so it goes

it is and it isn't that complicated

The literary It Piece of the last week was Patricia Lockwood on David Foster Wallace. I did not love it! But I’ll also be the first to admit my DFW knowledge is pretty light. I love Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and I’ve read some other short stories and so on. But Infinite Jest, The Pale King, the big essays—no. I’ll get around to them, or I won’t, who knows, not me, I don’t know the future.

Lockwood uses Brief Interviews as a way of discussing the biographical element of her subject, i.e., that David Foster Wallace was a violent man. The way she brings it into the essay has, to me, the character of a jump scare—like you’re supposed to be lulled into fondness for the first half of the essay, but then she pounces with the phrase “moving car.” And even the phrase “moving car” is a bit weird because, yes, if you’re reading this long long essay about David …