06/12/2013
Michael Hoyer on David Foster Wallace
Michael Leigh Hoyer received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 2012. She specializes in 19th- and 20th century French literature, the history of the novel, and narrative theory. Her dissertation, “Project Fiction, A User's Manual: Readings in a Subgenre,” offers a new historically-informed philosophical aesthetics for analyzing novels that exhibit a projective […]
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This is KCSU Stanford.
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Welcome to entitled opinions.
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My name is Robert Harrison.
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We're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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Our show today is about the writer David Foster Wallace.
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And it comes to you courtesy of the many emails I've received from listeners over the past few years.
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listeners who adamantly believe that entitled opinions and David Foster Wallace are a natural fit,
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and that the two are destined to meet sooner or later, so why not make it sooner?
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Unfortunately now is not soon enough to have Wallace himself on the show.
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He would have made a very compelling guest and interlocutor, I'm sure,
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but he died some five years ago before I had even gotten around to reading him.
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Nevertheless, I have with me in the studio the next best thing to Wallace himself, Michael Hoier,
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a recent Stanford PhD in comparative literature whose dissertation on what she calls project fiction
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contains an impressive central section on David Foster Wallace.
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It was when I read that dissertation that I began to suspect that maybe some of the hype surrounding this writer is justified after all.
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And that yes, maybe it's time for entitled opinions to devote a show to him.
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I'm still not convinced that Wallace is a great fiction writer,
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but if anyone can make the case for him, it's my guest today.
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As some of you die hard fans know, there's always a risk of incineration on entitled opinions.
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Will David Foster Wallace get out of here alive?
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Hard to say.
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Stay tuned and find out.
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Today's show and the author is devoted to,
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bring to mind the full title of this radio broadcast,
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entitled opinions about life and literature.
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As I said in the very first show, we ever aired back in 2005,
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the phrase "life and literature" is almost pleonastic,
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in the sense that literature concerns itself with life,
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and that life seeps into and saturates literature.
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That was still a mildly controversial claim back then,
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deconstruction and postmodernist dogmas, while on the way,
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still hung heavy in the halls of academia at the time.
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Many of us who had become professors of literature had been taught as graduate students,
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that literature is not about life, that only a naive, natural attitude believes
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that fiction refers to lived experience, that novels are a textile industry.
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In other words, they are texts that refer first and foremost to their own,
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a rachnoid acts of textualization.
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Ole bersou.
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That kind of deconstructive postmodern,
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numbrelesum, which is a French word for staring at your belly button,
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was all the rage in American academia and fiction writing
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when David Foster Wallace came of age as a college student and later as a writer.
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He was plenty guilty of it himself to be sure,
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yet he insisted in interview after interview that his goal as a writer
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was to break the solipsistic glass cage of postmodernism
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and return serious fiction to the serious business
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of saying something seriously meaningful about life, suffering,
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personal experience, and the lived world we share in common with one another,
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but from which we consumers caught in the web of capitalism seduction
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and the
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relationships and blandishments have an irrepressible urge to escape from.
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Serious fiction is not or should not be a game,
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and if it has a ludicrous quality about it,
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as Wallace's writing does,
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it should nevertheless make an effort to transcend itself
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referential cleverness and find its way back to earnesty,
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sincerity, and existential relevance.
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All that is fine and good, and when I read Wallace on the vocation of serious fiction in our time,
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I become a fan of his,
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and I understand why so many listeners have urged me to do a show on him.
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By contrast, when I read some of his fiction,
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I have a harder time believing that as an artist he gives us the kind of literature he himself advocated.
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In other words, I still need to be persuaded that his fiction matches his vision
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for what fiction should be, and that will be one of the challenges facing the guest who joins me today,
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namely to convince us that Wallace, in fact, practiced what he preached.
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Michael, welcome to the program.
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Hi, Valbert, thank you so much.
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So life and literature have important convergences when it comes to David Foster Wallace, obviously,
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and in his case, it's not only life, death as well plays an important role in that convergence.
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So for those listeners who may not know much about this writer, could you start off by telling us who Wallace was
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and what kind of life he led, and how and why he willfully terminated it at the age of 46?
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Sure. It's always a challenge to condense that and take it from start to finish as a sad prospect now that he's gone already,
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Yes, David Foster Wallace was born in 1962.
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Both of his parents are academics, his father's a philosophy professor, and his mother is an English professor.
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So he was steeped in philosophical thinking and logic on the one hand and language and literature on the other from very early on.
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He went to Amherstly, grew up in the Midwest and was a nationally ranked junior tennis player.
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And already in high school was suffering some pretty severe panic attacks, which a little aside, that is why he wore the bandana, the iconic bandana,
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or fashion statement of any sort, but began because when he would do readings and things, the sweat would drip down into his eyes and onto the page.
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So he left the Midwest for Amherst and pursued philosophy as a course of study, modal logic and high level mathematics as well.
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But it was in his sophomore year that his first bout with clinical depression really took a serious turn and he retreated, went back home to Illinois.
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And it was there, he had always read a lot of fiction and read a lot of everything. He had a voracious curiosity, but it was then that he began writing fiction.
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And as he reports to Larry Mcaffery in that famous interview from 1993, citing Yates, it was fiction writing.
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He pursued philosophy to find the click of the well made box, that's the Yates citation.
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He stopped finding that click, that in philosophy, and it was fiction writing that got him out of the cage that that box of philosophical thinking and rigorous logic had created for him.
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So when he went back to Amherst, he added English as another course of study and wrote theses in both philosophy and English.
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It was the 700 page novel that he wrote as his undergrad thesis in English that would become the broom of the system. His first novel published in 1987, shortly after he graduated.
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So from there, he decided to pursue an MFA in fiction writing at University of Arizona.
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He went there, but after a spell decided that maybe philosophy was, that calling was stronger again.
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So he, after finishing the MFA, went to Harvard and matriculated as a PhD student in philosophy.
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Now this is where again, getting deep into the thinking of logic and dealing particularly with the doctrine of solipsism and the issue of fatalism.
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He had a second major crisis that in 1989 that landed him in the mental institution.
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He attempted suicide and was using drugs and alcohol heavily at this period.
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Michael, you mentioned solipsism as something that he fell into the trap of solipsism, I believe, were your words.
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What was that trap of solipsism? What did it have to do with suicide? Because you seem to link those two things.
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Well, if not suicide, then depression, I guess.
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Yeah. So Wallace from very early on in his undergraduate studies was an amort of Wittgenstein in particular, and the tractatus.
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And the doctrine of solipsism that nothing exists outside of one's own head or thoughts, actually.
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So as fascinating as this course of philosophical thought could be, David Foster Wallace also linked it to his personal experience of feeling completely disconnected from everyone and everything around him, really stuck in his own head.
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From the academic side, he, most of his work was trying to disprove this difficult to disprove logical, the...
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Yes, it's difficult to disprove if you buy into that analytic philosophy tradition that dominates American academia.
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And I know that someone who struggled a lot with that is Stanley Cabelle, the philosopher whom I admire a lot, who was educated in the analytic tradition.
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And then he realized that it's absolutely crazy to go on obsessing about issues of solipsism where it just goes against all common sense to believe that you're the only thing.
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And why do you have to prove something that seems very obvious? I have a feeling he studied with Stanley Cabelle. I don't know this because I don't know his biography well enough.
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But that this kind of solipsism, it seems to me having read your dissertation and other things that he said that he tries to generalize this as a particular pathology of the American society that we live in, namely that people are trapped inside their own heads and have a hard time getting outside of their own...
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What you call hyper-traffic loneliness, you'll talk more about that I hope. And that this and our heads are these traps.
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Yes.
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You actually gave me a very interesting quote from one of his commencement addresses where he says that it is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. They shoot the terrible master.
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Yes. Okay. So yes, we're touching on so many fascinating parts of David Foster Wallace's both life and writing as you mentioned in the beginning they're so intertwined. So first of all, to the point that solipsism logically is difficult to disprove, but in reality we all know that it's not actually the case.
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That links specifically, I mean this clarifies the relationship between fiction and philosophy for David Foster Wallace
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Because for them fiction has the power to humanize important truths by bringing them back into contact with—who lived experience
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And concretizing them in in imagined and imaginable reality, you know, in a novel populated by relatable I'll be at sometimes grotesque and
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Difficult to imagine people
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That putting them in this fictional context we can get at the fact that they
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Can't they don't have as much power over us over us as we might think they do so in his first novel the broom of the system
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Which grapples very blatantly and self-consciously with Vic and Shini and questions
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The protagonist Lenore
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Has this debate with her brother who is very into Vic and Shine
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He you know rehearses the problem about how we can't think of anything outside of our own head and she says watch me
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I just did you know, so that's simple like look I just did it and nothing happened. I'm still here
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So and that's what
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mystifies me a little bit about Wallace to be frank that he
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He suffered from a particular kind of neurosis. Let's say which is
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Highly academic and philosophical analytic philosophy in nature
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And it may also have to do with his personality
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You want to call it personality disorder? I'm sure some people are hyper cerebral and that they're they they listen to the thoughts that are going on in their heads
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And it's a voice or many voices that just will not stop. Yeah, and you just want to
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You just don't know how to control all that you have a very interesting
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thesis about his fiction writing as as trying to bring discipline to this
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Chaos in the mind. Yes, so perhaps you could say something about
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Yeah, this this this head inside which he he felt like he was trapped and he wanted to get outside of it
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Yeah, certainly so I I do make that point
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I think that accounting for heads in in Wallace's writing across genres is crucial to understanding not only his work
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But also him as a person because for him the head condenses
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You know this pervasive noun and symbol it condenses the most positive and the most problematic aspects of his imaginary
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Meaning that you know it comprises the physiological components of the skull and the brain
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And that is where we get the grotesque representations of characters that are deprived of skulls
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Well one so she wears this metal cap so that her brain and cerebral spinal fluids won't
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explode or come running out
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And another character described as them having a skull so large and hair and skin so thin that it's
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Stretch so tight they he is called skull head
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So we have we have these grotesque representations of the physiological components of heads and then at the same time these
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portraits of the internal workings of the mind and
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Those tend to be of characters that have that suffer from this problem of thinking too much and
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It's David Foster Wallace's phrase abstract thinking and I
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append to that that discipline to abstract thinking
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So why abstract thinking why not just thinking well
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It's particularly this analytical kind of thought that you're speaking about so when he
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found himself deep in these studies of
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Logical justifications for phenomena that we witness every day. We know exist
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But cannot justify logically he said he has this passage in the
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Nonfiction book he wrote called everything in more brief history of infinity
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Where it still has these elements of the fiction writer so there's a passage about
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laying in bed and your alarm clock goes off now
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Do you just hit your alarm clock jump out of bed and go about your day
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Or are you the type of person who can lay there and for hours constantly
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Justify to yourself whether the floor will hold beneath you or not because you know from past experience
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You know deductive reasoning, but the floor will indeed hold but how can you justify this?
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Well, you can either way in bed all day contemplating this and getting stuck in your own head or you can
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Move on so disciplining one's abstract thinking allows one to
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You know shut down as you said those voices that want to constantly be
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Going in the solipsistic circle of of internal thinking
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Okay, can I ask now about the relationship between this
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Head issue and the society that we live in because in the same commencement speech that I
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referenced earlier he says that
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That the no BS value of a liberal arts education is how to keep going through
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your
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comfortable prosperous respectable adult life not dead or unconscious or being a slave to your head and
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To make how to avoid your natural default setting being that of being a uniquely completely
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Empirially alone
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Individual day in and day out so that is I like the way he phrases it this natural default setting of being uniquely alone
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But the interesting thing is that he then relates it to the social
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capitalistic
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Consumers world that we live in and he says that this so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your
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Default settings because the so-called real world of men and money and power
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Humps merely along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self
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And he goes on to suggest that
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the system
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profits
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And and capitalizes on the
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Loneliness of the individual who was trapped inside his or her own head. Yeah, and this is where it's thought takes on
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A sociological dimensions of a sociological commentary
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Can you say something about how he viewed the social social pathology of the it's in particular the United States of America in this
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Kind of late capitalistic stage that he felt that we were
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Yeah, absolutely, and um, you know
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I you and I've spoken about this before. I know you're aware of the the essay he wrote the long essay
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He wrote on television and US fiction
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um in which his thesis is the television is in large part
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Motivated by these consumerist ideals that are constantly creating
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Desire and seducing the viewer into capitalizing on these desires that they have that may or may not be good for them
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these
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Media
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seduce the reader so that they are the perfect
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consumer
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This
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Inelastic supply
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You know the addict isn't is the perfect consumer because the addict constantly wants more
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so would you say there is some
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connection that he was
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very intuitively
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identified between solipsism
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Not now as a philosophical problem, but solipsism as an existential MO
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That many people in our society live with and capitalism that it suits the purpose of capitalism and consumerism to have
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us be atomized individuals
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Alienated from one another. Yeah, because there we are put at the mercy of what he calls these forms of passive
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Spectation whether it's of television and of addiction of yeah, well, yes, absolutely
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I wouldn't credit, you know the
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I wouldn't credit the system for you know
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Thinking this through in any way. I don't know that that they there's some master plan behind it all but exactly this works in in two ways
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One if you create enough of a vacuum around
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an individual that they feel they constantly need to be filling with commodities or by consuming
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you know substances and
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You know foods and all the stuff the hot new thing. That's one way it works the other way is if you
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are alienating
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People from one another then they are they need to escape themselves
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by
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Immersing themselves in things that help them forget they're you know empirically alone
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Condition this hyper-trophic loneliness that you spoke up before I I append the adjective hyper-trophic because
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Going along with with Wallace's diagnosis of this problem that we evolve
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You know the human species has always contended with this condition of existential loneliness of
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You know being able to relate to one another but only so far so that you will never know what it's like to be me
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And I will not have that kind of insight into your experience either
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but within late 20th century that gets
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you know manifested in in this
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Hyper-trophic way for these reasons and in the case of Wallace now we're actually in a strange way still with the biography
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Although when you're talking about life you're talking about his literature as well and the fact that he
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ended up losing his
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his
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Struggle against the forces of depression. Yeah, it is tempting to read into his suicide
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some kind of
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Defeat at the hands of the phenomena that he are under description in his essays as well as his fiction
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Namely
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You know a society which where everything conspires to perpetuate addictions and passive
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Spectation and loneliness
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But I think that you are right to be cautious about this
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over-determination of
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His final act which was to take his own life because it might not represent at all the logical conclusion of
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a kind of nihilism at work in his vision of things that it might have a much more contingent
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Causality or etiology
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Absolutely
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I'm really glad you bring that up because that I think if there's any notion that I would like to dispel with our
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Conversation it is that actually well it's like compound notion
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But that David Foster Wallace was someone so self-involved
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and so
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Unable to
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Get out of his own vision of himself and his writing
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That this is what led to somehow his arrogance and that is what led to his demise
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Because I say that because some some people tend to oversimplify
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his death
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Connecting it to the fact that he was writing pale king which would have been or was published posthumous
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From what he left behind of it. It wasn't finished in any way, but
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| 00:23:55.960 |
The follow-up novel to
|
| 00:23:59.080 |
Infinite just which in the interim we he published multiple books of short stories and he wrote a lot of nonfiction as we know
|
| 00:24:05.560 |
But infinite just was published in 1996
|
| 00:24:08.920 |
He was working on pale king at the time of his death in 2008
|
| 00:24:12.600 |
And so the over simplification runs thus that you know here is this artist
|
| 00:24:18.360 |
working on
|
| 00:24:20.680 |
The next big work is dissatisfied with what he's coming up with and feeling creatively stunted or something and so therefore
|
| 00:24:26.520 |
This it
|
| 00:24:29.960 |
Contributed to his ending everything well as you point out and I believe very strongly that this is not the right view
|
| 00:24:38.040 |
For
|
| 00:24:41.480 |
David Foster Wallace
|
| 00:24:43.160 |
The struggle was with clinical depression on top of everything anything else
|
| 00:24:47.640 |
It's what drove him to drugs and alcohol early on. It's what fiction helped him come back and
|
| 00:24:54.680 |
Then at the same time. There's the chemical piece that you know over which
|
| 00:24:59.560 |
Someone suffering with depression has very little control
|
| 00:25:03.080 |
He had managed it for some 20 years with a drug called Nardil which was a clunky first-generation
|
| 00:25:10.920 |
antidepressant he went on in his teenage years and
|
| 00:25:16.040 |
You know the biographical piece of this story
|
| 00:25:18.680 |
leading up to his
|
| 00:25:21.560 |
suicide in
|
| 00:25:22.520 |
2008 is that he had an incident where you know Nardil has very
|
| 00:25:27.240 |
You can have strong reactions with certain foods and you may not even know
|
| 00:25:31.960 |
So he had one of these and ended up in the hospital for I think about a week or something
|
| 00:25:36.600 |
And at the time the doctors suggested that he try some other drug. They said well you're on this really old
|
| 00:25:42.680 |
antidepressant, you know technology we've we've gotten much further in being able to treat
|
| 00:25:47.720 |
Clinical depression without all these horrible side effects. So they tried him on
|
| 00:25:52.280 |
He tapered off of Nardil and tried a bunch of other drugs none of which worked and then when he tried to go back on Nardil that no longer worked either
|
| 00:25:59.720 |
so
|
| 00:26:01.240 |
It was very much a
|
| 00:26:03.240 |
Chemical problem in the end that led to so it's a chemical biochemical suicide not a metaphysical suicide as such
|
| 00:26:11.240 |
Yes, I agree that it's it's really important to keep
|
| 00:26:14.040 |
David Foster Wallace's suicide as separate as we can from
|
| 00:26:19.080 |
Thinking about his philosophy
|
| 00:26:22.200 |
on life because he in fact as you read from the Kenyan commencement speech from 2005
|
| 00:26:27.720 |
was very optimistic in in his thinking and
|
| 00:26:32.040 |
One of his main projects was to help people reconnect with one another and find this place of empathy and just joy despite
|
| 00:26:40.920 |
Challenging conditions and one of the ways he wanted to help people is through his fiction. Have you mentioned already?
|
| 00:26:48.040 |
more than once and now let's
|
| 00:26:50.680 |
Shift our attention really to to his practice because I have to say that
|
| 00:26:56.040 |
When I read him as a
|
| 00:26:59.400 |
His social commentary. I'm I'm persuaded. I'm impressed by his understanding of a certain kind of pathology that afflicts this nation of ours
|
| 00:27:09.800 |
Where you can see signs of it and symptoms of it in
|
| 00:27:12.520 |
Not only psychologically you can see it even physically in the kind of
|
| 00:27:17.800 |
bodies that have a kind of distortion about them all
|
| 00:27:23.960 |
Across this country of ours where you you see a reflection of some kind of
|
| 00:27:29.400 |
Disorders of one sort and I think that he he go he gets to something crucial about
|
| 00:27:37.560 |
um
|
| 00:27:39.560 |
Addiction
|
| 00:27:42.600 |
Living in contemporary
|
| 00:27:44.600 |
American
|
| 00:27:45.640 |
the collapse of of social communal structures and so forth
|
| 00:27:48.840 |
but now when we let me okay, so infinite justice is main
|
| 00:27:52.840 |
I consider by many people his main magnus opus
|
| 00:27:56.440 |
and I'm now gonna
|
| 00:27:59.320 |
adopt
|
| 00:28:01.960 |
a
|
| 00:28:03.000 |
Anatitude of skepticism because I'm not at all
|
| 00:28:08.200 |
I've tried to read it as most readers, you know, I gave up most readers read about till page 100
|
| 00:28:14.760 |
I've quared a number of friends of mine literary
|
| 00:28:17.480 |
Scholars as well as intense readers of contemporary fiction and so forth
|
| 00:28:23.640 |
and I would say I've acquired about eight seven or eight, you know, in preparation for the show not one of them
|
| 00:28:32.600 |
believes that
|
| 00:28:34.600 |
Or thought that infinite just was a great book and and not one of them was able to well
|
| 00:28:39.880 |
One of them was able to read it all the way through and I'd like to read a
|
| 00:28:43.720 |
an email I received from this friend of mine who's um, you know, highly literate and who
|
| 00:28:49.000 |
wrote to me when I informed him to ask and revise said in a way I'm quoting now in a way
|
| 00:28:54.520 |
I'm sorry you're dignifying David Foster Wallace with a show
|
| 00:28:58.680 |
He's almost my exact contemporary so I've been reading him pretty much from the get-go
|
| 00:29:03.240 |
He wrote some wonderful short stories, but his novels are awful
|
| 00:29:07.400 |
Infinite just was three novels in one seemingly combined for the publicity shock effect of a young man publishing a very long book
|
| 00:29:16.200 |
There's some wonderful writing about addiction
|
| 00:29:18.840 |
Some fair writing about tennis and a preposterous third plot about Canadian terrorism
|
| 00:29:25.720 |
In which for all his pose of knowingness he consistently misspells the French word for wheelchair
|
| 00:29:31.800 |
I guess poser is the word I'm looking for
|
| 00:29:35.400 |
That's a harsh judgment
|
| 00:29:39.720 |
But it comes from someone who has put in the time and who has earned the right to that judgment through
|
| 00:29:46.760 |
Was you know
|
| 00:29:48.280 |
Spending however many hours it takes to read it looks like infinite just
|
| 00:29:52.920 |
so I would like to hear you defend it on the basis of its literary merits and convince me
|
| 00:30:00.680 |
that it's not bloated and
|
| 00:30:03.320 |
self-indulgent and
|
| 00:30:05.480 |
overwritten and full of all those things that in his interview he says he's trying to avoid namely
|
| 00:30:11.480 |
Look at me how clever I am
|
| 00:30:13.480 |
what he calls you know the
|
| 00:30:15.480 |
the sort of puffed up attitude of the writer drawing attention to himself for herself
|
| 00:30:22.600 |
So here you go Michael well that that's a tall order indeed, but I will try to channel all the enthusiasts out there
|
| 00:30:29.800 |
Because I know we are legion in fact
|
| 00:30:32.360 |
I
|
| 00:30:35.000 |
believe strongly that it is a great work of fiction
|
| 00:30:38.680 |
American fiction and in fact probably
|
| 00:30:41.480 |
maybe the greatest
|
| 00:30:44.360 |
Novel of the 20th century
|
| 00:30:46.440 |
In that it really reflects
|
| 00:30:49.960 |
You know so much of what we've been speaking about what it feels like to
|
| 00:30:53.320 |
Be alive in this moment and
|
| 00:30:55.720 |
Perhaps that's part of the key as to why your friend there and
|
| 00:31:00.920 |
You know you and other readers have not your friend made it through but the criticism might have to do with a generational
|
| 00:31:08.040 |
Positioning
|
| 00:31:12.280 |
Because Wallace you know we've spoken a bit about the high level
|
| 00:31:16.840 |
solipsism and and philosophical thought that he
|
| 00:31:19.880 |
dedicated much of his study to and also suffered from that that is only a particular
|
| 00:31:27.560 |
Population that can relate to that but at the same time
|
| 00:31:31.560 |
you know there's a
|
| 00:31:34.680 |
generational difference divide in in the language that he's speaking and in the phenomenon that he's
|
| 00:31:40.840 |
Reconstructing yes, but you
|
| 00:31:44.760 |
You say that he's the greatest it's the greatest novel of the 20th century
|
| 00:31:48.440 |
But if it's so generationally determined and I would actually question that because the email I received from you know
|
| 00:31:55.400 |
My friend said that that he's he's
|
| 00:31:57.320 |
Wallace's contemporary right exact contemporary and he doesn't seem to get into it that much either and
|
| 00:32:02.600 |
So is it the greatest novel of a particular slice of a generation?
|
| 00:32:08.920 |
Is novel of art of art particular decade or two decades or is it really the greatest novel of the 20th century in your view?
|
| 00:32:16.120 |
Well American novel I'm assuming
|
| 00:32:18.920 |
um
|
| 00:32:19.880 |
I mean, okay, let's say one of the greatest one of the top three maybe greatest novels
|
| 00:32:24.680 |
I think what we need to address when we speak about the criticism that this book and that Wallace has received
|
| 00:32:31.640 |
I think we need to remember what happens to
|
| 00:32:34.440 |
um
|
| 00:32:36.520 |
sort of highly visible targets
|
| 00:32:39.320 |
that they they kind of
|
| 00:32:42.360 |
Have this magnetic effect to negative criticism particularly this novel which as you mentioned too the other people you queried
|
| 00:32:48.760 |
very few of Wallace's
|
| 00:32:51.400 |
Staunches critics have read infinite just all the way through so one could
|
| 00:32:56.760 |
You know surely there's no judgment on character there or whatever you can read the novel you cannot read the novel
|
| 00:33:02.600 |
But can you not read the novel and make pronouncements about what it is or isn't or how successful it is or is not that
|
| 00:33:09.480 |
I'm not so sure about well can I ask then I'm because I'm gonna push you hard now like because you said that
|
| 00:33:15.160 |
You have to make it through that novel
|
| 00:33:18.760 |
But you also mentioned that he submitted a novel that was 700 pages longer than what
|
| 00:33:25.000 |
It the published version was and people like me, you know read the first hundred pages and say
|
| 00:33:32.840 |
This ain't Kafka. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got you got you he distills in five pages
|
| 00:33:38.520 |
Absolutely essential psychic and social phenomena so forth and you know there there's a sense that
|
| 00:33:45.800 |
He claimed when he's that everything there was there for a reason
|
| 00:33:52.360 |
but if you can
|
| 00:33:54.120 |
Reduce it down by 700 pages it means that there's a lot of
|
| 00:33:57.960 |
Perfluest stuff there was a lot of superfluous stuff in there and I'm not convinced that the thousand plus pages of
|
| 00:34:05.400 |
His published version is all absolutely essential and everything
|
| 00:34:09.560 |
It's necessary has on that in there to vent but you are persuaded of that I am and I think it has to do with
|
| 00:34:15.880 |
What it means for something in this novel to be essential for it to have a reason to be there because
|
| 00:34:24.760 |
Thinking about how the novel operates and again when I speak about project fiction I think about
|
| 00:34:29.560 |
novels that tend to have this long duration and that that voluminous structure is what allows the authors to
|
| 00:34:38.040 |
To rehearse and proposed certain principles about
|
| 00:34:45.080 |
Thinking through what it means to live a good life and in their contemporary moment there each of these novels, you know, and Bruce is another
|
| 00:34:53.400 |
I look at and
|
| 00:34:55.400 |
George Pecax
|
| 00:34:56.520 |
Lavimodempoa life a users manual
|
| 00:34:58.520 |
They are inherently bound up in their contemporary moment. So with Wallace
|
| 00:35:03.880 |
It's a tricky question. What is
|
| 00:35:06.280 |
Essential and what isn't because the one of the essential points is that we live in a time where there's so much overload
|
| 00:35:13.320 |
Our stimuli are constantly I mean there's constant
|
| 00:35:16.520 |
Influx of stimuli and
|
| 00:35:20.760 |
things calling out for us to pay attention to them and
|
| 00:35:23.880 |
You know in to his mind and and what he is thinking about in the fiction is that we've potentially lost
|
| 00:35:31.880 |
strategies and
|
| 00:35:35.240 |
practical
|
| 00:35:36.520 |
tools to cope with this overflow and and complete
|
| 00:35:41.000 |
Overabundance of substances and stimuli and you know
|
| 00:35:47.560 |
Words coming at us every day. So this novel
|
| 00:35:50.440 |
one of the tools that it gives the reader is
|
| 00:35:53.080 |
Practicing coaching them to develop how it's habits of intentional awareness that
|
| 00:36:00.200 |
Our vital to living well today
|
| 00:36:03.960 |
So you're suggesting I gather that there is an antidote
|
| 00:36:08.840 |
in the writing to the ailments of the society in particular
|
| 00:36:15.240 |
the overload the addiction the inability to
|
| 00:36:19.640 |
Impose restraint you also claim in your in your work on him that he is
|
| 00:36:26.440 |
Using fiction as an occasion to discipline abstract thought
|
| 00:36:31.160 |
Absolutely and
|
| 00:36:33.160 |
But here again, I
|
| 00:36:35.160 |
Would like to hear more about why you believe that that is actually taking place in the novel because I I read it as
|
| 00:36:42.040 |
symptomatic of the overload and of the excess and of that there's a certain incontinence in in the book from my
|
| 00:36:51.880 |
Very partial reading of it literal sense and I have a sense
|
| 00:36:57.400 |
I mean I I knew an academic once who was
|
| 00:37:01.400 |
an
|
| 00:37:03.640 |
alcoholic much, you know like
|
| 00:37:05.640 |
Wallace was and while he was an alcoholic he wrote very brilliant
|
| 00:37:11.480 |
lucid and
|
| 00:37:13.480 |
Almost Apollonian kind of essays and chapters of a book
|
| 00:37:16.680 |
Then he went into rehab gave up alcohol all of a sudden his writing became
|
| 00:37:22.040 |
Completely intoxicated and drunken and he ended up
|
| 00:37:26.280 |
Trading in one form of excess for another and he would have probably for his academic career would have done better
|
| 00:37:34.600 |
To remain an alcoholic at least until he got tenure which didn't happen so yeah
|
| 00:37:39.720 |
When I read infinite just I have a sense that here we have
|
| 00:37:42.760 |
You know an addict who who has transpose onto into his fiction a certain kind of
|
| 00:37:50.600 |
inability to exercise restraint on
|
| 00:37:53.240 |
Unaddiction or a passion or whatever you call it interesting
|
| 00:37:57.080 |
well, I don't know how helpful
|
| 00:38:00.440 |
the
|
| 00:38:03.480 |
mapping
|
| 00:38:05.480 |
Wallace's own addiction is on to reading the novel, but I do grant and
|
| 00:38:09.640 |
citing
|
| 00:38:11.560 |
Wallace in an interview
|
| 00:38:13.560 |
That I know that he had trouble
|
| 00:38:15.560 |
determining what was most important and less important to include in his nonfiction
|
| 00:38:21.000 |
But I feel like in his fiction again that
|
| 00:38:24.920 |
everything is in there for a
|
| 00:38:28.040 |
reason in that
|
| 00:38:30.840 |
This nonlinear recursive presentation of these proliferate plot elements and narrative details
|
| 00:38:36.360 |
Encourage as the reader to exercise the cognitive muscles that
|
| 00:38:40.040 |
You know he or she uses to parse and organize the barrage of input that
|
| 00:38:44.760 |
his or her brain processes daily so in the novel itself
|
| 00:38:48.840 |
It's like being out in the world and
|
| 00:38:50.840 |
at the same time it is controlled and constrained because
|
| 00:38:55.960 |
You know your your movements are dictated by
|
| 00:38:59.640 |
The words on the page by flipping back and forth to the end notes at different moments
|
| 00:39:04.360 |
and in
|
| 00:39:07.480 |
Remember the
|
| 00:39:08.680 |
attentional awareness now what I mean when I say that is that
|
| 00:39:11.400 |
the way things things
|
| 00:39:14.040 |
Being you know mobile synecticae these nouns that accrue significance and
|
| 00:39:20.280 |
are
|
| 00:39:21.960 |
Deployed throughout the text in different synectic docket relations
|
| 00:39:25.640 |
So they stand in as parts for different holes at different moments
|
| 00:39:29.640 |
and have different symbolic and comic
|
| 00:39:31.800 |
Resonance so that the reader
|
| 00:39:34.920 |
Moving through this thousand page text has to awaken
|
| 00:39:39.560 |
to
|
| 00:39:41.560 |
Paying attention to the details that are important and parsing out actually what is more or less important and again
|
| 00:39:47.080 |
I should say that um
|
| 00:39:49.080 |
You know of course there's uneven writing and of course more could have been edited out
|
| 00:39:53.880 |
Particularly around the 200 page mark. I feel as some of the weak stuff
|
| 00:39:58.040 |
I think it's around there there are few voices that come in that um
|
| 00:40:02.360 |
You know he he brings in different dialects and things and that is some somewhat interesting
|
| 00:40:07.480 |
But they do not come back in a substantive way
|
| 00:40:10.760 |
So one is a feeling that you know that is a thread that did not get picked up again
|
| 00:40:15.320 |
And maybe could have been cut out
|
| 00:40:17.000 |
Well you have a really
|
| 00:40:20.040 |
intriguing and compelling
|
| 00:40:22.040 |
Analysis of some of some of these
|
| 00:40:26.520 |
Mobile synectic geez as you call them one of which is of course is the head
|
| 00:40:30.440 |
Yeah, and that's where you know reading you I start suspecting that you know maybe there is a kind of intensely controlled
|
| 00:40:38.760 |
System of metaphoric taking place because the head in in infinite just
|
| 00:40:45.720 |
From your reading anyway seems to take have many different declensions
|
| 00:40:51.960 |
And it even now makes sense to me why the tennis academy becomes a central locus because the the game of tennis is
|
| 00:41:00.120 |
about heads in
|
| 00:41:03.000 |
number of different ways first thing you
|
| 00:41:05.960 |
Hit the ball with the head of the racket
|
| 00:41:08.440 |
or even a brand, you know the head brand of
|
| 00:41:10.600 |
the
|
| 00:41:12.200 |
industry
|
| 00:41:13.240 |
but it's also a highly mental game
|
| 00:41:15.640 |
And you drew my attention to a passage in infinite just where
|
| 00:41:21.000 |
Character has a dream of some vast tennis this again for me is so David Wallace
|
| 00:41:25.720 |
It's not a tennis court of the normal dimensions. It's a size of a football field
|
| 00:41:30.680 |
And it's full of complexity in terms of the rules
|
| 00:41:35.080 |
So he takes a game which is clean lucid and contained and in large is it to a football field and and and complex
|
| 00:41:43.960 |
This is what I feel when I read him as a fiction writer is what he does to a good story
|
| 00:41:50.760 |
But anyway
|
| 00:41:52.760 |
The head there is in the tennis, but it's also in the solipsism of other characters and it's in the headquarters
|
| 00:41:59.320 |
So for so you have a really very compelling analysis of that particular
|
| 00:42:05.160 |
mobile synectically and on others and
|
| 00:42:08.200 |
I take it you you believe that if you have the right
|
| 00:42:14.600 |
amount of patience and reading him with a suspension of
|
| 00:42:19.480 |
cynicism let's call it yeah, you will uncover that most of what's in that book is actually there for a very good reason
|
| 00:42:26.840 |
absolutely I mean now granted
|
| 00:42:29.560 |
When talking about literature and our entitled opinions about literature in life that we we have we come to text with different
|
| 00:42:38.840 |
interests and personalities and
|
| 00:42:42.840 |
goals
|
| 00:42:44.120 |
you know someone who is is
|
| 00:42:46.120 |
Interested in you know following game of thrones or something
|
| 00:42:50.120 |
May although nextly. I don't know anything about game of thrones
|
| 00:42:53.240 |
But that person might actually really love it and it's just from my understanding of the yes
|
| 00:42:57.800 |
It's in it's that's in content. It's not quite as incontinent, but it can't it can't contain itself
|
| 00:43:03.320 |
Well, yes, I think the proliferation of characters and you know plotlines and things but um
|
| 00:43:07.800 |
Yeah, I I
|
| 00:43:11.640 |
Feel that
|
| 00:43:13.640 |
Infinite just
|
| 00:43:15.640 |
Has enormous payoff for readers who are willing and can find the time and space necessary
|
| 00:43:21.080 |
To dedicate themselves to reading it from start to finish
|
| 00:43:24.360 |
And I don't I don't deny that it takes
|
| 00:43:28.280 |
a
|
| 00:43:30.440 |
Certain metal and motivation to get through the text. I myself started a few times before I was able to push through and I don't know that
|
| 00:43:37.400 |
if I had not had the mandate of
|
| 00:43:41.000 |
my dissertation and wanting to piece all this together
|
| 00:43:44.520 |
It might have been more difficult for me to do it
|
| 00:43:47.960 |
But when when I was reading this is another piece
|
| 00:43:50.120 |
We should talk about the
|
| 00:43:51.480 |
experiential factor of
|
| 00:43:53.480 |
of
|
| 00:43:54.440 |
Getting involved with infinite just and spending the amount of time that it takes
|
| 00:43:59.800 |
with this novel is that
|
| 00:44:02.360 |
It um it's
|
| 00:44:04.520 |
affective power the characters that Wallace creates are
|
| 00:44:09.400 |
so three-dimensional and
|
| 00:44:11.400 |
So vulnerable a lot of them and struggling with really difficult
|
| 00:44:17.080 |
um
|
| 00:44:18.680 |
conditions of life
|
| 00:44:20.440 |
that you
|
| 00:44:21.720 |
Become really attached to them and to the feeling of
|
| 00:44:25.560 |
Sitting down with this novel and this whole host of characters that you've come to know that you know by the time you reach the last page
|
| 00:44:33.320 |
There is a bit of a let down one of these
|
| 00:44:35.400 |
I know readers of all sorts of long novels know this feeling you're like oh no now it's over
|
| 00:44:41.000 |
In fact, you're drawing attention to a very important element of a fiction reading in general which is that
|
| 00:44:47.800 |
You empathize or empathize might not be the right way you identify you you become friends or you become a quaint
|
| 00:44:55.320 |
An acquaintance of the characters
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| 00:44:58.040 |
You're in their company for a long time now either you enjoy being in the company of a cast of characters
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| 00:45:05.080 |
Or you don't and I think
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| 00:45:07.080 |
Some people like some novels because they do others will not like that same novel because they don't and
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| 00:45:12.920 |
Is it the case that someone of your age and generation
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| 00:45:18.920 |
Can warm up to this cast of characters and enjoy have the actual pleasure of spending all those hours with them in the book as
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| 00:45:29.000 |
Opposed to someone from another generation or from another class or from another kind of experience in life where these characters are
|
| 00:45:38.040 |
Actually just annoying. I'm not sure that
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| 00:45:42.600 |
That
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| 00:45:45.960 |
One's enjoyment of the novel is dependent upon you know one's generational
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| 00:45:53.000 |
Dance I think that it's rather the
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| 00:45:57.560 |
Identification with the dilemmas that the main characters are going through and the the challenges they
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| 00:46:04.280 |
confront
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| 00:46:05.800 |
Would be the piece that would
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| 00:46:07.800 |
maybe speak more to
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| 00:46:09.800 |
David Foster Wallace's generation and younger readers the enjoyment factor
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| 00:46:14.120 |
I think as with anything it's a matter of taste and a matter of
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| 00:46:17.720 |
what one finds pleasurable now
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| 00:46:21.400 |
Infant adjust
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| 00:46:23.000 |
Has the range I mean it the whole spectrum from the body grotesque humor and
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| 00:46:29.320 |
satire to really eloquent
|
| 00:46:32.600 |
descriptive passages of
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| 00:46:35.160 |
Difficult things like depression and addiction, but then also really beautiful
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| 00:46:39.800 |
Parts of life and David Foster Wallace said in an interview somewhere
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| 00:46:44.920 |
That part of serious fiction's job
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| 00:46:49.000 |
I mean primarily is to give give the reader who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull
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| 00:46:55.000 |
There we have the head again to give her imaginative access to other self. So that's where fiction can
|
| 00:47:01.160 |
bridge our
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| 00:47:04.600 |
existential
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| 00:47:06.760 |
Lonely conditions we can get into one other's mind. So that that is the pleasurable piece
|
| 00:47:12.360 |
I think is to find solace and comfort and yes to empathize with these characters who
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| 00:47:19.000 |
You know our experiencing
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| 00:47:21.000 |
The peaks and valleys of life as we all do what do you make of the
|
| 00:47:26.360 |
dialectic let's say or the tension between
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| 00:47:30.360 |
The demands on the novelist to entertain the reader and provide pleasure
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| 00:47:36.440 |
and at the same time the
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| 00:47:39.720 |
Imperative for serious fiction not to become another form of
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| 00:47:47.320 |
Television like entertainment which with its passive
|
| 00:47:50.280 |
Spekitation and therefore
|
| 00:47:52.440 |
Wallace feels obliged to unsettled the reader and to get him or her outside of his or her comfort zone and
|
| 00:48:00.280 |
Wake up to the fact that no you have to do some work here. Right. Right. Yeah, no absolutely
|
| 00:48:07.160 |
He was he was very aware of that and I
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| 00:48:10.040 |
Identify that as one of the primary traits of
|
| 00:48:13.080 |
again project fiction is
|
| 00:48:16.040 |
The acknowledging the fact that you have to
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| 00:48:18.680 |
expend a heightened amount of effort really in the reading of these novels
|
| 00:48:24.600 |
But there's a reward for this effort namely you
|
| 00:48:29.320 |
Engage with a text in a way that you know, I mentioned before I think the the non-linearity the
|
| 00:48:39.880 |
Volum the luminosity of it having to keep different plots in mind and characters and revisiting them those
|
| 00:48:47.720 |
Those features I think exercise, you know
|
| 00:48:50.360 |
Quite concretely cognitive muscles. We know now about the plasticity of the brain, you know operating
|
| 00:48:57.560 |
Through these neural pathways you can reinforce them
|
| 00:49:01.560 |
Through just patterns of thought and behavior. So there's that on the one hand but on the other hand the novel offers
|
| 00:49:09.000 |
Pretty concrete pragmatic strategies that the reader, you know consciously or unconsciously
|
| 00:49:15.080 |
I
|
| 00:49:16.760 |
Think can leave the text and bring back into his or her everyday life
|
| 00:49:21.640 |
We've talked about the
|
| 00:49:24.360 |
necessity to to choose to make conscious
|
| 00:49:27.880 |
thoughtful choices and you reference the canyon conventions commencement speech to not be operating on our default settings day and day out
|
| 00:49:37.400 |
But to to pay attention and to think really hard about what we spend our time energy and money on so that we have the best
|
| 00:49:44.680 |
outcome we can and
|
| 00:49:47.480 |
your convinced Michael that
|
| 00:49:49.480 |
reading a work like infinite just actually
|
| 00:49:53.160 |
Serves the purpose of breaking down some barriers of alienation and of promoting a
|
| 00:50:02.120 |
more a greater awareness of the
|
| 00:50:06.600 |
uh
|
| 00:50:07.720 |
predicaments and the
|
| 00:50:09.720 |
and the seduction and blandishments that the
|
| 00:50:13.000 |
hyper-capitalistic system that
|
| 00:50:16.120 |
wants to impose on us um I I do absolutely I mean
|
| 00:50:20.680 |
um I believe that it provides us with an occasion
|
| 00:50:24.200 |
to practice new habits of thought and
|
| 00:50:27.400 |
and mind and you know
|
| 00:50:30.200 |
There's a lot of studies now. There's a whole branch of positive psychology that's developed
|
| 00:50:35.640 |
around mindfulness training and
|
| 00:50:37.640 |
how it's really in our control our
|
| 00:50:43.000 |
power through through
|
| 00:50:45.800 |
practices that are
|
| 00:50:48.280 |
They might not seem like they can be effective but meditation for example
|
| 00:50:51.800 |
as dramatic positive effect on our experience because in the end
|
| 00:50:57.480 |
again this is
|
| 00:51:00.840 |
amply represented in the novel in the end our experience can come down to
|
| 00:51:05.800 |
how we choose to
|
| 00:51:08.600 |
see ourselves
|
| 00:51:09.880 |
either as a part of something larger or as an
|
| 00:51:13.400 |
an island on our own completely isolated and disconnected from those around us
|
| 00:51:19.000 |
was Wallace uh
|
| 00:51:22.120 |
someone who practiced meditation?
|
| 00:51:23.560 |
I don't know that I would imagine that along with you know he was he was
|
| 00:51:29.960 |
um
|
| 00:51:31.000 |
very quiet about AA and everything in his personal life
|
| 00:51:36.280 |
he
|
| 00:51:38.040 |
upheld that
|
| 00:51:39.640 |
tenant of not speaking publicly about it as a member but of course it it's in infinite just
|
| 00:51:45.480 |
a lot but I wouldn't imagine that meditation would have been part of his practice yeah
|
| 00:51:51.240 |
well I um feel that you've done a really good job bringing attention to what is at work
|
| 00:51:58.920 |
in the fiction and that it's not just um it's not just a literary enterprise that he was involved in
|
| 00:52:04.280 |
but that he was trying to give an existential density
|
| 00:52:08.840 |
uh and transitivity to to what he wrote and that
|
| 00:52:14.920 |
infinite just has its proper justification for having those three parts and and being so
|
| 00:52:22.520 |
complex ultimately that's the word that keeps coming back I mean I know people have talked about it
|
| 00:52:28.760 |
as being a fractal novel and that he was very into the mathematical and that that appeals to a
|
| 00:52:34.680 |
certain kind of reader perhaps you know to decode and and and analyze in terms of complexity I
|
| 00:52:41.160 |
like some other readers I find that there's an inexhaustible depth to
|
| 00:52:46.760 |
lucidity and certain kind of minimalism it's the the Kafka
|
| 00:52:54.200 |
he agreed with you he says oh if only I could write you know something as lucid and short as that
|
| 00:53:02.040 |
yeah yeah and again I don't want to I'm not here to bash him I actually um have become a fan of his
|
| 00:53:09.000 |
especially if he has an essay essay I will I promise you I'm going to make a good heart of
|
| 00:53:15.400 |
effort now again to go through infinite just but so for example tennis is something that I
|
| 00:53:21.640 |
you know I know about I play it I've I've done a show on it in fact with the
|
| 00:53:25.960 |
Dick Gould the fame tennis coach of Stanford oh yeah no and and I'm a huge fan of Roger Federer so
|
| 00:53:36.520 |
here again David Wallace writes an essay on on you know the mystical the religious experience
|
| 00:53:42.520 |
of watching Federer do match which is but if you read it you'll find that it's not just
|
| 00:53:49.640 |
the normal editorial piece in the New York Times it's very very long and I feel like he makes some
|
| 00:53:56.360 |
very original points and nothing but if I were an editor I would be do's into one fifth of
|
| 00:54:03.160 |
its idea would be a much more crystalline compelling uh common on Roger Federer whereas I have to
|
| 00:54:09.640 |
wait through a bunch of pages but anyway that's again we're talking about style here and
|
| 00:54:16.600 |
I'm certainly a pluralist in the sense that I think that literature should have a plurality of styles
|
| 00:54:22.040 |
and they can go from the the bleak minimalism of a Samuel Beckett you know to the kind of wild
|
| 00:54:26.840 |
profusion of a Joyce or Robert Muzil whom I do love and I think you believe that Wallace belongs
|
| 00:54:37.960 |
to a distinct genre of the novel what you call project fiction that requires
|
| 00:54:45.800 |
a certain kind of length or volume for it to work right yeah yeah yeah as we were saying before that
|
| 00:54:55.320 |
it needs a novel a project fiction is as long as it is so that the reader can really dwell within it
|
| 00:55:04.840 |
for a good portion of time and in order to practice the the practices that are on offer and the
|
| 00:55:12.360 |
strategies and to to have a real human experience of what is presented now I'm distracted right now
|
| 00:55:22.040 |
because I have this this citation a perfect quote you were speaking a moment ago about both tennis
|
| 00:55:26.440 |
and then also the voluminous the expansion and the impossibility of editing editing David Foster Wallace
|
| 00:55:34.440 |
so I think it's perfect here it's a passage describing Gerhard Stitt he's the tennis coach at
|
| 00:55:42.200 |
the Kent tennis academy in Infinite Just and it's again this narrative voice that is this
|
| 00:55:47.800 |
authorially authorially inflected narrative voice but not any character in the text
|
| 00:55:53.000 |
it's describing why howling candidates as father hired Stitt because he has knowledge of formal math
|
| 00:56:01.880 |
or you know sorry because he does not have knowledge of for while he does not have knowledge
|
| 00:56:05.240 |
of formal math he in here begins the citation he nevertheless seem to know what hotman and
|
| 00:56:10.760 |
vandamir and bulletary seemed not to know that locating beauty and art and magic and improvement
|
| 00:56:17.640 |
and keys to excellence and victory in the prolic's flux of match play is not a fractal matter
|
| 00:56:23.880 |
of reducing chaos to pattern seemed intuitively to sense that it was a matter not of reduction
|
| 00:56:29.640 |
at all but perversely of expansion the alliatory flutter of uncontrolled metastatic growth
|
| 00:56:37.640 |
each well shot ball admitting of n possible responses to n possible responses to those responses
|
| 00:56:44.760 |
and on into what incandenza would articulate to anyone who both who shared both his backgrounds as
|
| 00:56:50.840 |
a cantorian continuum of infinities of possible move and response
|
| 00:56:56.040 |
cantorian and beautiful because in foliating contained this diagonal infinity of infinities
|
| 00:57:03.400 |
of choice and execution mathematically uncontrolled but humanly contained bounded by the talent
|
| 00:57:10.440 |
and imagination of self and opponent bent in on itself by the containing boundaries of skill
|
| 00:57:16.600 |
and imagination the brought one player finally down they kept both from winning that made it
|
| 00:57:22.680 |
finally a game these boundaries of self that's great michael that means david fusselwall
|
| 00:57:30.120 |
gets the last word on this show yeah he won the mat he did thank you for joining as we've been
|
| 00:57:35.560 |
speaking with michael hoier who got her dissertation done last year over just about a year ago in
|
| 00:57:42.600 |
comparative literature here at stanford with david foster wallace being you know one of the main
|
| 00:57:47.960 |
protagonists along with much said post pama in terms of company thanks again for coming on michael
|
| 00:57:57.080 |
i'm robert harris and for entitled opinions thanks for listening thanks
|
| 00:58:25.000 |
they spent a ton of the TV
|
| 00:58:27.000 |
blowing kisses and my pep see
|
| 00:58:31.960 |
i knew just had to be your pit and had a whole to see
|
| 00:58:39.880 |
it's just one thing that isn't right
|
| 00:58:44.920 |
something that keeps me up
|
| 00:58:51.480 |
beneath the lipstick and the blush i think i got into two months
|
| 00:58:58.200 |
it's this one i was supposed to know that you want me my that goes my face my my bloodies great
|
| 00:59:13.960 |
you might do me now that mother's gone away you think that you can help your way
|
| 00:59:24.760 |
so you stroke my feet with lips with your filthy fingertips there's just one thing that isn't right
|
| 00:59:39.800 |
something that keeps me up
|
| 00:59:43.800 |
i think i got into two months
|
| 00:59:51.160 |
it's this one i was supposed to know that you want me my that goes my face my my bloodies
|
| 01:00:06.840 |
my to me
|
| 01:00:08.840 |
me
|
| 01:00:10.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:12.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:14.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:16.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:18.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:20.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:22.840 |
you
|
| 01:00:24.840 |
(upbeat music)
|
| 01:00:27.420 |
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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