ESSAY, I SAY!

(Thoughts on: David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, George Steiner At The New Yorker and Will Self's Feeding Frenzy.)

Just to kick things off with a caveat: this isn't an exact non-fiction compare-and-contrast matchup- of these three books, one (ostensibly) is largely about restaurant and architectural criticism, one chiefly concerned with the reviewing of books (and by extension, often the authors and their ouevre), and one a freely ranging high-speed meditation on whatever the hell takes the writer's fancy*. But there's a common theme: these three all, in their idiosyncratic ways, typify central features of that rather nebulous bunch: the polymaths. (Indeed, references to Steiner's purported polymathic nature occur, (implicitly or explicitly) five separate times in seven review excerpts on the back cover of ...At The New Yorker. Draw your own conclusions.) Their interests are wide-ranging, insatiable and often passionate: Self riffs on psychogeography, the Tate, food, and interviews Morrissey; Steiner wields unbelievably prodigious skill with languages: justified-looking critiques of translations from French, Italian and German (amongst others I forget) appear frequently, as does a seemingly inexaustible knowledge of the lit. canon (both modern and ancient); and Wallace tackles subjects massively disparate subjects: the Illinois state fair, the professional athlete as modern-day religious figure, holidaying on cruise ships and (possibly premature) critical exultations about "the death of the author". Everything seems to be grist for their respective mills.

And they all certainly make for invigorating reading- though often wildly different in style, each is certainly engaging. Steiner's prose is pellucid, his criticism sharp and exacting. Wallace is variously deliciously straight up, especially when discussing supposedly "difficult" topics ("The wicked fun here is to watch how Hix employs the deconstructionists' own instruments against them.") or wonderfully obtuse (the much vaunted "and but so" and variants; chunks of essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction) and Self is... Well, he's Will. He leaps between evisceration (his skewering of Quentin Tarantino is just beautiful. Representative quotes: "... Mr. Tarantino is essentially a pasticheur and an artistic fraud"; "...I read Mr. Tarantino's script, and found it to be illiterate..." etc.), archly surreal reviews (a few pages on a place called "Bluebird" take the form of an hallucinogenically weird vignette where Self himself is briefly cradled by Terence Conran) and several surprisingly generous pieces on Oasis, among many, many others.

But there are similarities: both Self and Wallace are laugh-out-loud funny, and they also both often delve into their respective manic, ticcy styles. It feels as though both writers are but a few steps removed from the worlds of their novels: DFW's essaying tone is regularly set to the 'self aware, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink' level of information overload, a mere skip and a bound from the 'horrendously self-referential, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-and-a-whole-lot-more-crap-you-never-even-noticed-before' data deluge of Infinite Jest or the short stories. Similarly, Self's frequent forays into frankly bizarre discursive wanderings** permeate his writing, fiction and non-. Steiner's erudite discussions are, by contrast, infinitely more restrained, often sticking to broadly the same formula: apparently tangental, unrelated introduction (sometimes drawn out (occasionally frustratingly so) to over two pages in length), the relevance of which becomes quickly apparent at the interesting picking apart of author/thinker/biographer/biographed stage, followed by a sucker-punch surprise ending, pithily summarising and adding to the above. (Viz: "[this collection of E.M. Cioran's aphorisms] does raise the question not so much whether the emperor has any clothes as whether there is any emperor.")

What all three do have in common, however, is an often overwhelming sense of fairness in their treatments of various subjects. I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions that are reached by some (more on this shortly) but one feels that each writer is scrupulously careful and considered in their arguments and eventual conclusions. Wallace's frequent, horrendously self-aware admissions of supposed pretensions in his analyses of various phenomena, of being "abstract" or "arcane", or of beating around an ideological bush mask a seriously sharp mind: his even-handed simultaneous deconstruction of both the films of David Lynch and critical hubbub around Lynch is masterful, especially when it coalesces around a wider point about cinematic violence and imbedded American filmic archetpypes and expectations. And when Steiner issues an edict like "A bad book is the death of a good forest." (referring to John Barth's LETTERS) it feels, for want of a better word... true. They've done the critical legwork, and the judgements passed down are thus largely judicious and, well, just.

But it's not all perfect for Steiner. (And I'm not sure if I think this because A) because I really like, on a personal level, the other two writers, and thus have less of a connection with the newly discovered Mr Steiner and am thus more inclined to pick holes, or B) because these criticism are actually justified. But here goes.) Occassionally it feels like Steiner, if he really likes something, descends (or possibly ascends?) to some kind of gushing blather, especially when he talks about 'the national spirit of Russia' or something in Under Eastern Eyes. His general thesis there seems to be that Russians are more attuned to and capable of withstanding physical and mental punishment. It just sounds- and I can't put this any other way- bullshitty. It's not everywhere- his careful dismantling of Russell*** and Orwell is inspired, for example- but these kind of wide-ranging generalisations and amateur (well, possibly not so amateur) cultural studies twaddle does cast a shade, especially when the other essays are of such a high standard. It's not something I can really explain- I mean, see the section in parenthesis above. It seems to me like some awfully strange aberration- one minute there's erudite, informative discussion, the next these sweeping statements about 'national character' informing the works of a particular author, and a pretty clear break from the 'scrupulous fairness' mentioned above. Deuced odd.

The other is a more piddling concern, and more caveat emptor than censure: Self's Feeding Frenzy can become rather repetitive if one reads for an extended period of time- one would do well to heed Self's advice, and choose to "sip phrases delicately, carefully selecting them to accompany word dishes" and not "chomp" through all the essays, arranged as they are non-thematically and non-chronologically, essentially inviting one to dip in and out. Thus, I would recommend not 'pigging out', as it were; it was a word-binge I regretted.

The Wallace, however, I unreservedly endorse. The longer form that his pieces largely take (A Supposedly Fun Thing... has seven separate articles over its 353 pages; At The New Yorker has 28 over 328 pages; Feeding Frenzy like 128 over 370-odd pieces of paper) draws out Wallace's strengths in close, terrifically interesting analysis- by comparison, it sometimes feels as though Steiner is hampered by too-short articles. Self, by contrast, seems perfectly suited to the small piece- see above. In fairness, they're all of roughly equal worth, all things considered, but DFW has a special place in my heart- which is something I probably should've mentioned at the beginning of this so my words could be taken with a pinch of salt.

But never mind.

I feel I should ape Steiner and say something pithy and concise at this juncture, but as there hasn't exactly been any continuous theme, a phrase in summation would more than likely just sound retarded. But certainly, these three are critics as worthy of reading as the things they criticise, and sometimes probably more fun. And it's not often you can say that about a critic.


*I realise, however, how nauseatingly po-mo it must seem to be reviewing books that are largely comprised of reviews. Believe me I'm ambivalent about the quality of this idea too, but am continuing pretty much regardless anyway.

**Far more than just shades of Burroughs and Pynchon here, people.

***Which I distinctly don't agree with, but for reasons too involved and convoluted to even start to get into now. The piece on 1984, however, is pretty much spot-on.