The Big Four
The Importance of Timing in a War Against Apathy
by Alex Sinclair
The undeniable urge to assure someone their modesty is not needed, that they are important, and that they are cherished, is something that is common to anyone who has been in contact with greatness. It is possible to encounter similar feelings when you love someone. You think your child’s drawings are abstract expressionist masterworks. You think your friend’s band is the voice of a generation. You definitely think your mother is a culinary genius. I’m not talking about that feeling. There’s something outside the personal levels of appreciation that can be reached by very few. Fandom. Obsession. Admiration. Something along those lines. A designation which transcends the barriers and limitations of our own short lives.
You don’t open a one-thousand-page book because you’ve heard the author’s a nice guy. You read it — once you prop the thing open at all — because you understand the author is brilliant.
I guess the best way to explain it is to tell you about four people. The first is Stanley Kubrick; mysterious, reclusive director born to a wealthy Jewish family in the Bronx whose films supplied answers to questions people would discover on their own. He died as a man, but was reborn as a mythology, spilling out onto the internet as conspiracy theories and “What if”s regarding the Apollo 11 mission in ‘69.
The second is Sylvia Plath. The gone-too-soon American poetess who seduced my teenage mind with the possibility that there is a broken planet hidden beneath the skin of this one, visible to anyone willing to chip away at its flaky surface. As a school boy, I learned it’s okay to stare back at the dark thing inside me. “All day I felt its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity”.
Third, there’s John Darnielle. You probably know him as the lead singer of The Mountain Goats, but some have just discovered him as the author of ‘Wolf In White Van’. He’s someone whose mind appears more as a universe than as a person. And I mean universe in the infinitely unexplorable sense; distant and full of so many things that you cannot reach, but could perhaps observe with the right equipment.
Lastly, there’s David Foster Wallace. I don’t know what to say about Wallace. A lot of people have written about him, and what he means to them, and that’s okay, because there’s a trend and pressure to point out that you have a special relationship to this person and that you, the one with the opinion, have a bond with this person unlike anyone else. That’s a common trope among any nostalgic writing in the Wallace-writing genre, that is to say if Wallace-writing is to be considered a genre now, of which yes, I would classify it as one, because it’s there, it’s real and it’s damn addictive.
It’s not surprising that Wallace has a gravitational pull. What’s crazy about the whole thing is the extent to which people embrace it. One sided personal connections to producers of media are not new, but they are taking on a new dynamic in a dispassionate over-saturated society. No longer is it exceptional to feel an emotional contact point with a publication. Now, it is only worth talking about if this contact point is either spectacular in itself, or demonstrates an interaction with something undeniably great.
That last part is problematic. Apathy is the invasive and exhausting vice of our age. In a world overcome with “Click here, you won’t believe what happens next”, the natural default state has shifted towards scepticism of the sentimental. This is why a declaration such as “I believe this person has achieved greatness” is predominantly met with an eye-roll and a token sarcastic response. Despite a daily routine of internet ‘likes’, a heartfelt comment of endorsement is often cast back with a detached sense of mockery. Personal taste, open preference, and candid displays of affirmation are viewed as signs of weakness. It’s emotional. It’s maudlin. You’re a fool.
A Venn diagram illustrating “Those who can generate an emotional one-sided contact point” and “People viewed as great” would create a graph whose intersection consumes the majority of the equation. Not quite depicting an eclipse of both sides, but a situation where no more than a slight crescent may escape. The two attributes are certainly and inextricably linked. Greatness is an attractive quality. It’s shiny and polished after years of practice. Greatness is neither natural nor something one can inherit. Greatness is a work ethic. While all of this sounds like marketing strategy buzzwords for the latest Nike performance apparel, it remains true.
Even if they’re responding to your work, and the work is so personal, […] then trading on it is actually simply another way of meeting you …
See, what I’m interested in is the internal conflict of being drawn towards greatness, but knowing that the magnetism of it is dangerous. I know of only one person who has written about this phenomenon and that is David Lipsky. In his book ‘Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself’, he details, annotates and transcribes an extended interview he conducted with Wallace during the press tour for Wallace’s seminal novel, ‘Infinite Jest’.
The book is riddled with examples of this confusion, this desire to acknowledge greatness, stare the beast dead in the eyes and say what you feel. Lipsky is compelling because he understands the risks of the game.
You’re the most talked about writer in the country. [Embarrassing to hear myself talk that way]
All throughout the book, we see Lipsky reluctantly square himself up to Wallace. Shy compliments evolve into mental jousting. How many times does he bring up John Updike? Like a million? But, anyone in his position would do the same. Bring the competition down to your level, pull out your specialist subject and see what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with Tyson. How many rounds will you survive?
In reality, the answer is probably none. You’ll get to the ring, you might hear the bell, but not much else after that. The reason Lipsky’s book is important is because he survives longer than expected. The interview could easily have gone a thousand other ways. Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman comes to mind. Actually, so does an unfortunate fellow who we stumble upon later in the transcript, when Wallace is signing books in Minneapolis.
[One flustered, excited, embarrassed reader in the queue reaches the front and David. A tall guy: goatee, vest, jeans, a huge, white-man’s Afro.]
GUY: Are you glowing? Unbelievable. The City Pages . That’s our local newspaper. Alternate news. Goddamn beautiful, man. Where to next? You cover some incredible material.
[Dave signs.] Thanks. I’ve been to like ten cities.
GUY: No, I meant, uh, bookwise. You know? What’s playing on your heart song?
If you talk about it, then you don’t do it.
GUY: True. Very True. But is there something, that you’ve zeroed in on, for the next project? Or are you contemplating —
The thing about meeting heroes is that it’s a two-way system for a one-way connection. We set for ourselves certain unavoidable expectations. We have ideas in our head about what we want to gain from the interaction. Mostly, it’s a transfer of impressions from one to another, a collecting of talismans (autographs, pictures and such) that prove, that yes, there was a moment in time when we were in the same space as greatness; a concept which I value because it transcends time and space.
Unfortunately, this isn’t enough for most people. Autographs and pictures are replicated, copied, shared. They are not unique to you. Would-be Hall of Fame baseball player Pete Rose has a full-time job signing merchandise in Las Vegas, but it’s not the item that people covet, it’s the personal experience of meeting him, although, even those are so routine nowadays that they mostly fit into a template format.
What people really want from these exchanges is to not only have greatness impress upon them, but to impress upon greatness. I think some see it as a cheap alternative to putting in the work towards an immortality of your own. Wouldn’t it be cool if Pete Rose had a dinner party anecdote about meeting you, rather than the other way around? Not everyone wants to be remembered in the same way, and that’s fine. Sometimes, a valued legacy may be an impact crater rather than a moon.
Right after the end of the interaction between Wallace and the fan at the bookstore, Lipsky added an annotation.
[This is painful. Shy, flustered; the guy trying to be expansive, intimate, cool, making human contact. He doesn’t realize you can’t, the moment’s not designed for that.]
That’s why his book is good. That’s why I have this problem with meeting my heroes. Of course, three of the Big Four are dead. There’s nothing I can do about that, but the other, John Darnielle. Well, he’s still kicking, and I have tickets to see The Mountain Goats in November.
A part of me wishes to be as brave as Lipsky, to not care, to maybe even see how I compare to Darnielle during the time he sets aside after shows to meet fans. Another piece of my brain, the bit that cringed at the Updike mentions, tells me to shut up and enjoy the concert. Do not try and impress. I guess the best I can hope for is to not be the oblivious Minneapolitan. Don’t make it painful. Realize the moment’s not designed for that. Realize maybe no moment is designed for that.
Alex Sinclair is a staff writer for SB Nation’s New York Giants blog, Big Blue View, and currently lives in Bray, Ireland.
