QotD: Ghost Writer

If you could write like one fiction author, who would it be?

Infinite Jest: A Novel

Submitted by Marilyn.

ETD: Now that I'm at home I added a longer quotation of his work below.

He writes a lot of non-fiction these days but his works of fiction are literally considered genius. (He won the MacAuthur "Genius Grant" in 1997 for his second novel, Infinite Jest. I've never met a person who has successfully finished that book. It is 1,100 + pages which includes 100 pages or more of footnotes.)

David Foster Wallace

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

From his book for short stories Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

That's it. That's all there is to that story.

As an aside: John Krasinski (AKA Jim Halpert) is writing and directing an adaptation of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for a movie that is set to come out this year.

As I said above I'm adding a longer quotation of his work. It's from a book of short stories he wrote. This is 1 1/2 pages from a story about Lyndon Johnson. It's told from the POV of his assistant. The scene is the two of them in the Oval Office overlooking protesters in the park.

The things that LBJ says in here really resonated with me. I photocopied those pages and had them posted next to my computer for years when I was younger. Reading it now I see that these paragraphs have really informed my way of thinking in my life.

He was shaking his head. "I believe... I believe I am out of touch with the youth of America. I believe that they cannot be touched by me, or by what's right, or by intellectual concepts on what's right for a nation."

I sneezed.

He touched, with big brown-freckled fingers, at the window, leaving more smears. "You'll say this is easy for me to say, but I say they've had it too goddamned easy, son. These youths that are yippies and that are protesters and that use violence and public display. We gave it to them too easy, boy. I mean their Daddies. Men that I was youths with. And these youths today are pissed off. They ain't never once had to worry or hurt or suffer in any real way whatsoever. They do not know Great Depression and they do not know desolation." He looked at me. "You think that's good?"

I looked back at him.

"I think I'm gettin' to be a believer in folks' maybe needing to suffer some. You see some implications in that belief? It implies our whole agenda of domestic programs is maybe possibly bad, boy. I'm headed for thinking it's smelling bad right at the heart of the whole thing." He inhaled nasally, watching protesters dance around. "We're taking away folks' suffering here at home through these careful domestic programs, boy," he said, "without giving them nothing to replace it. Take a look at them dancing across over there, boy, shouting fuck you like they invented both fucking and me, their President, take a look over across, and you'll see what I see. I see some animals that need to suffer, some folks that need some suffering to even be Americans inside, boy; and if we don't give them some suffering, why, they'll just go and hunt up some for themselves. They'll take some suffering from some oriental youths who are caught in a great struggle between sides, they'll go and take those other folks' suffering and take it inside themselves. They're getting stimulation from it, son. I'm believing in the youths of America's need for some genuine stimulation. Those youths are out there making their own stimulation; they're making it from scratch off oriental youths wouldn't squat to help your Mama take a leak. We as leaders haven't given them shit. They think prosperity and leadership is dull. God bless the general patheticness of their souls." He pressed his nose against the glass. I had a quick vision, as he stood there, of children and candy stores.

I squinted as a helicopter’s passing spot brightened the Oval Office to a brief blue noon. ‘So you think there’s something right about what they’re doing out there?’

‘”Something right,”’ Lyndon snorted, motionless at the blue window. ‘No,’ ‘cause they got no notion of right and wrong. Listen. They got no notion whatsoever of right and wrong, boy. Listen’

We listened to them. I sniffed quietly.

‘To them, right and wrong is words, boy.’ He came away and eased himself into his big desk chair, sitting straight, hands out before him on the unscarred presidential cherrywood. ‘Right and wrong ain’t words,’ he said. ‘They’re feelings. In your guts and intestines and such. Not words. Not songs with guitars. They’re what make you feel like you do. They’re inside you. Your heart and digestion. Like the folks you personally love.’ He felt at his forearm and clenched his fist. ‘Let them sad sorry boys out across there ho be responsible for something for a second, boy. Let them go be responsible for some folks and then come back and tell their President, me, LBJ, about right and wrong and so fourth.’