David Foster Wallace by Hannah Agosta |
My hero:
David Foster Wallace by Colin Barrett
Infinite Jest, a novel brimming with compassion and empathy, left me euphoric and burdened, and made me want to be a better writer
Saturday 12 July 2014
I
David Foster Wallace |
I read Infinite Jest on my weekday tram commute over a summer. Just over 1,000 pages long, heavily influenced by the dense, formally daunting works of Pynchon, Gaddis and McElroy, Infinite Jest is a crypto-apocalyptic, science-fiction-tainted satire and tragedy. It's about a great many things, from tennis and addiction to roving packs of giant feral hamsters and militant Quebecois wheelchair assassins, but beneath its almost defensively elaborate postmodern conceits is a novel brimming with extraordinary compassion and empathy.
The two main characters, teen tennis prodigy Hal Incandenza and recovering addict and ex-con Donald Gately, have stayed with me as few fictional entities do. Like Ulysses, Infinite Jest is a book that seems to echo and anticipate many other books. And it's no accident that its two central characters are a gifted, vulnerable but insufferably snide little prick, and an older, wiser, fundamentally decent man; or that the narrative hinges tantalisingly on the prospect of their exasperatingly deferred, but surely inevitable, connection.
The book left me euphoric and burdened. Here it is, it seemed to say: here is the torrential spate of the mind talking incessantly back to itself, the bottomless aporias and fleeting ecstasies that you, as a human, must suffer alone, like everyone else. Here is the head that pounds like a heart.
Infinite Jest gave me back to myself, and left me with nowhere to hide. I stopped writing my brittle, evasive poems. I began to wonder how on earth you do something like this.
2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm
2010
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey
022 My hero / John Keats by Helen Dunmore
023 My hero / Edith Wharton by Lionel Shriver
024 My hero / Elizabeth Barrett Browing by Sara Paretsky
025 My hero / Nelson Mandela by Gordon Brown
026 My hero / Billy Wilder by David Nicholls
027 My hero / Samuel Beckett by Nick Clegg
028 My hero / Margaret Atwood by Caroline Lucas
029 My hero / Colette by Helen Simpson
030 My hero / Cyd Charisse by Tony Parsons
031 My hero / Nicolai Medtner by Philip Pullman
032 My hero / Jean Genet by Ahdaf Soueif
033 My hero / Jeri Johnson by Kate Moss
034 My hero / John Maynard Keynes by Joan Bakewell
035 My hero / Patti Smith by Joseph O'Connor
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner
041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson
051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper
2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)
2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)
131 My hero / Maurice Sendak by Neil Gaiman (11 May)
156 My hero / Barack Obama by Lorrie Moore (8 November)
160 My hero / Charles Baudelaire by Roberto Calasso (7 December)
174 My hero / Alice Munro by Nell Freudenberger (29 March)
176 My hero / Mae West by Kathy Lette (12 April)
184 My hero / Louise Bourgeois by Tracey Emin (28 June)
187 My hero / Roddy Doyle by Kerry Hudson (19 July)
191 My hero: Elmore Leonard by Philip Hensher (23 August)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)
2014
206 My hero / Sir John Tenniel by Chris Riddell (11 Jan)
222 My hero / Emily Brontë by Lucasta Miller (16 May)
241 My hero / Mary Shelley by Neil Gaiman (18 October)
2015
261 My hero / Football by David Conn (30 May)
280 My hero / George Weindelfel by Antonia Fraser
281 My hero / Dmitri Shostakovich by Julian Barnes
282 My hero / Charlotte Brontë by Tracy Chevalier
283 My hero / Margaret Foster by Valerie Grove
284 My hero / David Cesarini by David Herman
285 My hero / Umberto Eco by Jonathan Coe
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