpiece, was published.
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[1] No surprise here. Wallace informs the reader that in his eyes, mass tourism “is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you,” and compares being a tourist to “becom[ing] economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
[2] Initially serialized in Rolling Stone in 1972, and later released as a book in early 1973 as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.
[3] “Up, Simba.” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
[4] The first essay of the book, Big Red Son, is an account of his experience at the Adult Video News, or AVN Awards. The 50-page essay chronicles the pornography industry’s biggest night and the surrounding fanfare which accompanies it in vividly vulgar detail, and is certainly not for anyone who places family values anywhere near the forefront of their consciousness.
[5] “Authority and American Usage.” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
[6] Albeit, in different lights
[7] I’m merely sticking these links in here as reference points. As I’ve never read Dostoevsky, I cannot submit to the efficacy of the links’ translations. Russian, as I’ve been made to understand, is a exceedingly difficult language to translate to English.
[8] “Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
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