Fountain City

[skwantz]

I

There's this book I love.  It's called Wonder Boys, and it's by Michael Chabon. It appeals to my sensibilities in that it's simple--it's the story of a guy with a problem that he needs to overcome in order to move forward and be functional, and it all takes place over the course of a weekend. It has focus. It is tight. And I like it that way, for

Comments

[heyitsgogi]

So First: I don't think anyone should give a fuck whether DFW or MC or whatever is "considered a genius." Who are these considerers anyway? You consider Chabon to be a better writer than Wallace, and you've read enough books to get to have an opinion. Which you back up well, btw. As Kurt Vonnegut said in a much pithier way, just sitting down to read a book makes you smarter than, like 98% of everyone else out there. Doesn't matter if it's Danielle Steele or Derrida. And, whether you're enjoying the book is the most important thing. No way you'll read them all, might as well not waste time on the ones you don't like.

But Second: I realized at some point in the middle of reading Infinite Jest that the whole thing was a shaggy dog story, sort of like Proust, the other well-known maximalist. So when I was reading it, I didn't care that there wasn't much of a plot, or that the plot was largely insane, or that he explained the goddamn latin names of every single goddamned drug in the book, or that at least once, an entire chapter was a 9 pt font footnote. That's part of the fun, that's the writer fucking with the reader a little bit. That's DFW showing off. And his showing off is pretty impressive. It sounds like Fountain City just wasn't holding together, but I'd bet that at least during some point, Chabon was aiming for a proust-like novel of grandeur. When he realized he couldn't hold it together, he decided to do the opposite, to great effect. But I wouldn't be surprised if DFW had tried to write a tight little novel at first, and just found it wasn't working for him, then decided to go big.

Third: this is an awesome review. It makes my brain happy. More!