Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (7 page)

[A cliffhanger; David stops.

The waitress has returned with my tip after all. David retains his thought.]

—just talk about a kind of mind-set that can get ravenous and that can tear you up. And I just—you know, I went through some of that. And I just, it’s weird: I just don’t wanna send any blood supply to that part of my
brain
anymore. Not because I’m this great
person. But I just—then I’m really unhappy and I’m not doing any work.

Plus
, the research on this thing. I’m serious, it took me out of the loop. I don’t even
know
90 percent of what’s been published. I didn’t even know Jayne Anne Phillips had a new book, like I told you. Until this escort in Chicago told me. I just missed like four years of this. And I’m not sorry not to be part of that world anymore. I just—there’s nothing but envy, and sort of puffery, and all that stuff in it. And it’s not like I’m above it. It’s just that it—the amount that it hurts me, outweighs whatever good feelings it gives me.

Hemingway tapeworm quote: “Literary New York is like a bottle of tapeworms all trying to feed off each other.”

Yeah: Or great white sharks fighting over a
bathtub
, you know? There’s so little—the amount of celebrity and money we’re talkin’ about is on the scale of like true entertainment so small. And the formidable intellect marshaled by these egos fighting over this small section of the pie, it’s just … yeah, it seems kind of absurd. But I’ll tell ya, I was in New York when the
Esquire
thing came out. [I think he means the 1987 Literary Cosmos thing: a map, with him on the horizon as one of the “approaching comets.” No, he means one of the book’s few mixed reviews, from
Esquire
’s literary editor Will Blythe.] And it hit that part of me, that writer-vanity part of me. And I was right in that: It’s like, I wanna go see him, how dare he? All that, like—whereas when I’m
here
, it’s just more like, “Huh, what an interesting storm, going on outside my window. I’m sure glad I’m inside.”

How long a part of that world?

I don’t know … I went through Tucson. Then I went to Yaddo. I was at Yaddo twice. And I would go to New York, and give these readings, go to these parties. There were some of these writer-guys at Yaddo with me when I was there. And they were like five years older than me, and they were like big superstars, and I was like …

[Jay McInerney, Lorrie Moore, and others]

So you were at Yaddo with some literary heavyweights and you fell into that sort of casino mind-set?

[Turns off tape: He’s careful.]

Sometimes at parties. It was more just, you know, you’re a student, you’re a writing student. You’re young, you are by definition immature. And you have these ideas about why people are in the game, what they want. And most of the ideas degenerate into—devolve into—this idea of how other people are gonna regard you. So you look to these people who are well regarded, and regard them as having made it and all this kind of stuff. And I don’t know if
Rolling Stone
readers are interested, it’s just—most bright people, something happens in your late twenties, where you realize that this other, that
how
other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out. That you’ve got to find, make some other détente.

[This is his friend Mark Costello’s vision of what happened to David. Mark was curious, from the beginning, to see how David would make out in the field; he lived this part—the positioning and business politics—this version of the literary life with David. David, starting out, called it the “publishing episcopacy;” a world of bishops and competing dioceses.

His friend Jon Franzen sees a different novel: a David who tried for adulthood and had trouble getting there.

Writers can be especially awful, about measuring each other and about touching fame. There’s a famous New York story about a movie made of a very well-known—Pulitzer Prize, etc.—novelist’s book. Halfway through the shoot, from location, the novelist’s agent receives a call. An assistant answers instead. The novelist immediately says, “You know X?”—insert famous actress’s name here—“I banged her.” Writers eye and measure the celebrity world and don’t
know how to deal with the portion that falls to them; because what they’re selling is not their features, physique, or their charm; it’s more personal, it’s their brain, their
them
, and so they get as anxious about that as a starlet would about nose or waistline. How do I husband this thing that’s earning me praise and money? How do I protect and expand it? And what is it people like about me anyway?]

And I am weak enough, and easily enough plunged into these little worlds, that it’s just real good for me that I’m not part of it anymore.

Easier to say that now, though? With Infinite Jest in magazines and on covers of book reviews? With your readings jammed?

I would like to think you’re wrong. Here’s what I was ready for: I am proud of this book. I worked really hard on it. I was pretty sure that it would fall stillborn from the presses. But that within three or four years—like
Girl
sells better now than when it first came out. I thought, hopefully it would sell well enough so that at least Little, Brown could think, “All right, we’re eventually gonna get our money back,” so that they would buy my next thing. In all earnestness I say to you, that was my expectation, that’s what I was ready for.

When did counterindications come?

When
Vogue
and the fashion magazines …

[The tape side runs out.]

… trust the idea of people who read
Vogue
and
Elle
and
Harper’s Bazaar
buying four-and-a-half-pound fairly difficult pieces of work. Y’know, when they said
Newsweek
wanted to send a photographer, I think I began to get the idea that there was—I thought maybe Little, Brown had just …

My first thought was fear. ’Cause I thought, “Wow, they’ve really kicked up the hype engine. And this means I’m gonna get
smeared
.
And shittily reviewed, at a much more public level than I would have before.” So it sort of accumulated.

[Simple thing: everyone sees him differently. Bonnie Nadell, his agent, as a sensitive person she was protecting. Franzen, as a friendly rival and fellow whiz who would maybe benefit from a little simultaneous social translation. As long as he persuaded enough people of those different aspects of himself—sort of sending them out on missions—they would protect him on any grounds that needed defense. Done persistently enough, there’d be protection from everything.]

Michael Pietsch’s presentation. He went to his sales force, at their conference, and said, “This is why we publish books.”

I wasn’t there. I know he really liked it. And I know he really read it hard, because he helped me—I mean, that book is partly him. A lot of the cuts are where he convinced me of the cuts. But also, editors and agents jack up their level of effusiveness when they talk with you, to such an extent that it becomes very difficult to read the precise shade of their enthusiasm. What’s being presented for you and what they really feel.

I’m not an idiot. I mean, I knew for them to do this, this long, it really cuts their profit margin, ’cause paper’s so expensive, etc., etc. That they had to really like it. And partly that feels good, and partly makes it feel, I mean, I got fairly lucky. I know this sounds very political. But I think as a house, these guys are—you can find houses where people really love books. And you can find houses where they’ve got a really good hype machine. But to find one that’s got a combination of the two, and that also really happens to like
your
book?—it seems to me I got fairly lucky.

Sounds like it. But the indications: some months ago? Four months ago, you were saying?

November. And then things quieted down—and then, ah, same
week the
Esquire
thing comes out, came out,
Harper’s Bazaar
came out. And I thought, “Oh fuck: there’s just gonna be all this negative stuff about the hype. Those
idiots
for handing out those postcards.”

[For six months prior to publication, Little, Brown had sent postcards alerting reviewers and booksellers to the upcoming novel. A card with no title; then, weeks later, a phrase like “Infinite Writer” or “Infinite Pleasure.” Then they announced, “David Foster Wallace’s
Infinite Jest.”
]

Um, I forgot, I had to go to L.A. to do this thing about a Lynch movie. For
Premiere
. It’s gonna come out next fall. It’s called
Lost Highway
, it’s gonna be
very
cool.

Lynch had his own trouble with getting famous. Twin Peaks, the Time cover
.

He’d been through a lot before then; he’d been through
Dune
.

But when I was out there, I would go back to the hotel, and there’d be like four messages all the time, on the hotel machine, of various people wanting to talk to me.

And I’d been through—I mean, I’d been through three books. I mean, one of them—like a limited edition. You know, like a $500 advance for. And I’d been through some of this, and I realized that, unless the publishing world had changed drastically, there was some sort of … So I think, I think January, when I was in L.A.

What’s happened since January?

[Long pause]

You know what? I think it’s hard to describe, because—this is not going to satisfy you—it all happened sorta so
fast
. You know? I talked to
Newsweek
one week and
Time
the next, and there are like
fifteen different people calling up, wantin’ to do articles. And if they weren’t incredibly obnoxious, I would talk to ’em. And then as you know, the fact checkers would call. And then I was trying to work on this Lynch piece, which was very hard and very long. And so I remember, starting at about mid-January, when I noticed I couldn’t be home very much. ’Cause if I was home, just the phone rang all the time. And I remember feeling kind of excited, but bein’ scared about … because I really thought, I was really ready for this not to be liked.

I mean—have you read it? It’s reasonably hard. There are things about it that are reasonably hard. I was ready for a lot more perceptions I think like what that lady had, that Michiko Kakutani lady. [Michiko Kakutani, lead reviewer of the daily
New York Times
.] So I was sort of … guardedly excited, because I felt like this could either be a lot of praise, or it could also be a whole lot more public, you know, burning, basically.

And then I didn’t read it, but Michael called and said there was a review in … uh. Oh, I met the guy at the party. The man who’s married to McGuane’s daughter. Walter Kirn. And then Charis Conn called me and said, “Walter Kirn doesn’t like anything, and he really liked this.” And then I began to go, wow. I mean, “People seem really to like this.”

You know what he said?

I didn’t read it. I mean, I heard. People told me a couple of things that he said, which sounded to me really stupid. (Voice blocked by cigarette) ’Cause if I was on committees, it would so piss me off that …

[Walter Kirn,
New York Magazine
, 2/12: “Next year’s book awards have been decided. The plaques and citations can now be put in escrow. … The novel is that colossally disruptive. And that spectacularly good.”]

Didn’t go out to find it?

I went and found the
Atlantic
, because I was scared about Sven [Birkerts]. Look—it’s not like I’m, I’m not some
Buddha
. It’s just that, I’ve been through reading reviews before. They’re not for me. They always fuck me up. And I’ll
read
’em. But I’ve gotta like finish this book of nonfiction for Michael by like the end of April. And when that’s done, I’m gonna go ahead and freak out about this whole thing; I just can’t do it right now.

How’d it feel, though: “As if the book is a National Book Award winner already”?

I applauded his taste and discernment. How’s that for a response? What do you want me to say? How would
you
feel? I can’t describe it; it’s indescribable. You speculate and I’ll describe.

[Slightly mean/clever smile]

I’d feel I’d known all along it was OK, and here was someone actually saying what I’d hoped to hear said
.

Except you also know that—you know all along when something’s really good. But there’s the other part, that, “Oh no, this makes absolutely no sense to anybody else—I’m a pretentious fuckwad. People are gonna ridicule me.”

So it’s sort of like, um … here’s another part. You’ll like this, because this won’t make me look attractive at all. If you’re used to doing heavy-duty literary stuff—we’re talkin’ caviar for the general, that doesn’t sell all that well? Being human animals with egos, we find a way to accommodate that fact of our ego, by the following equation: If it sells really well and gets a lot of attention, it must be shit. It’s just generated by the hype machine.

Then of course the ultimate irony is: um, if your own thing gets a lot of attention and sells really well, then the very mechanism you’ve used to shore yourself up when your stuff didn’t sell well, is
now part of the Darkness Nexus when it does. And I’m still working that through. I’ve still gotta, I’m still worried that, Yeah, the book’s funny, and fairly fun to read. But it’s fun to read partly because I wanted to try to do something that was really
hard
and avant-garde, but that was fun enough so that it forced the reader to do the work that was required. And I think I’m worried that the fuss [his word throughout] is all about the book’s entertainment value, and that people will buy it on that.

Buy it for that reason—which is good, because Little, Brown makes money. But then they’ll read 150 pages and get that:
“Eeeew
. Y’know, this isn’t what I thought at all.” And then
not
read it. Which, I’ll … Yeah, all right. Avant-garde, or whatever you want to call, like, experimental fiction writers, we don’t write for the money. But we’re not saints. We write to be read. You know what I mean? And the idea of, OK, the book making a lot of money but not getting read, is for me fairly cold comfort. Although I’m certainly not allergic to money. But you know what I mean? So, see me in a year. Y’know, if a year from now—like, if I have a bunch of conversations, like with this guy Silverblatt [Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR’s
Bookworm
], or with Vince Passaro, or with like David Gates, somebody who clearly read the book closely. Um, and a bunch of people are saying it’s good, then I’m probably gonna start feeling wholeheartedly good about the book. As it is, there’s a kind of creeping feeling of a kind of misunderstanding.