{"id":142,"date":"2008-10-03T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T07:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2008-10-03T00:00:24","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T07:00:24","slug":"%e2%80%9ctrapped-in-the-armor-of-language%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTrapped in the Armor Of Language\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite my previous efforts to move past reflecting on David Foster Wallace\u2019s death, I spent part of my lunch today listening to this reflection<\/a> on the life and work of the late author. I\u2019ve enjoyed Michael Silverblatt’s show in the past. However, today I found myself (with headphones on) leaning in closer and closer to a speaker that wasn\u2019t there. The closeness and emotional veracity of Silverblatt’s words was striking. Despite being in front of a library, munching on pizza, I was transported next to Silverblatt as he reminisced about the writer.<\/p>\n

More importantly, the discussion about Wallace\u2019s essays illustrated that part of the allure for the reader (at least for me) was that Wallace was an expert at making the invisible visible. Through his work a lobster festival is seen from a completely different perspective. Ditto a state fair, a filmmaker, a presidential candidate, tennis players & recovering addicts, and even the mundane such as having to move a car from one side of the road to the other due to municipal codes. I say this having sat through the first four hours of a yearlong sequence on qualitative methods and design. Perhaps the key fact that was expected for the students in this class to take away is the role of the ethnographer to make the invisible visible \u2013 Wallace may be better an example at this than many of the case studies we\u2019ll be investigating. His is a route towards illumination I\u2019m interested in treading.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Wallace talked about how defining \u201cterms\u201d on Silverblatt\u2019s show would take him about 6 hours. And though Silverblatt asserts that this would be done in a hilarious manner (and he\u2019d probably be right), it cuts to a central frustration with language. Wallace effectively tried writing himself out of a novel while also making the experience so intensely personal that it feels as if he wrote it just for you \u2013 yes, this conceit is cribbed from the show. However, he literally becomes trapped within this behemoth of a novel. He probably never really escaped it. [As an aside, looking today on Amazon, Infinite Jest <\/em>was the #60 top selling product \u2013 I think it peaked last week. In any case, I can\u2019t imagine how many people will be trying to read through this thing as a result of his passing.]<\/p>\n

In a seminar about language issues, I made an assertion in class about how language primarily limits intentions and communication. That although its primary function is one of communication between two or more people, it literally cuts away at the pure essence of meaning in some sort of abstract way. While it protects it also denies. Lastly, as a result of looking at the Beyond Pedagogy texts, reading Valis<\/em> for the first time and generally spacing out when I should be taking notes, I\u2019ve been thinking about the aborigine concept of \u201cdreamtime\u201d or a dream world. About how such a place could likely exist both in and out of the modern day world. About how there\u2019s something about Eskimos and words for snow and western limitations with words like \u201cmagic\u201d and how that all kind of vacillates between structured thought and language-less ideas like the flickering of a light between \u201creal time\u201d and \u201cdreamtime\u201d until the flickering stops flickering like a strobe-light slow motion kind of thing and it becomes really clear (at least for a second) that both places are the same and it\u2019s us \u2013 like \u201cus\u201d in some sort of socio-cultural way \u2013 that are leaving some things \u201cinvisible\u201d and that the balance between dream and real is one most of us aren\u2019t ever going to really negotiate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still working this out.<\/p>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>