{"id":4865,"date":"2013-03-17T11:06:03","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T15:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/?p=4865"},"modified":"2019-06-07T13:39:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T17:39:34","slug":"david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/","title":{"rendered":"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t know much about David Foster Wallace when he died. I\u2019d read a few of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gourmet.com\/magazine\/2000s\/2004\/08\/consider_the_lobster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his essays<\/a> and his <a href=\"http:\/\/moreintelligentlife.com\/story\/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">widely circulated commencement address<\/a> at Kenyon College, but that was the extent of it.<br \/>\nThe intensity of the reaction from well-read friends when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/03\/09\/090309fa_fact_max\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wallace committed suicide<\/a> gave me a view into how admired he was.<br \/>\nFlash forward a few years, and <a href=\"http:\/\/tebeau.com\/david-foster-wallace-obsession-cartoon\">my husband, John, recently got onto a DFW kick<\/a>, both his writing and videos of interviews he gave.<br \/>\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N5IDAnB_rns]<br \/>\nOne idea Wallace shared got me thinking about liking things. Wallace suggested that in modern society, it&#8217;s easier to be ironic or sarcastic. If we like things or want to make things better, that involves the risk of putting ourselves out there, maybe becoming the subject of that pervasive irony and criticism.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAnd make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit &#8220;I don\u2019t really mean what I\u2019m saying.&#8221; So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it\u2019s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it\u2019s too bad it\u2019s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today\u2019s irony ends up saying: &#8220;How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.\u201d<br \/>\n&#8230; and separately &#8230;<br \/>\nFew artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what\u2019s wrong, because they\u2019ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony\u2019s gone from liberating to enslaving. There\u2019s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who\u2019s come to love his cage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I mentioned this to a friend recently and he responded, \u201cWho spends that much time caring what other people think?\u201d Sadly, I think many of us do.<br \/>\nJohn did a series of paintings a few years ago that he called \u201cSimple Pleasures.\u201d He painted such things as a cold beer, hot coffee, summer barbecues, the first snow of winter, vintage Cadillacs, a day at the beach, board games.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/tebeau.com\/world-shaking-events\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">In the press release about that show<\/a>, John channeled Andy Warhol who said, \u201cPop Art is about liking things.\u201d<br \/>\nI\u2019m with Wallace and Warhol and John on this \u2013 I like to like people, places and things.<br \/>\nI like getting a hand-written note in the mail, I like sleeping in on weekends, I like fluffy towels, I like a good hearty laugh, I like costume jewelry. Even if it\u2019s considered pedestrian, I like giant California red wines, and even though most traditional jazz fans seem about twice my age, I like that music.<br \/>\n<strong>What do you like?<\/strong><br \/>\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vET9cvlGJQw]<br \/>\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EEjVnB7AeBQ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t know much about David Foster Wallace when he died. I\u2019d read a few of his essays and his widely circulated commencement address at Kenyon College, but that was the extent of it. The intensity of the reaction from well-read friends when Wallace committed suicide gave me a view into how admired he was. Flash forward a few years,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[54,58],"tags":[204,538,639,1358,1414,1452,1559,2053,2361],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things - Newvine Growing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things - Newvine Growing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I didn\u2019t know much about David Foster Wallace when he died. I\u2019d read a few of his essays and his widely circulated commencement address at Kenyon College, but that was the extent of it. The intensity of the reaction from well-read friends when Wallace committed suicide gave me a view into how admired he was. Flash forward a few years,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Newvine Growing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-03-17T15:06:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-06-07T17:39:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/no-image.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Colleen Newvine Tebeau\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Colleen Newvine Tebeau\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/\",\"name\":\"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things - Newvine Growing\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-17T15:06:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-06-07T17:39:34+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/#\/schema\/person\/34671ebbbb37e4c1cc97f2f5ac1b1646\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/\",\"name\":\"Newvine Growing\",\"description\":\"Live life intentionally\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/#\/schema\/person\/34671ebbbb37e4c1cc97f2f5ac1b1646\",\"name\":\"Colleen Newvine Tebeau\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/700a4f604ab1d15dc1062a892418c128?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/700a4f604ab1d15dc1062a892418c128?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Colleen Newvine Tebeau\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/author\/cnewvine\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things - Newvine Growing","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/staging.communify.me\/newvinegrowing\/david-foster-wallace-and-the-peer-pressure-against-genuinely-liking-things\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"David Foster Wallace and the peer pressure against genuinely liking things - Newvine Growing","og_description":"I didn\u2019t know much about David Foster Wallace when he died. 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