A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
David Foster Wallace · 1997
Contains the title essay (a cruise ship piece as cultural criticism), the Kafka essay, the tennis piece, and the TV essay "E Unibus Pluram," arguably the most important essay about American culture and irony written in the 1990s.
The case against
Wallace's tics are all here: footnotes breeding footnotes, the performance of his own anxiety as a critical method, and a faint condescension toward the cruise passengers and state-fair Midwesterners he's ostensibly observing. The TV essay's diagnosis of irony has dated into a period piece. Brilliance and shtick arrive in the same sentences.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
