What Can We Learn from David Foster Wallace?

If you attended the Greater Boston Vineyard a few weeks back or caught the sermon online, you'll know that I have a mini-obsession (there's got to be an oxymoron buried in that phrase) with David Foster Wallace.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not so obsessed that I've actually, like, read his seminal novel Infinite Jest (one of Time Magazine's 100 Great Novels of the 20th Century) or his new, posthumous, unfinished novel The Pale King.  I'm obsessed, but not crazy.  I don't believe I have a friend who has read these books, and I have many friends who, like me, have started Infinite Jest with all due determination to make it all the way through, whatever obstacles might come our way.  But, as it turns out, we are Ahab; it is the whale.

But I have many friends who, like me, have read a good sampling of Wallace's non-fiction which, strangely, is particularly easy reading, along with being strikingly insightful and engaging.  (My favorite at the moment: his essay on John Updike [and Norman Mailer and others]: "Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?")

But it's, of all things, his one commencement address--at Kenyon College in 2005--that I and some of my friends have found so provocative and helpful.  (If you would prefer the original audio version--which I think is better--you can listen to it in 2 parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2)   Can I make a pitch, oh awesome blog reader, that you take 23 minutes of your day to listen to this?  If you're anything like me, you won't regret it.  You're talking to someone who, on a recent date night, made Grace listen to the whole speech as we were driving to a movie (the new Jane Eyre--Grace's favorite novel, and this movie version is probably the best I've seen, FYI).  I had to pull over to finish the speech up, because we were getting close to the theater.  When it was done, Grace said, "Wow.  Well, I know why you liked that speech so much.  It's the first truly stage 4 speech you've ever heard."

Wallace does some remarkable things in this speech.  He overtly tweaks stage 3 college students, and he does so by conceding everthing they believe about stage 2.  Yes, of course these folks merit your judgment.  Conceded.  But now that we've got that out of the way, what's so great about your life, with all its miseries and judgments?  Are you so sure that there's no transcendence in the world? 

He walks us through an extended look at an average, tedious work day--which he says is the future for all of these starry-eyed graduates--and proposes a way of reframing the tedium in a way that, rather than leaving you only with judgment, superiority and misery, might offer you the kind of transcendence "that created the stars."  (I ran an 8-minute clip of this section during the church service, to good response [from those who commented to me].)  It's just a remarkable speech.

The book that Charles cited in his recent, provocative look at "Axial Age Faith" is this philosophical take on the Western literary tradition called All Things Shining.  It opens with a look at David Foster Wallace's alleged nihilism, which they see as the defining statement on our current age.  They praise Wallace to the skies--and offer a really interesting advance look at the argument of The Pale King--but then say that the one flaw in the case he's arguing for in his books--that he summarizes in his Kenyon College speech--is that no human being is capable of reframing each moment of their lives in the way he's arguing for.  Wallace, as you may know, hung himself in 2008.  He'd been chemically depressed for a long time and he had problems with his antidepressants in the season before his suicide.  That said, these folks argued that his philosophy had to lead to his despair.  You would need--they claimed--to be a god to live in the admirable way he's describing.  One Wallace scholar in my church takes great issue with their interpretation of him, so this is by no means conceded.

But take a listen to his speech.  Does one need to be a god to live in stage 4?  In my sermon, I offered up Brother Lawrence as the spiritual response to Wallace.  Like Wallace, he wanted to find transcendence in every mundane moment.  (Bro. Lawrence's main occupation was washing dishes.)  But he felt that he accomplished this in a way that was ultimately easy, as opposed to what Wallace calls "unimaginably hard."  Does actually being alive while on this earth require an ongoing connection with a Transcendence that doesn't come from inside of us?  I'd love your thoughts.