Supposedly Fun ThingA Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
1997
In A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace brings to non-fiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that animated his bestselling novel, Infinite Jest. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again collects David Foster Wallace's writings on a range of subjects that only he could bring together. From personal narratives to tennis, film, philosophy, and postmodern literary theory, no subject is outside the play of his imagination. In "Getting Away from Already Pretty Much Away from it All," a finalist for the 1995 National Magazine Award, Wallace gorges himself on corn dogs, gawks at baton twirlers, and gropes toward the true meaning of the all-American institution the State Fair. In the title essay, one of the most talked about (and frequently photocopied) nonfiction pieces of the year, Wallace reports with excruciating humour the agonies of enduring forced fun on a commercial cruiseliner. Wallace's sports obsession comes out in an essay about the unfathomable gulf between professional tennis players and the merely excellent."E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" explores the deep currents affecting both popular arts and literary craft, while "David Lynch Keeps His Head" is at once a portrait of the artist at work and an appreciation of the far-reaching cultural influence a popular artist can have. Unfolding from familiar starting points to inspired leaps of imagination and logic, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again showcases the extrordinary writing and fascinating insights of one of the most exciting and original writers at work today.
1997 Little Brown Hardback
Earlier (and often shorter) versions of those in the collection available elsewhere:
- Derivative Sport inTornado Alley in Harper's as Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes: A Midwestern boyhood, Dec 1991.
- E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.. Fiction in The Review of Contemporary Fiction , 1993.
- Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All in Harper's as Ticket to the Fair , July 1994.
- David Lynch Keeps His Head in Premiere (Alternate link ) Sept 1996.
- Tennis Player Michael Joyce's... in Esquire as The String Theory, July 1996.
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again in Harper's as Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise, Jan 1996
Links on the web:
- Guardian Lit Review But I digress (archive.org). Feb 26 1997
- An Italian review!. Nov 98 Broken Link
- A nice review at Boston Pheonix
- Review at Salon
- Minnesota Daily Review
- WWW.SUCK.COM has a go at misinterpreting DFW, David Wiley's interview (archive.org link) and the essay in ASFT, "E Unibus Pluram".
- For a change, a review that gives ASFT the thumbs down
- Carnies, cruises and a way with words. A review from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel archive.org link
- Michiko Kakutani's review (2.4.97) of "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again,"
- Novelist Richard Stern's review of "Supposedly Fun Thing" for The Chicago Tribune (3.9.97)
- I Just Read About That... A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by Paul Debraski (14.3.11)
- I Just Read About That... original articles that comprise A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1991-1996) by Paul Debraski (22.3.11)
