The Book That Turned me Into a Writer
May 12th, 2008 by Carlos
We all have certain moments in our lives that kind of take us and point us in a new direction. For me, reading David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again was one of those moments.
You may have noticed that in my Amazon Store I have every one of his books listed there. It’s because I recommend each and every one—he’s that good.
How I found it
Anyway, the story of how I ran into this book is pretty interesting because it’s kind of random and accidental. I was in college and my sister sent me a birthday present in the mail. It was this book she said someone recommended to her by a “local” author in the Chicago area (which is where she was living at the time). Well, I saw the cover—it was weird—and put it on my bookshelf. “Never heard of it,” is what I thought before totally forgetting about it.
Fast forward about a year and I was reading everything I could get my hands on. Something clicked in my head and I was fast becoming a voracious reader—anything new I could get my hands on I was reading. I was reading so much that I eventually read every book I owned (which I would LOVE to do now, so much on the shelves that I still haven’t read).
Except for one. The book with the funky cover my sister had given me. So I picked it up off the shelf and said, “What the hell, I got nothing else to read.”
It changed my life. I hate to sound melodramatic, but it really did. The book is a compilation of different essays and articles he wrote—from a county fair to tennis to television—about all kinds of different things. Now, if I told you that this book was made up of essays on things like going on a cruise, tennis, and TV, you would probably just say “that’s nice” and move on. That’s what I did.
But the impressive thing about the book (besides showing off how smart DFW is) is how he manages to make such different, wide-ranging topics so damn interesting. Especially the title essay about going on a cruise. I mean, just from reading that, I want to go on a cruise now. I want to experience what he experienced, even though I know what I go through won’t be anywhere near the hyper-aware event he had.
I finished the book and realized that’s what I wanted to do: to write about things in a way that made them interesting, funny, and enlightening.To entertain people even if the topic I wrote about wasn’t that compelling to them. And god knows I have some interests that people out there may not jive with (like bananas).
Technically, this isn’t really a book review. Maybe I’ll do that down the line after a re-read of the book, but I just had to post a little something about how important this book is to me and how DFW himself became such a big part of my “schooling” as a writer. I went on to read all his books and he’s probably the only author that is an “automatic buy” for me. Whenever he comes out with a new book, I will be there to buy it. No questions asked.
You use a lot of extraneous words and cliches for a writer, Nut. Cutting both will take you a long way to being like the writer you adulate.
thats sort of what happened to me when i saw Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark. oh wait, i didn’t become an archaeologist, so its nothing like that! ;-P
[...] P.S. If you really like David Foster Wallace’s writing (a lot of people don’t) and you like non-fiction, you can’t do much better than Consider the Lobster or A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again, which was the book that turned me into a writer. [...]
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