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Pens and Guts. (Oh. And David Foster Wallace)
A book I’ve been reading is Infinite Jest. I am absolutely enamored with Wallace’s style of writing. It is my firm belief that he would have failed every Grammar/English class in existence with his erratic blathering of incoherent dialogues. But it’s a beautiful type of incoherent.
He pushes incessantly at the boundaries of literary forms, and in turn, forces the readers to push at their own boundaries of perception. There’s just something about his writing that hits you in the stomach, the heart, and cuts your guts. I have a feeling that Wallace is at times, spilling his own guts all over pages. (I can smell his blood wafting from the ink). There’s something about a guy having the courage to do that, that makes people rip their own guts open too.
I wonder if I too, will able to write something that glorious. Full of style, and blood spilled in my own suicidal way. That’s what I think authors do, y’know. They cut their own throats with pens and clog their throats with congealed thoughts to give life to their work. The way they sacrifice themselves to breathe life into cold flimsy pulp makes me cringe in equal parts pity and longing.
The pity makes sense because hey, we have this whole population voluntarily slitting their minds to drop blood on paper. But the longing is the part that scares me. I can’t explain it now, because I, to put it bluntly, don’t have the capabilities to put it in words. This feeling, I can’t capture it. Heck, it’s not even in my brain. It’s formless, sloshing in my belly like water. It’s a gut feeling.
I loathe to admit that the only way to chase down that feeling is to wield a pen and jab at my own intestines. (Sweet Jesus, I think I’m starting to sound mad and suicidal. Save me, somebody.)
But really, there’s something about a guy having the guts to spill his own guts that makes people rip their own guts open too. It’s a vicious cycle that I’m not sure if I’m proud or not to be part of.
(Thank you David Foster Wallace for planting the seed of madness in me.)
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