Changing My Mind_ Occasional Essays Part 8

That is the actress Prunella Scales answering a question of comic (and cla.s.s) motivation that had troubled my father for twenty years: why on earth did they marry each other? A question that-given his own late, failed marriage to a Jamaican girl less than half his age-must have had a resonance beyond the laugh track. On finally hearing an answer, he gave a sigh of comedy-sn.o.b satisfaction. Not long after my visit, Harvey died, at the age of eighty-one. He had told me that he wanted "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" played at his funeral. When the day came, I managed to remember that. I forgot which version, though (sweet, melodic Baez). What he got instead was jeering, postbreakup Dylan, which made it seem as if my mild-mannered father had gathered his friends and family with the particular aim of telling them all to f.u.c.k off from beyond the grave. As comedy, this would have raised a half smile out of Harvey, not much more. It was a little broad for his tastes.

In birth, two people go into a room and three come out. In death, one person goes in and none come out. This is a cosmic joke told by Martin Amis. I like the metaphysical absurdity it draws out of the death event, the sense that death doesn't happen at all-that it is, in fact, the opposite of a happening. There are philosophers who take this joke seriously. To their way of thinking, the only option in the face of death-in facing death's absurd nonface-is to laugh. This is not the bold, humorless laugh of the triumphant atheist, who conquers what he calls death and his own fear of it. No: this is more unhinged. It comes from the powerless, despairing realization that death cannot be conquered, defied, contemplated or even approached, because it's not there; it's only a word, signifying nothing. It's a truly funny laugh, of the laugh-or-you'll-cry variety. There is "plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope-but not for us!" This is a cosmic joke told by Franz Kafka, a wisecrack projected into a void. When I first put the partial cremains of my father in a Tupperware sandwich box and placed it on my writing desk, that was the joke I felt like telling.

Conversely, the death we speak of and deal with every day, the death that is full of meaning, the nonabsurd death, this is a place marker, a fake, a convenient subst.i.tute. It was this sort of death that I was determined to press upon my father, as he did his dying. In my version, Harvey was dying meaningfully, in linear fashion, within a scenario stage-managed and scripted by the people around him. Neatly crafted, like an American sitcom: "The One in Which My Father Dies." It was to conclude with a real event called Death, which he would experience experience and for which he would be ready. I did all the usual, ba.n.a.l things. I brought a Dictaphone to his bedside, in order to collect the narrative of his life (this perplexed him-he couldn't see the through line). I grew furious with overworked nurses. I refused to countenance any morbidity from my father, or any despair. The funniest thing about dying is how much we, the living, ask of the dying; how we beg them to make it easy on us. At the hospital, I ingratiated myself with the doctors and threw what the British call "new money" at the situation. Harvey watched me go about my business with a puzzled half smile. To all my eager suggestions he said, "Yes, dear-if you like," for he knew well that we were dealing with the National Health Service, into which all Smiths are born and die, and my new money would mean only that exactly the same staff, in the same hospital, would administer the same treatments, though in a slightly nicer room, with a window and possibly a television. He left me to my own devices, sensing that these things made a difference to me, though they made none to him: "Yes, dear-if you like." I was still thrashing an Austin 1100 with a tree branch; he was some way beyond that. And then, when he was truly beyond it, far out on the other side of nowhere, a nurse offered me the opportunity to see the body, which I refused. That was a mistake. It left me suspended in a bad joke in which a living man inexplicably becomes two pints of dust and everyone acts as if this were not a joke at all but, rather, the most reasonable thing in the world. A body would have been usefully, concretely absurd. I would have known-or so people say-that the thing lying there on the slab wasn't my father. As it was, I missed the death, I missed the body, I got the dust and from these facts I tried to extrapolate a story, as writers will, but found myself, instead, in a kind of stasis. A moment in which nothing happened, and keeps not happening, forever. Later, I was informed, by way of comfort, that Harvey had also missed his death: he was in the middle of a sentence, joking with his nurse. "He didn't even know what hit him!" the head matron said, which was funny, too, because who the h.e.l.l does? and for which he would be ready. I did all the usual, ba.n.a.l things. I brought a Dictaphone to his bedside, in order to collect the narrative of his life (this perplexed him-he couldn't see the through line). I grew furious with overworked nurses. I refused to countenance any morbidity from my father, or any despair. The funniest thing about dying is how much we, the living, ask of the dying; how we beg them to make it easy on us. At the hospital, I ingratiated myself with the doctors and threw what the British call "new money" at the situation. Harvey watched me go about my business with a puzzled half smile. To all my eager suggestions he said, "Yes, dear-if you like," for he knew well that we were dealing with the National Health Service, into which all Smiths are born and die, and my new money would mean only that exactly the same staff, in the same hospital, would administer the same treatments, though in a slightly nicer room, with a window and possibly a television. He left me to my own devices, sensing that these things made a difference to me, though they made none to him: "Yes, dear-if you like." I was still thrashing an Austin 1100 with a tree branch; he was some way beyond that. And then, when he was truly beyond it, far out on the other side of nowhere, a nurse offered me the opportunity to see the body, which I refused. That was a mistake. It left me suspended in a bad joke in which a living man inexplicably becomes two pints of dust and everyone acts as if this were not a joke at all but, rather, the most reasonable thing in the world. A body would have been usefully, concretely absurd. I would have known-or so people say-that the thing lying there on the slab wasn't my father. As it was, I missed the death, I missed the body, I got the dust and from these facts I tried to extrapolate a story, as writers will, but found myself, instead, in a kind of stasis. A moment in which nothing happened, and keeps not happening, forever. Later, I was informed, by way of comfort, that Harvey had also missed his death: he was in the middle of a sentence, joking with his nurse. "He didn't even know what hit him!" the head matron said, which was funny, too, because who the h.e.l.l does?

Proximity to death inspired the manic spirit of carpe diem in the Smiths. After Harvey died, my mother met a younger man in Africa and married him. The younger of my two brothers, Luke, went to Atlanta to pursue dreams of rap stardom. Both decisions sounded like promising pilot episodes for new sitcoms. And then I tried to ring in the changes by moving to Italy. In my empty kitchen, on the eve of leaving the country, I put my finger in the dust of my father and put the dust into my mouth and swallowed it, and there was something very funny about that-I laughed as I did it. After that, it felt as if I didn't laugh again for a long time. Or do much of anything. Imagined worlds moved quite out of my reach, seemed utterly pointless, not to mention a colossal human presumption: "Yes, dear-if you like." For two years in Rome, I looked from blank computer screen to handful of dust and back again-a scenario that no one, even in Britain, could turn into a sitcom. Then, as I was preparing to leave Italy, Ben, my other brother, rang with his news. He wanted me to know that he had broken with our long-standing family tradition of pa.s.sive comedy appreciation. He had decided to become a comedian.

It turns out that becoming a comedian is an act of instantaneous self-creation. There are no intermediaries blocking your way, no gallerists, publishers or distributors. Social cla.s.s is a nonissue; you do not have to pa.s.s your eleven-plus. In a sense, it would have been a good career for our father, a creative man whose frequent attempts at advancement were forever thwarted, or so he felt, by his accent and his background, his lack of education, connections, luck. Of course, Harvey wasn't, in himself, funny funny-but you don't always have to be. In the world of comedy, if you are absolutely determined to stand on a stage for five minutes with a mike in your hand, someone in London will let you do it, if only once. Ben was determined: he'd given up the after-school youth group he had, till then, managed; he'd written material; he had tickets for me, my mother, my aunt. It was my private opinion that he'd had a minor nervous breakdown of some kind, a delayed reaction to his bereavement. I acted pleased, bought a plane ticket, flew over. Though tight as thieves as children, I'd barely seen him since Harvey died, and I sensed us settling into the attenuated relations of adult siblings, a new formal distance, always slightly abashed, for there seems no clear way, in adult life, to do justice to the intimacy of childhood. I remember being scandalized, as a child, at how rarely our parents spoke to their their siblings. How was it possible? How did it happen? Then it happens to you. Thinking of him standing up there alone with a microphone, though, trying to be siblings. How was it possible? How did it happen? Then it happens to you. Thinking of him standing up there alone with a microphone, though, trying to be funny, funny, I felt a renewed, Siamese-twin closeness: fearing for him was like fearing for me. I've never been able to bear watching anyone die onstage, never mind a blood relative. If he'd told me that it was major heart surgery he was about to have, on this makeshift stage in the tiny, dark bas.e.m.e.nt of a London pub, I couldn't have been more sick about it. I felt a renewed, Siamese-twin closeness: fearing for him was like fearing for me. I've never been able to bear watching anyone die onstage, never mind a blood relative. If he'd told me that it was major heart surgery he was about to have, on this makeshift stage in the tiny, dark bas.e.m.e.nt of a London pub, I couldn't have been more sick about it.

It was a mixed bill. Before Ben, two men and two women performed a mildewed sketch show of unmistakable Oxbridge vintage, circa 1994. A certain brittle poshness informed their exaggerated portraits of high-strung secretaries, neurotic piano teachers, absentminded professors. They put on mustaches and wigs and walked in and out of imaginary scenarios where fewer and fewer funny things occurred. It was the comedy of things past. The girls, though dressed as girls, were no longer girls, and the boys had paunches and bald spots; the faintest trace of ancient intracomedy-troupe love affairs clung to them sadly; all the promising meetings with the BBC had come and gone. This was being done out of pure friendship now, or the memory of friendship. As I watched the unspooling horror of it, a repressed, traumatic memory resurfaced, of an audition, one that must have taken place around the time this comedy troupe was formed, very likely in the same town. This audition took the form of a breakfast meeting, a "chat about comedy" with two young men, then members of the Cambridge Footlights, now a popular British TV double act. I don't remember what it was that I said. I remember only strained smiles, the silent consumption of scrambled eggs, a feeling of human free fall. And the conclusion, which was obvious to us all. Despite having spent years at the grindstone of comedy appreciation, I wasn't funny. Not even slightly.

And now the compere was calling my brother's name. He stepped out. I felt a great wash of East Anglian fatalism, my father's trademark, pa.s.s over to me, its new custodian. Ben was dressed in his usual urban street wear, the only black man in the room. I began peeling the label off my beer bottle. I sensed at once the way he was going to play it, the same way we had played it throughout our childhood-a few degrees off whatever it was that people expected of us, when they looked at us. This evening, that strategy took the form of an opening song about the Olympics, with particular attention paid to equestrian dressage. It was funny! He was getting laughs. He pushed steadily forward, a slow, gloomy delivery that owed something to Harvey's seemingly infinite pessimism. No good can come of this No good can come of this. This had been Harvey's reaction to all news, no matter how objectively good that news might be, from the historic entrance of a Smith child into an actual university to the birthing of babies and the winning of prizes. When he became ill, he took a perversely British satisfaction in the diagnosis of cancer: absolutely nothing good could come of this, and the certainty of it seemed almost to calm him.

I waited, like my father, for the slipup, the flat joke. It didn't come. Ben did a minute on hip-hop, a minute on his baby daughter, a minute on his freshly minted stand-up career. Another song. I was still laughing, and so was everyone else. Finally, I felt able to look up from the beer mats to the stage. Up there I saw my brother, who is not eight, as I forever expect him to be, but thirty, and who appeared completely relaxed, as if born with mike in hand. And then it was over-no one had died.

The next time I saw Ben do stand-up was about ten gigs later, at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He didn't exactly die the night I turned up, but he was badly wounded. It was a shock to him, because it was the first time. In comedy terms, his cherry got popped. At first, he couldn't see why: it was the same type of venue he'd been doing in London-intimate, drunken-and, by and large, it was the same material. Why, this time, were the laughs smaller? Why, for one good joke in particular, did they not occur at all? We repaired to the bar to regroup, with all the other comedians doing the same. In comedy, the a.n.a.lysis of death, or near-death, experiences is a clear, unsentimental process. The discussion is technical, closer to a musician's self-a.n.a.lysis than to a writer's: this note was off; you missed the beat there. I knew I could say to Ben, honestly, and without fear of hurting him, "It was the pause-you went too slowly on the punch line," and he could say, "Yep," and the next night the pause would be shortened, the punch line would hit its mark. We ordered more beer. "The thing I don't understand-I don't understand what happened with the new material. I thought it was good, but . . . " Another comedian, who was also ordering beer, chipped in, "Did you do it first?" "Yes." "Don't do the new stuff first. Do it last. Just because you're excited by it doesn't mean it should go first. It's not ready yet."

We drank a lot, with a lot of very drunk comedians, until very late. Trying to keep up with the wisecracks and the complaints, I felt as if I'd arrived late to a battleground that had seen b.l.o.o.d.y action. The comedians had the aura of survivors, speaking the language of mutual, hard experience: venues too hot and too small, the horror of empty seats, who got nominated for what, who'd been reviewed well or badly, and, of course, the financial pain. (Some Edinburgh performers break even, most incur debts and almost no one makes a profit.) It was strange to see my brother, previously a member of my family, becoming a member of this this family, all his previous concerns and principles subsumed, like theirs, into one simple but demanding question: family, all his previous concerns and principles subsumed, like theirs, into one simple but demanding question: Is it funny Is it funny? And that's another reason to envy comedians: when they look at a blank page, they always know, at least, the question they need to ask themselves. I think the clarity of their aim accounts for a striking phenomenon, peculiar to comedy: the possibility of extremely rapid improvement. Comedy is a Lazarus art; you can die onstage and then rise again. It's not unusual to see a mediocre young standup in January and, seeing him again in December, discover a comedian who's found his groove, a transformed artist, a death defier.

Russell Kane, a relatively new British comic, is a death defier, the sort of comedian who won't let a moment pa.s.s without filling it with laughter. I went to see him on the last night of his Edinburgh run. His show was called Gaping Flaws, Gaping Flaws, a phrase lifted from a negative online review of his 2007 Edinburgh show, which, in turn, was called a phrase lifted from a negative online review of his 2007 Edinburgh show, which, in turn, was called Easy Cliche and Tired Stereotype, Easy Cliche and Tired Stereotype, a phrase lifted from a negative review of his debut 2006 show, a phrase lifted from a negative review of his debut 2006 show, Russell Kane's Theory of Pretension Russell Kane's Theory of Pretension. All these reviews came from the same man, Steve Bennett, a prominent British comedy critic who writes for the Web site Chortle. The problem with Kane was cla.s.s-the British problem. A self-defined working-cla.s.s "Ess.e.x boy" (though, physically, his look is more indie Americana than English suburbia; he's a dead ringer for the singer Anthony Kiedis), he centers his act on the tricky business of being the alien in the family, the wannabe intellectual son of a working-cla.s.s, bigoted father. To his father, Kane's pa.s.sion for reading is deeply suspicious, his interest in the arts tantamount to an admission of s.e.xual deviancy. Kane's dilemma has a natural flip side, a typically British ressentiment for those very people his sensibilities have moved him toward. The middle cla.s.ses, the Guardianistas (readers of the left-leaning liberal newspaper The Guardian The Guardian), the smug elites who have made him feel his cla.s.s in the first place. Can't go home, can't leave home: Can't go home, can't leave home: a subject close to my heart. a subject close to my heart.

In 2006, Kane played this material too broadly, overexploiting a natural gift for grotesque physical comedy: his father was a hulking deformed monster, the Guardianistas fey fools, skipping across the stage. In 2007, the chip on his shoulder was still there, but the ideas were better, the portraits more detailed, more refined; he began to find his balance, which is a rare mixture of inspired verbal sparring and effective physical comedy. Third time's the charm: Gaping Flaws Gaping Flaws had almost none. It was still all about cla.s.s, but some magical integration had occurred. I couldn't help being struck by the sense that what it might take a novelist a lifetime to achieve a bright comedian can resolve in three seasons. (How to present a working-cla.s.s experience to the middle cla.s.ses without diluting it. How to stay angry without letting anger distort your work. How to be funny about the most serious things.) had almost none. It was still all about cla.s.s, but some magical integration had occurred. I couldn't help being struck by the sense that what it might take a novelist a lifetime to achieve a bright comedian can resolve in three seasons. (How to present a working-cla.s.s experience to the middle cla.s.ses without diluting it. How to stay angry without letting anger distort your work. How to be funny about the most serious things.) Audiences love death defiers like Kane. It's what they pay their money for, after all: laughs per minute. They tend to be less fond of those comedians who have themselves tired of the nonstop laughter and pine for a little silence. I want to call it "comedy nausea." Comedy nausea is the extreme incarnation of what my father felt: not only is joke telling a cheap art; the whole business of stand-up the whole business of stand-up is, in some sense, a shameful cheat. For a comedian of this kind, I imagine it feels like a love affair gone wrong. You start out wanting people to laugh in exactly the places you mean them to laugh, then they is, in some sense, a shameful cheat. For a comedian of this kind, I imagine it feels like a love affair gone wrong. You start out wanting people to laugh in exactly the places you mean them to laugh, then they always always laugh where you want them to laugh-then you start to hate them for it. Sometimes the feeling is temporary. The comedian returns to stand-up and finds new joy in, and respect for, the art of death defying. Sometimes, as with Peter Cook (voted, by his fellow comedians, in a British poll, the greatest comedian of all time), comedy nausea turns terminal, and only the most difficult laugh in the world will satisfy. Toward the end of his life, when his professional comedy output was practically nil, Cook made a series of phone calls to a radio call-in show, using the pseudonym Sven from Swiss Cottage (an area of northwest London), during which he discussed melancholy Norwegian matters in a thick Norwegian accent, some of the funniest and bleakest "work" he ever did. laugh where you want them to laugh-then you start to hate them for it. Sometimes the feeling is temporary. The comedian returns to stand-up and finds new joy in, and respect for, the art of death defying. Sometimes, as with Peter Cook (voted, by his fellow comedians, in a British poll, the greatest comedian of all time), comedy nausea turns terminal, and only the most difficult laugh in the world will satisfy. Toward the end of his life, when his professional comedy output was practically nil, Cook made a series of phone calls to a radio call-in show, using the pseudonym Sven from Swiss Cottage (an area of northwest London), during which he discussed melancholy Norwegian matters in a thick Norwegian accent, some of the funniest and bleakest "work" he ever did.

At the extreme end of this sensibility lies the anticomedian. An anticomedian not only allows death onstage; he invites death up. Andy Kaufman was an anticomedian. So was Lenny Bruce. Tommy Cooper is the great British example. His comedy persona was "inept magician." He did intentionally bad magic tricks and told surreal jokes that played like Zen koans. He actually actually died onstage, collapsing from a heart attack during a 1984 live TV broadcast. I was nine, watching it on telly with Harvey. When Cooper fell over, we laughed and laughed, along with the rest of Britain, realizing only when the show cut to the commercial break that he wasn't kidding. died onstage, collapsing from a heart attack during a 1984 live TV broadcast. I was nine, watching it on telly with Harvey. When Cooper fell over, we laughed and laughed, along with the rest of Britain, realizing only when the show cut to the commercial break that he wasn't kidding.

There was an anticomedian at Edinburgh this year. His name was Edward Aczel. You will not have heard of him-neither had I; neither has practically anyone. This was only his second Edinburgh appearance. Maybe it was the fortuitous meeting of my mournful mood and his morbid material, but I thought his show, Do I Really Have to Communicate with You?, Do I Really Have to Communicate with You?, was one of the strangest, and finest, hours of live comedy I'd ever seen. It started with neither a bang nor a whimper. It didn't really start. We, the audience, sat in nervous silence in a tiny, dark room, and waited. Some fumbling with a ca.s.sette recorder was heard, faint music, someone mumbling backstage: "Welcome to the stage . . . Edward Aczel." Said without enthusiasm. A man wandered out. Going bald, early forties, schlubby, entirely nondescript. He said, "All right?" in a hopeless sort of way, and then decided that he wanted to do the introduction again. He went offstage and came on again. He did this several times. Despair settled over the room. Finally, he fixed himself in front of the microphone. "I think you'll all recall," he muttered, barely audible, "the words of Wittgenstein, the great twentieth-century philosopher, who said, 'If indeed mankind came to earth for a specific reason, it certainly wasn't to enjoy ourselves.' " A long, almost unbearable pause. "If you could bear that in mind while I'm on, I'd certainly appreciate it." Then, on a large flip chart, the kind of thing an account manager in an Aylesbury marketing agency might swipe from his office (Aczel is, in real life, an account manager for an Aylesbury marketing agency), he began to write with a Magic Marker. It was a list of what not to expect from his show. He went through it with us. There was to be was one of the strangest, and finest, hours of live comedy I'd ever seen. It started with neither a bang nor a whimper. It didn't really start. We, the audience, sat in nervous silence in a tiny, dark room, and waited. Some fumbling with a ca.s.sette recorder was heard, faint music, someone mumbling backstage: "Welcome to the stage . . . Edward Aczel." Said without enthusiasm. A man wandered out. Going bald, early forties, schlubby, entirely nondescript. He said, "All right?" in a hopeless sort of way, and then decided that he wanted to do the introduction again. He went offstage and came on again. He did this several times. Despair settled over the room. Finally, he fixed himself in front of the microphone. "I think you'll all recall," he muttered, barely audible, "the words of Wittgenstein, the great twentieth-century philosopher, who said, 'If indeed mankind came to earth for a specific reason, it certainly wasn't to enjoy ourselves.' " A long, almost unbearable pause. "If you could bear that in mind while I'm on, I'd certainly appreciate it." Then, on a large flip chart, the kind of thing an account manager in an Aylesbury marketing agency might swipe from his office (Aczel is, in real life, an account manager for an Aylesbury marketing agency), he began to write with a Magic Marker. It was a list of what not to expect from his show. He went through it with us. There was to be No nudity.No juggling.No impressions of any well-known people.No reference to crop circles during the show.No one will be conceived during the show.No tackling head-on of any controversial issues . . .

And finally, and I think most important-

No refunds.

I recognized my father's spirit in this list: No good can come of this No good can come of this. He then told us that he had a box of jigsaw puzzles backstage, for anyone who became dangerously bored. Later, he drew a graph made up of an x-axis, which stood for "TIME," and a y-axis, for "GOODWILL," on which he tracked the show's progress. Point one, low down: "Let's all go and get a drink-this is pointless." Point two, slightly higher up: "O.K., carry on, whatever." Point three, still only halfway up: "We could all be here forever. We think this is great." He looked at his shoes, then, with mild aggression, at the audience. "We'll never get to that point," he said. "It's just . . . it'll never happen." By this time, everyone was laughing, but the laughter was a little crazy, disjointed. It's a reckless thing, for a comedian, to be this honest with an audience. To say, in effect, "Whatever I do, whatever you do, we're all all going to die." When it finally came to jokes ("Now we go into the section of the show routinely called 'material,' for obvious reasons"), Aczel had a dozen written on his hand, and they were very funny, but by now he had already convinced us that jokes were the least of what could be done here. It was an easy and wonderful thing to believe this show a genuine shambles, saved only by our attention and by chance. (We were mistaken, of course. Every stumble, every murmur, is identical, every night.) In the lobby afterward, calendars were on sale, each month ill.u.s.trated by impossibly ba.n.a.l photographs of Aczel in bed, washing his face, walking into work, standing in the road. Mine sits on my desk, next to my father in his Tupperware sandwich box. On the cover, Aczel is pictured in a supermarket aisle. The subt.i.tle reads, "Life is endless, until you die"-Edith Piaf. Each month has a message for me. November: "Winter is coming-Yes!" April: "Who cares." June: "This is not the life I was promised." going to die." When it finally came to jokes ("Now we go into the section of the show routinely called 'material,' for obvious reasons"), Aczel had a dozen written on his hand, and they were very funny, but by now he had already convinced us that jokes were the least of what could be done here. It was an easy and wonderful thing to believe this show a genuine shambles, saved only by our attention and by chance. (We were mistaken, of course. Every stumble, every murmur, is identical, every night.) In the lobby afterward, calendars were on sale, each month ill.u.s.trated by impossibly ba.n.a.l photographs of Aczel in bed, washing his face, walking into work, standing in the road. Mine sits on my desk, next to my father in his Tupperware sandwich box. On the cover, Aczel is pictured in a supermarket aisle. The subt.i.tle reads, "Life is endless, until you die"-Edith Piaf. Each month has a message for me. November: "Winter is coming-Yes!" April: "Who cares." June: "This is not the life I was promised." There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope-but not for us! There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope-but not for us!

On the last night of the Edinburgh festival, in another small, dark, drunken venue, I waited for my brother to go on. It was about two in the morning. Only comedians were left at the festival; the audiences had all gone home. I feared for him, again-but he did his set, and he killed. He was relaxed. There was nothing riding on his performance; the pause had been fixed. Then a young Australian dude came on and spoke a lot about bottle openers, and he killed, too. Maybe everybody kills at two in the morning. Then the end of the end: one last comedian took the bar stage. This was Andy Zaltzman, a great, tall man with an electrified Einstein hairdo and a cutting, political-satirical act that got its laughs per minute. He set to work, confident, funny, and instantly got heckled, a heckle that was followed by a collective audience intake of breath, for the heckler was Daniel Kitson, a rather shy, whimsical young comedian from Yorkshire who looks like a beardy cross between a fisherman and a geography teacher. Kitson won the Perrier Comedy Award in 2002, at the age of twenty-five, and his gift is for the crafting of exquisite narratives, shows shaped like Alice Munro stories, bathetic and beautiful. A comedy-sn.o.b thrill pa.s.sed through the room. It was a bit like Nick Drake turning up at a James Taylor gig. Kitson good-humoredly heckled Zaltzman, and Zaltzman heckled back. Their ideas went spiraling down nonsensical paths, collided, did battle and separated. Kitson busied himself handing out fliers for "Our joint show, tomorrow!"-a show that couldn't exist, because the festival was over. We all took one. Zaltzman and Kitson got loose; the jokes were everywhere, with everyone, the whole room becoming comedy. There was a kind of hysteria abroad. I looked over at my brother and could see that he'd got this abdominal pain, too, and we were both doubled over, crying, and I wished Harvey were there, and at the same moment I felt something come free in me.

I have to confess to an earlier comic embellishment: my father is no longer in a Tupperware sandwich box. He was, for a year, but then I bought a pretty Italian art deco vase for him, completely see-through, so I can see through to him. The vase is posh, and not funny like the sandwich box, but I decided that what Harvey didn't have much of in life he would get in death. In life, he found Britain hard. It was a nation divided by postcodes and accents, schools and last names. The humor of its people helped make it bearable. You don't have to be funny to live here, but it helps You don't have to be funny to live here, but it helps. Hanc.o.c.k, Fawlty, Partridge, Brent: in my mind, they're all clinging to the middle rungs of England's cla.s.s ladder. That, in large part, is the comedy of their situations.

For eighty-one years, my father was up to the same game, though his situation wasn't so comical; at least, the living of it wasn't. Listen, I'll tell you a joke: Listen, I'll tell you a joke: his mother had been in service, his father worked on the buses; he pa.s.sed the grammar-school exam, but the cost of the uniform for the secondary school was outside the family's budget. his mother had been in service, his father worked on the buses; he pa.s.sed the grammar-school exam, but the cost of the uniform for the secondary school was outside the family's budget. No, wait, it gets better: No, wait, it gets better: at thirteen, he left school to fill the inkwells in a lawyer's office, to set the fire in the grate. At seventeen, he went to fight in the Second World War. In the fifties, he got married, started a family and, finding that he had a good eye, tried commercial photography. His pictures were good, he set up a little studio, but then his business partner stiffed him in some dark plot of which he would never speak. His marriage ended. at thirteen, he left school to fill the inkwells in a lawyer's office, to set the fire in the grate. At seventeen, he went to fight in the Second World War. In the fifties, he got married, started a family and, finding that he had a good eye, tried commercial photography. His pictures were good, he set up a little studio, but then his business partner stiffed him in some dark plot of which he would never speak. His marriage ended. And here's the kicker: And here's the kicker: in the sixties, he had to start all over again, as a salesman. In the seventies, he married for the second time. A new lot of children arrived. The high point was the late eighties, a senior salesman now at a direct-mail company-selling paper, just like David Brent. Finally, the (lower) middle rung! A maisonette, half a garden, a sweet deal with a local piano teacher who taught Ben and me together, two b.u.ms squeezed onto the piano stool. But it didn't last, and the second marriage didn't last, and he ended up with little more than he had started with. Listening to my first novel on tape, and hearing the rough arc of his life in the character Archie Jones, he took it well, seeing the parallels but also the difference: "He had better luck than me!" The novel was billed as comic fiction. To Harvey, it sat firmly in the laugh-or-you'll-cry genre. And when that in the sixties, he had to start all over again, as a salesman. In the seventies, he married for the second time. A new lot of children arrived. The high point was the late eighties, a senior salesman now at a direct-mail company-selling paper, just like David Brent. Finally, the (lower) middle rung! A maisonette, half a garden, a sweet deal with a local piano teacher who taught Ben and me together, two b.u.ms squeezed onto the piano stool. But it didn't last, and the second marriage didn't last, and he ended up with little more than he had started with. Listening to my first novel on tape, and hearing the rough arc of his life in the character Archie Jones, he took it well, seeing the parallels but also the difference: "He had better luck than me!" The novel was billed as comic fiction. To Harvey, it sat firmly in the laugh-or-you'll-cry genre. And when that Fawlty Towers Fawlty Towers boxed set came back to me as my only inheritance (along with a cardigan, several atlases, and a photograph of Venice), I did a little of both. boxed set came back to me as my only inheritance (along with a cardigan, several atlases, and a photograph of Venice), I did a little of both.

REMEMBERING.

Seventeen.

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN: THE DIFFICULT GIFTS OF DAVID FOSTER WALLACE.

I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction's disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of "generalization" of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer a sort of "generalization" of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourish also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourish ing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. ing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple. But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of "low" art- But now realize that TV and popular film and most kinds of "low" art- which just means art whose primary aim is to make money-is lucrative pre which just means art whose primary aim is to make money-is lucrative pre cisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the cisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas "serious" art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more "serious" art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort. So it's hard for an art audience, especially a of hard work and discomfort. So it's hard for an art audience, especially a young one that's been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable young one that's been raised to expect art to be 100 percent pleasurable and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. and to make that pleasure effortless, to read and appreciate serious fiction. That's not good. The problem isn't that today's readership is "dumb," I don't That's not good. The problem isn't that today's readership is "dumb," I don't think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture's trained it to be sort of think. Just that TV and the commercial-art culture's trained it to be sort of lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today's lazy and childish in its expectations. But it makes trying to engage today's readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard. readers both imaginatively and intellectually unprecedentedly hard.

-DAVID FOSTER WALL ACE65 0. DIFFICULT GIFTS.

David Foster Wallace was clever about gifts: our inability to give freely or to accept what is freely given. A farmer can't give away an old tiller for free; he has to charge five bucks before someone will come and take it. A depressed person wants to receive attention but can't bring herself to give it. Normal social relations are only preserved because "one never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one." In these stories, the act of giving is in crisis; the logic of the market seeps into every aspect of life.

These tales are found in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection that was itself the response to two enormous gifts. The first was practical: the awarding of the MacArthur. a collection that was itself the response to two enormous gifts. The first was practical: the awarding of the MacArthur.66 A gift on that scale frees a writer from the harsh logic of the literary market, and maybe also from that bind Wallace himself defined as postindustrial: A gift on that scale frees a writer from the harsh logic of the literary market, and maybe also from that bind Wallace himself defined as postindustrial: the need always to be liked the need always to be liked. The second gift was more difficult; it was Wallace's own talent, the bedrock of which was a formidable intellect. That he ended up a fiction writer at all speaks to the radical way Wallace saw his own gifts-not as a natural resource to be exploited but as a suspicious facility to be interrogated. Certainly that unusual triune skill set-encyclopedic knowledge, mathematical prowess, complex dialectical thought-would have had an easier pa.s.sage to approval within the academic world from which he hailed than in the literary world he joined. Instead, in his twenties, Wallace chose the path of most resistance. He turned from a career in math and philosophy to pursue a vocation in what he called "morally pa.s.sionate, pa.s.sionately moral fiction." For the next twenty years, the two sides of that chiasmus would be in constant tension. On the one side, his writing sought the emotive force of fiction; on the other, its formal, philosophical possibilities. These elements attracted him equally but his virtuosity (and his training) was in the latter, and there was always the risk that the philosophy would overwhelm the pa.s.sion. But Wallace was clever enough to realize that cleverness alone wasn't enough ("I'll catch myself thinking up gags or trying formal stunt-pilotry and see that none of this stuff is really in the service of the story itself; it's serving the rather darker purpose of communicating to the reader 'Hey! Look at me! Have a look at what a good writer I am! Like me!' ") He battled to share his gifts rather than simply display them, seeming to seek the solution in a principle of self-mortification. What do you do with a great gift? You give it away: I've gotten convinced that there's something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn't have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent . . . .Talent's just an instrument. It's like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn't. I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. I know this doesn't sound hip at all. . . . But it seems like one of the things really great fiction-writers do-from Carver to Chekhov to Flannery O'Connor, or like the Tolstoy of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" or the Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow Gravity's Rainbow-is "give" the reader something. The reader walks away from the real art heavier than she came into it. Fuller. All the attention and engagement and work you need to get from the reader can't be for your benefit; it's got to be for hers. What's poisonous about the cultural environment today is that it makes this so scary to try to carry out.

When Wallace wrote he offered everything he had to his readers, including the kitchen sink. His cultish fans were always ready and willing to come away from his work a little heavier-it was his complexity that they loved. For many of us, though, what Wallace had to give looked simply too too heavy, too much like hard work. And while heavy, too much like hard work. And while Brief Interviews Brief Interviews had its pa.s.sionate defenders, I remember that the pair of reviews it received in the had its pa.s.sionate defenders, I remember that the pair of reviews it received in the New York Times New York Times were bad (in both senses), opening with paragraphs of nervous ridicule: were bad (in both senses), opening with paragraphs of nervous ridicule: How to describe David Foster Wallace's new collection of stories? You might say it's like being a therapist and being forced to listen to one narcissistic patient after the next prattle on-and on and on-about their neuroses and their explanations for those neuroses and the rationaliza tions behind the explanations for those neuroses. Or you might say it's like being locked in a room with a bunch of speed freaks babbling to themselves nonstop on a Benzedrine-fueled high as they clip their toenails or cut the split ends out of their hair.

You know the old story about how if you set a billion monkeys to work on a billion typewriters, one of them would eventually compose the complete works of Shakespeare? David Foster Wallace often writes the way I imagine that billionth monkey would: in mad cadenzas of simian gibberish that break suddenly into glorious soliloquies, then plunge again into nonsense.

Perhaps it was easy, when you read Wallace, to distrust "the agenda of the consciousness behind the text." Did he truly want to give you a gift? Or only to demonstrate his own? For why should we be expected to tease out references to De Chirico and logotherapy, or know what happens during an eclipse, or what polymerase does, or the many nuances of the word p.r.o.ne p.r.o.ne? Why go through the pain if this is to be all we get in return: "Discursive portraits of relentlessly self-absorbed whiners, set down in an unappetizing mix of psychobabble, scholarly jargon and stream-of-consciousness riffs"? It's my recollection that this sort of thing had become, in the early noughties, the common "line" on Wallace, especially in England; something to say whether you'd actually read him or not. Postmodern type? Swallowed a dictionary? Postmodern type? Swallowed a dictionary? Bad reviews serve many purposes, not least of which is the gift of freedom: they release you from the obligation of having to read the book. Bad reviews serve many purposes, not least of which is the gift of freedom: they release you from the obligation of having to read the book.

At the time of writing, Brief Interviews Brief Interviews marks its tenth anniversary and its author is no longer with us. Now might be the time to think of the literary gift economy the other way around. To do this we have to recognize that a difficult gift like marks its tenth anniversary and its author is no longer with us. Now might be the time to think of the literary gift economy the other way around. To do this we have to recognize that a difficult gift like Brief Interviews Brief Interviews merits the equally difficult gift of our close attention and effort. For this reason, the newspaper review was never going to be an easy fit for Wallace. He can't be read and understood and enjoyed at that speed any more than I can get the hang of the Goldberg Variations over a weekend. His reader needs to think of herself as a musician, spreading the sheet music-the gift of the work-over the music stand, electing to play. First there is practice, then competency at the instrument, then spending time with the sheet music, then playing it over and over. merits the equally difficult gift of our close attention and effort. For this reason, the newspaper review was never going to be an easy fit for Wallace. He can't be read and understood and enjoyed at that speed any more than I can get the hang of the Goldberg Variations over a weekend. His reader needs to think of herself as a musician, spreading the sheet music-the gift of the work-over the music stand, electing to play. First there is practice, then competency at the instrument, then spending time with the sheet music, then playing it over and over.

Of course, the arguments that might be employed w/r/t reading in this way are deeply unreasonable, entirely experiential, and impossible to objectively defend.67 In the end, all that can be said is that the difficult gift is its own defense, the deep rewarding pleasure of which is something you can only know by undergoing it. To appreciate Wallace, you need to In the end, all that can be said is that the difficult gift is its own defense, the deep rewarding pleasure of which is something you can only know by undergoing it. To appreciate Wallace, you need to really really read him-and then you need to read him-and then you need to reread reread him. For this reason-among many others-he was my favorite living writer, and I wrote this piece to remember him by, which, in my case, is best done by reading him once again. him. For this reason-among many others-he was my favorite living writer, and I wrote this piece to remember him by, which, in my case, is best done by reading him once again.

1. BREAKING THE RHYTHM THAT EXCLUDES THINKING.

The story "Forever Overhead" is Brief Interviews Brief Interviews at its most open, and for many readers, its most beautiful. Wallace disliked it, thinking it juvenilia-maybe it was its very openness he suspected. So many of the dense themes of the book are here laid out with an unexpected directness. At first glance, it's simple: a boy on his thirteenth birthday in an "old public pool on the western edge of Tucson," resolving to try the diving tank for the first time. The voice is as blank as a video game, as an instruction manual, at its most open, and for many readers, its most beautiful. Wallace disliked it, thinking it juvenilia-maybe it was its very openness he suspected. So many of the dense themes of the book are here laid out with an unexpected directness. At first glance, it's simple: a boy on his thirteenth birthday in an "old public pool on the western edge of Tucson," resolving to try the diving tank for the first time. The voice is as blank as a video game, as an instruction manual,68 and yet, within it, Wallace finds something tender: "Get out now and go past your parents, who are sunning and reading, not looking up. Forget your towel. Stopping for the towel means talking and talking means thinking. You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking. Go right by, toward the tank at the deep end." To this he then adds a layer of complication: a spa.r.s.ely punctuated, synesthetic compression, like a painter placing another shade atop his base. A remembered wet dream does not yet know its own name, it is "spasms of a deep sweet hurt"; the pool is "five-o'clock warm," its distinctive odor "a flower with chemical petals." The noise of the radio overhead is "jangle flat and tinny thin," and a dive is "a white that plumes and falls" until once more "blue clean comes up in the middle of the white." Throughout, the expected verb- and yet, within it, Wallace finds something tender: "Get out now and go past your parents, who are sunning and reading, not looking up. Forget your towel. Stopping for the towel means talking and talking means thinking. You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking. Go right by, toward the tank at the deep end." To this he then adds a layer of complication: a spa.r.s.ely punctuated, synesthetic compression, like a painter placing another shade atop his base. A remembered wet dream does not yet know its own name, it is "spasms of a deep sweet hurt"; the pool is "five-o'clock warm," its distinctive odor "a flower with chemical petals." The noise of the radio overhead is "jangle flat and tinny thin," and a dive is "a white that plumes and falls" until once more "blue clean comes up in the middle of the white." Throughout, the expected verb-is-is generally omitted: sensations present themselves directly on the page, as they present themselves to the boy. The unmediated sensory overload of p.u.b.erty overlaps here with a dream of language: that words might become things, that there would exist no false gap between the verbal representation of something and the something itself.69 Then, with the base coat down, and the wash laid on top, comes another layer. Concrete details so finely rendered they seem to have been drawn from the well of our own memories: your sister's swim cap with the "raised rubber flowers . . . limp old pink petals" and the "thin cruel hint of very dark Pepsi in paper cups"; that SN CK BAR with the letter missing and the concrete deck "rough and hot against your bleached feet." Isn't everything just as you remember it? The big lady in front of you on the ladder: "Her suit is full of her. The backs of her thighs are squeezed by the suit and look like cheese. The legs have abrupt little squiggles of cold blue shattered vein under the white skin." The ladder itself: "The rungs are very thin. It's unexpected. Thin round iron rungs laced in slick wet Safe-T felt." And now, fueled by nostalgia, by the pressing in of times past, the concrete seems to mix with the existential: "Each of your footprints is thinner and fainter. Each shrinks behind you on the hot stone and disappears." And again, on that ladder: "You have real weight. . . . The ground wants you back." Haven't you been in this terrible queue? Aren't you in it now? A queue from which there is no exit, in which everyone looks bored and "seems by himself," in which all dive freely and yet have no real freedom, for "it is a machine that moves only forward."

The difference is awareness (this is always the difference in Wallace). The boy seems to see clearly what we, all those years ago, felt only faintly. He sees that "the pool is a system of movement," in which all experience is systematized ("There is a rhythm to it. Like breathing. Like a machine.") and into which, as the woman in front of him dives, he must now insert himself: Listen. It does not seem good, the way she disappears into a time that pa.s.ses before she sounds. Like a stone down a well. But you think she did not think so. She was part of a rhythm that excludes thinking. And now you have made yourself part of it, too. The rhythm seems blind. Like ants. Like a machine.You decide this needs to be thought about. It may, after all, be all right to do something scary without thinking, but not when the scariness is the not thinking itself. Not when not thinking turns out to be wrong. At some point the wrongnesses have piled up blind: pretend-boredom, weight, thin rungs, hurt feet, s.p.a.ce cut into laddered parts that melt together only in a disappearance that takes time. The wind on the ladder not what anyone would have expected. The way the board protrudes from shadow into light and you can't see past the end. When it all turns out to be different you should get to think. It should be required.

Now we see what the board is and feel our own predicament: sentient beings encased in these flesh envelopes, moving always in one inexorable direction (the end of which we cannot see). Bound by time. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. This, Sartre's dictum, hangs over these pa.s.sive people who "let their legs take them to the end" before coming down "heavy on the edge of the board and mak[ing] it throw them up and out." Thrown into the world, condemned to be free-and hideously responsible for that freedom. This, Sartre's dictum, hangs over these pa.s.sive people who "let their legs take them to the end" before coming down "heavy on the edge of the board and mak[ing] it throw them up and out." Thrown into the world, condemned to be free-and hideously responsible for that freedom.

It strikes me when I reread this beautiful story how poor we are at tracing literary antecedents, how often we a.s.sume too much and miss obvious echoes. Lazily we gather writers by nations, decades and fashions; we imagine Wallace the only son of DeLillo and Pynchon. In fact, Wallace had catholic tastes, and it shouldn't surprise us to find, along with Sartre, traces of Philip Larkin, a great favorite of his.70 Wallace's fear of automatism is acutely Larkinesque ("a style/ Our lives bring with them: habit for a while/Suddenly they harden into all we've got" Wallace's fear of automatism is acutely Larkinesque ("a style/ Our lives bring with them: habit for a while/Suddenly they harden into all we've got"71), as is his attention to that singular point in our lives when we realize we are closer to our end than our beginning. When Wallace writes, "At some point there has gotten to be more line behind you than in front of you," he lends an indelible image to an existential fear, as Larkin did memorably in "The Old Fools:" "The peak that stays in view wherever we go / For them is rising ground." Then there's the t.i.tle itself, "Forever Overhead": a perfectly accurate description, when you think about it, of how the poems "High Windows" and "Water" close.72 That mix of the concrete and the existential, of air and water, of the eternal submerged in the ba.n.a.l. And boredom was the great theme of both. But in the great theme there is a great difference. Wallace wanted to interrogate boredom as a deadly postmodern att.i.tude, an attempt to bypa.s.s experience on the part of a people who have become habituated to a mediated reality. "It seems impossible," the boy thinks, arranging his face in fake boredom to match the rest, "that everybody could really be this bored." In this story, the counterweight to automatism is sensation, expressed here as human reality in its most direct and redemptive form: "Your feet are hurt from the thin rungs and have a great ability to feel." It's no accident that we are in a swimming pool, at fiery sunset, with a high wind blowing and the ground hot enough to remind of us of its solidity. The four elements are intended to work upon "you"; for no matter how many times this queue has formed, no matter how many people have dived before, or have watched other people dive, in life or on TV, That mix of the concrete and the existential, of air and water, of the eternal submerged in the ba.n.a.l. And boredom was the great theme of both. But in the great theme there is a great difference. Wallace wanted to interrogate boredom as a deadly postmodern att.i.tude, an attempt to bypa.s.s experience on the part of a people who have become habituated to a mediated reality. "It seems impossible," the boy thinks, arranging his face in fake boredom to match the rest, "that everybody could really be this bored." In this story, the counterweight to automatism is sensation, expressed here as human reality in its most direct and redemptive form: "Your feet are hurt from the thin rungs and have a great ability to feel." It's no accident that we are in a swimming pool, at fiery sunset, with a high wind blowing and the ground hot enough to remind of us of its solidity. The four elements are intended to work upon "you"; for no matter how many times this queue has formed, no matter how many people have dived before, or have watched other people dive, in life or on TV, this is you, this is you, diving now, and it should be thought about, and there should be a wonder in it. For Larkin, on the other hand, boredom was diving now, and it should be thought about, and there should be a wonder in it. For Larkin, on the other hand, boredom was real real ("Life is first boredom, then fear./Whether or not we use it, it goes" ("Life is first boredom, then fear./Whether or not we use it, it goes"73), and the inexorability of time made all human effort faintly ludicrous. There is some of this despair in Wallace, too (whatever splash the divers make, the tank "heals itself" each time, as if each dive had never been), but much less than is popularly ascribed to him. Time has its horrors in Wallace but it's also the thing that binds us most closely to the real and to one another: without it we would lose ourselves in solipsism (which, for him, was the true true horror.) When the boy, in a meditative state, dares to hope that "no time is pa.s.sing outside," he is soon proven wrong: horror.) When the boy, in a meditative state, dares to hope that "no time is pa.s.sing outside," he is soon proven wrong: Hey kid. They want to know. Do your plans up here involve the whole day or what exactly is the story. Hey kid are you okay.There's been time this whole time. You can't kill time with your heart. Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

Yet this is not experienced as a negative revelation. Indeed, the greatness of Wallace's story lies in its indeterminacy, for the boy never quite resolves which part of his experience is the real one, the hardware of the world or the software of his consciousness: So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time? The lie is that it's one or the other. A still, floating bee is moving faster than it can think. From overhead the sweetness drives it crazy.

What is he jumping into, in the end? Is the tank death, experience, manhood, a baptism, the beginning, the end? Whatever it is, the boy is able to approach it without dread. He pauses to examine the "two vague black ovals" at the end of the board, over which his literary creator has taken such wonderful care: From all the people who've gone before you. Your feet as you stand here are tender and dented, hurt by the rough wet surface, and you see that the two dark spots are from people's skin. They are skin abraded from feet by the violence of the disappearance of people with real weight. More people than you can count without losing track. The weight and abrasion of their disappearance leaves little bits of soft tender feet behind, bits and shard and curls of skin that dirty and darken and tan as they lie tiny and smeared in the sun at the end of the board.

But this examination does not result in paralysis. He still dives. Where Larkin was transfixed by the acc.u.mulation of human futility, Wallace was as interested in communication as he was in finitude (the last word of the story, as the boy dives, is h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo). He was, in the broadest sense, a moralist: what mattered to him most was not the end but the quality of our communal human experience before before the end, while we're still here. What pa.s.ses between us in that queue the end, while we're still here. What pa.s.ses between us in that queue before before we dive. we dive.

In 2005, Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College that begins this way: There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the h.e.l.l is water?"

And ends like this: The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water. This is water." It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.

This short piece appeared in many newspapers when he died and has recently been repackaged as a Chicken Soup for the Soul Chicken Soup for the Soul-style toilet book (sentences artificially separated from one another and left, like Zen koans, alone on the page) to be sold next to the cash register. If you believe the publicity flack, it is here that Wallace attempted to collect "all he believed about life, human nature, and lasting fulfillment into a brief talk." Hard to think of a less appropriate portrait of this writer than as the dispenser of convenient pearls of wisdom, placed in your palm, so that you needn't go through any struggle yourself. Wallace was the opposite of an aphorist. And the real worth of that speech (which he never published, which existed only as a transcript on the Internet) is as a diving board into his fiction, his fiction being his truest response to the difficulty of staying conscious and alive, day in and day out.

The ends of great fiction do not change, much. But the means do. A hundred years earlier, another great American writer, Henry James, wanted his readers "finely aware so as to become richly responsible."74 His syntactically tortuous sentences, like Wallace's, are intended to make you aware, to break the r