1. The amazing and important New Yorker article about David Foster Wallace’s final, unfinished novel, The Pale King. A couple of quick quotations from the article, the first from DFW himself:
“It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies . . . in be[ing] willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I’m scared about how sappy this’ll look in print, saying this. And the effort to actually to do it, not just talk about it, requires a kind of courage I don’t seem to have yet.”
And the second from a character in TPK: “Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain, because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from.”
Apparently the manuscript uses a group of I.R.S. employees to further explore DFW’s interest in the redemptive possibilities of AA-inspired mindfulness. More on this soon…
2. Another fascinating theological review of U2’s No Line On The Horizon.
3. Slate nails the Watchmen comic-book legacy. Take it from a guy who first read it when he was in 6th grade. (Thanks for the heads-up, J.Stamper!).
4. Revised Mbird Conference schedule! We have added an in-depth Q&A with Dr. Paulson on Friday afternoon.
4a. Apocalypto (top ten movies ever) was only the beginning…
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3 responses to “4.5 Links 4 The Weekend”
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Regarding the Watchmen article…
You don’t have to be a comic book fan to find the following passage from the Slate piece intriguing. Barrabas and Good Friday anyone?
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While the blame can’t entirely be laid at the feet of Watchmen, its novelty helped bring about the avalanche of grim-‘n’-gritty comic books that followed in its wake. DC comics, the home of Watchmen, would go on to have Batgirl crippled and sexually humiliated by the Joker in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke (a comic that the author himself regrets having written), and DC later staged an event called “A Death in the Family” where the fate of Batman’s ward, Robin, was placed in the hands of readers who could call a 900 number to vote on the Boy Wonder’s fate. Predictably, they voted for him to be beaten half to death with a crowbar and then blown up.
The year Watchmen came out, DC had already discovered the sales boost that came with knocking off superheroes, having killed dozens of them in their best-selling Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. The publisher would, over the years, kill Supergirl, Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern, a handful of Robins, and, most recently, Batman. Watchmen helped kick off a decadent death spiral that would see adolescent violence peddled as adult content full of rape, murder, and corpse-burning.
Thanks for that John. I remember The Death In The Family episode very well, and feeling crushed at the time, as Jason Todd was my favorite Robin. One day they will release the alternate ending that they almost published, where he lived…
In other news, I read in DFW’s final published interview (in a French magazine) that one of his favorite writers was St Paul.
The David Foster Wallace article is very powerful and thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing! JZ