Showing posts with label david foster wallace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label david foster wallace. Show all posts

Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will Review

Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will
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Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will ReviewThis book centers around David Foster Wallace's undergraduate honors thesis in philosophy. It begins with a very well-written and interesting introduction to the philosophical argument DFW takes to task in his thesis, an argument by Taylor that takes a set of commonly accepted philosophical presuppositions and entails fatalism. The book then presents Taylor's article, originally published in the early 1960s, and a flurry of (sometimes heated) responses by other philosophers. All of this serves as the background for Wallace's work, which extends (seemingly substantially) upon those other responses.
I'm not a philosopher by either trade or background, and so I won't claim to have followed every nuance of all of the arguments, and as a reader, I found the back-and-forth regarding Taylor's original argument less interesting than either the introduction or DFW's contribution. However, the thesis itself is lucid (and I think easier to follow than several of the other arguments, even if it is not particularly light reading), and in a word, satisfying. It seems to me that David Foster Wallace was an exceptionally gifted person, and so I am glad that the editors and contributors put forth the effort to make it available. It was also enjoyable to detect elements of his literary style even at this early stage of his writing.
Based on this book alone, I'm not convinced that David Foster Wallace found the question of free will (as the subtitle might suggest) all that vexing or in need of defense - it seems as likely that he was concerned about the imprecise use of language and the confusion it may lead to - that doesn't detract from the book in any way. Very enjoyable for fans of DFW or, say, modal semantics.Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will Overview

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The New Kings of Nonfiction Review

The New Kings of Nonfiction
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The New Kings of Nonfiction ReviewI love This American Life on NPR and was excited to discover this collection of essays assembled by the intelligent and original Ira Glass. I have always loved the viewpoint in Ira's broadcasts and looked forward to discovering the essays and writers he considered worthwhile.
This is an excellent collection of non-fiction. I won't use the term "literary non-fiction" because Ira Glass hates the term. (...I'm a snob when it comes to that phrase. I think it's for losers. It's pretentious, for one thing, and it's a bore. Which is to say, it's exactly the opposite of the writing it's trying to describe.)
I will agree with other reviewers here that complained that they came across some of these essays before and therefore the collection did not seem fresh. Ira writes that "some of the stories are very well known" but were included because the writers were trying to document remarkable experiences and the stories were "built around original reporting of one sort of another." You should view the stories in this book as a whole, even if you might have come across a few of them before. There is merit in assembling these stories in a collection which becomes evident after you finish the book. This story collection works because Ira is able to spot that certain something in a story or style or reporting that is original-but not novel, entertaining-but humane. You're purchasing the vision of Ira Glass in The New Kings of Non-Fiction and it's worth every penny if it were quadruple the price.
Stories included:
Johnathan Lebed's Extracurricular Activities - Michael Lewis
Toxic Dreams: A California Town Finds Meaning In An Acid Pit - Jack Hitt
Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg - Malcolm Gladwell
Shapinsky's Karma - Lawrence Weschler
The American Man, Age Ten - Susan Orlean
Among The Thugs - Bill Buford
Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy - Chuck Klosterman
Host - David Foster Wallace
Tales of the Tyrant - Mark Bowden
Losing The War - Lee Sandlin
The Hostess Diaries: My Year At A Hot Spot - Coco Hensen Scales
My Republican Journey - Dan Savage
Power Steer - Michael Pollan
Fortune's Smile: World Series of Poker - James McManus
I'd also recommend The Best American Essays 2007 (The Best American Series (TM)) edited by David Foster Wallace. Another good collection of stories by an editor with excellent taste.The New Kings of Nonfiction Overview

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