DFW Essay

Today's goal was to finish "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" an essay by David Foster Wallace. This is my second essay by DFW. The first one was "Roger Federer as Religious Experience". It took me a few days to finish that one, and toward the end I wished it didn't finish.

As I started to write, I decided to improve my writing. As I have said innumerable times, writing needs to be paired with reading, and I was on the hunt to read good-quality material. One of my friends suggested DFW a long time ago. I have books by DFW gathering dust. They are long reads. I wanted to break down consuming DFW in bite-sized chunks, and I settled on the essays. The breath DFW has is impressive. He has something for everyone.

I will not analyze the article in-depth as I am not even close to comprehending it. I have understood a few pieces to a level I can comment on, albeit with limited authority. One thing I love reading about DFW is the footnotes. I was reading the essay on the tablet and quickly switched over to the print version. Unfortunately, I didn't staple the pages together, and what can go wrong does go wrong. The kids made a mess out of it. I was infuriated as I had to order the pages. Sadly, this version of the essay didn't have a page number. But lo, the footnotes came in handy. The footnotes are serially numbered throughout the essay and don't reset on a new page. That is how I could reorder the pages and resume my ritual of consuming one of the dense pieces by DFW.

I did not get distracted by the many new words which I have to look up every 30 seconds. I skipped over the new words and aimed to finish the essay, as I knew I had to read it a couple more times to finish my comprehension of it.

The essay was written in 2001, and I could see where society was heading. It left me spellbound on how different dialects of English were compared and how a particular dialect can be a foreign language to a native English speaker. I have so much to say but so much to understand. I will have to dissect this essay more and come back and write more about it.