By Tim Winterstein –
Well, now I have to finally finish Infinite Jest. I’ve been sort of superficially fascinated by David Foster Wallace since I read The Pale King. I’ve read parts of essays, plus my (so far) abortive attempt to read Infinite Jest. The comments I’d read by him seemed to frustrate any attempt to make him into any kind of authorial or celebrity cliché. His thought seemed genuinely original, at least compared to most of popular culture.
Consider this commencement speech, for example, in which we hear how excellently Jason Segel impersonates Wallace’s voice. It is interesting for the additional reason that Wallace stumbles upon a truth that Lutherans should know well: everyone worships. Everyone has a god, whether they know it or not. “A ‘god’ is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart” (Luther, Large Catechism, First Commandment). He does not, of course, come to the Christian conclusion (namely, that if “your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one,” but “where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God,” who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ), but he apparently knew well the unlimited jealousy of those gods, being unable to extricate himself, except by taking his own life.
So I’d been wanting to see The End of the Tour (available on Amazon Prime), but again, only halfheartedly. It’s difficult for me to watch biopics because I always wonder how true to life they are, which keeps me from enjoying them as movies. I haven’t read the book by David Lipsky on which this film is based, but Jason Segel is certainly believable as Wallace, from the interviews I’ve seen. The idiosyncrasies on display, including his junk food consumption and his contentment living and teaching at a small school in Illinois (at least during the time period of the film), add texture to the portrait of who the man was.
As David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) is quickly recording words and impressions of Wallace’s house toward the end of the film, one particular thing struck me as it seemed to strike Lipsky, something strange enough not to be made up. He is looking at pictures in the bedroom and he finds a card with a prayer by St. Ignatius, “Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.” An interesting decorating decision, to say the least, since he never appeared to embrace any form of Christianity. Apparently he also went through the Roman Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults a couple times, though he never became Roman Catholic.
Other than to note significant moments (like highlighting quotes in a book), I don’t really know how to write about this movie, nor do I really want to. I want to recommend it, however, for consideration and digestion. While there is a lot of flippancy in the conversations between David and David (as would happen in real conversations), there are also moments of profundity, as Wallace (or at least Segel’s Wallace) hits regularly on the depths of what it means to be human, or lonely, or an artist, or famous. Or for that matter, how much we love to be mindlessly entertained—which, without even finishing it, is very clearly the main theme of Infinite Jest.
Though much of the film is funny, there is a pallor that hangs over the whole thing, because of the significant choice to begin the film with Lipsky receive a phone call informing him of Wallace’s suicide (nearly ten years ago now). The tension that runs throughout the film, walking the line between happiness and sadness, between public and private personas, seems to have run through Wallace’s life itself. And it is a tension that is produced by an actual self-consciousness, an introspection that often leads to depression and suicide.
This is one of the increasingly rare films that is primarily dialogue driven, but it becomes compelling for that reason. It is not abstract philosophy, but the philosophy of a life lived under a perpetual question mark. Obviously, for Wallace, the question never was answered. But that he was thoughtful enough to raise the question in a culture as superficial as ours seems to be, and that he foresaw what the internet and entertainment could do, makes him and this film well worth considering.
