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The twenty-two essays in this powerful collection -- perhaps the most diverse in the entire series -- come from a wide variety of periodicals, ranging from n + 1 and PMS to the New Republic and The New Yorker, and showcase a remarkable range of forms. Read on for narrative -- in first and third person -- opinion, memoir, argument, the essay-review, confession, reportage, even a dispatch from Iraq. The philosopher Peter Singer makes a case for philanthropy; the poet Molly Peacock constructs a mosaic tribute to a little-known but remarkable eighteenth-century woman artist; the novelist Marilynne Robinson explores what has happened to holiness in contemporary Christianity; the essayist Richard Rodriguez wonders if California has anything left to say to America; and the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempts to find common ground with the evangelical community. In his introduction, David Foster Wallace makes the spirited case that "many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”… (altro)
The foolish political analysts of the late aughts thought they were on the cusp of a precipitous descent into hell itself. (Whereas it's exactly this moment that is the cusp. No, rather this moment. Actually it's this moment...) In fact, the political briefs on the Iraq war (there are four of them) are all quite good, if at times alarmist(: 'if Bush is enthusiastic about the use of torture, which is in violation of the Geneva conventions, then we can expect his enthusiastic use of nuclear weapons which are not in violation of these conventions...' ) The disguised fiction/prose pieces aren't terrible either, but the mediocre essays outnumber the good, and none of them produce lasting insight.
Instead we have a collage of DFW's worst impulses, which point backward to his despair. It's one thing to 'lament the horrors of the modern age' while recognizing modern bane/boon are dialectical i.e. 'there is also good'. It's another thing to 'lament the horrors of the modern age' as an unsmiling social reactionary. DFW's perspective on our great 'social degeneration' is more or less: 'These are problems that have never existed before and are currently a major threat to the integrity of our society. We could solve all these problems if everyone listened to me.' Ahistorical at best. Which problems merit this alarm? Late 90s 'Political Correctness' scares in The Freedom to Offend, 'Sexual Degeneracy' panics in Afternoon of the Sex Children, Late 90s 'Liberal Idiocy' screeds in Loaded and Dragon Slayers, 'My-philoosphy-and-political-ideas-are-correct-and-everyone-would-agree-with-me-if-they-just-heard-my-argument' in Out From Xanadu, Apocalypse Now, and others. ( )
I completely enjoyed this collection of essays. I started with the Robinson (Onward Christian Liberals), then cherry picked all the political/war essays, and finally started from the front and read all the remaining ones. My favorite essays were by Robinson, Scarry, Singer, Buruma, Danner, Gessert, and Grief. I also enjoyed the essay on the dog whisperer because I'm addicted to that show on t.v. (I had no idea he was an illegal immigrant). ( )
Deciderization: that's the way it's going to be from here out. Pick your authoritative filter (on any given topic), and follow. That's at least DFW's guest-editor opinion of how one can cope in today's info-saturated infinite info-scape. I agree with DFW. Awesome essays in here, too. This is also DFW's last thing that he created and published before his death last year. (Much, much more unpublished stuff will undoubtedly appear in the years to come. At least, I hope this stuff appears.) ( )
I read these sorts of things because most of the essays I am interested in, were written 20 years, 50 years, 100 years ago...? I think the Best American franchise fails often in their search for the best essays. I bought this particular edition, because I am a DFW fanboy. There a few really awesome essays. There's a really pretty narrative essay involving a building fire. ( )
The standard mixed bag for every sort of collection like this. Some good (mostly the Iraq conflict related "essays") and some that were instantly forgettable. Even DFW's introduction doesn't say all that much of worth. ( )
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I think it's unlikely that anyone is reading this as an introduction.
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Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Surely we also share a love of the Creation -- and an understanding that, however the tensions play out between our opposing worldviews, however science and religion wax and wane in the minds of men, there remains the earthborn yet transcendental obligation we are both morally bound to share.
The twenty-two essays in this powerful collection -- perhaps the most diverse in the entire series -- come from a wide variety of periodicals, ranging from n + 1 and PMS to the New Republic and The New Yorker, and showcase a remarkable range of forms. Read on for narrative -- in first and third person -- opinion, memoir, argument, the essay-review, confession, reportage, even a dispatch from Iraq. The philosopher Peter Singer makes a case for philanthropy; the poet Molly Peacock constructs a mosaic tribute to a little-known but remarkable eighteenth-century woman artist; the novelist Marilynne Robinson explores what has happened to holiness in contemporary Christianity; the essayist Richard Rodriguez wonders if California has anything left to say to America; and the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempts to find common ground with the evangelical community. In his introduction, David Foster Wallace makes the spirited case that "many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”
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Instead we have a collage of DFW's worst impulses, which point backward to his despair. It's one thing to 'lament the horrors of the modern age' while recognizing modern bane/boon are dialectical i.e. 'there is also good'. It's another thing to 'lament the horrors of the modern age' as an unsmiling social reactionary. DFW's perspective on our great 'social degeneration' is more or less: 'These are problems that have never existed before and are currently a major threat to the integrity of our society. We could solve all these problems if everyone listened to me.' Ahistorical at best. Which problems merit this alarm? Late 90s 'Political Correctness' scares in The Freedom to Offend, 'Sexual Degeneracy' panics in Afternoon of the Sex Children, Late 90s 'Liberal Idiocy' screeds in Loaded and Dragon Slayers, 'My-philoosphy-and-political-ideas-are-correct-and-everyone-would-agree-with-me-if-they-just-heard-my-argument' in Out From Xanadu, Apocalypse Now, and others. (