Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Engaging the Disenchanted

America seems to be teeming with disenchanted youth.
In November 2008, Barack Obama won the United States presidential race, running on a campaign platform that stressed a belief in change, that America could accomplish anything and everything it set its optimistic mind to.  A mere two years later, the bright sunrise that was the election of President Obama seems a distant memory, clouded by dissent and disappointment.  (This pall of discord has even led lone voices such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central to organize a Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, highlighting the absurdity of the current political climate.) 

Within this context, David Foster Wallace’s “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub” seems distinctly familiar.  With the youthful optimism of the 2008 Obama campaign evaporated, we can easily recognize the disenchantment with which Wallace describes the Young Voter.  How is it, then, that Wallace manages to engage his Rolling Stones readers, as well as us—people who fit perfectly into this cynical group?

Two methods allow Wallace to reach his audience: stream-of-consciousness style and personal opinion.  In short, Wallace breaks two huge rules of journalism to reach readers.  And in this instance, the risk works.

First, Wallace fills the piece with stream-of-consciousness writing.  Stream-of-consciousness is, according to the Britannica Online Encyclopedia, “intended to render the flow of myriad impressions.”  He writes long run-on sentences that offend many grammatical rules but nevertheless make sense, because they sound just the way people think.  For example, he writes, “As you might have gathered, Rolling Stone dislikes the 12M intensely, for all the above reasons, plus the fact that they’re [stingy] when it comes to sharing even very basic general-knowledge political information that might help somebody write a slightly better article, plus the issue of two separate occasions at late-night hotel check-ins when one or more of the Twelve Monkeys just out of nowhere turned and handed Rolling Stone their suitcases to carry, as if Rolling Stone were a bellboy or gofer instead of a hard-working journalist just like them even if he didn’t have a portable Paul Stuart steamer for his blazer.” (He refers to himself throughout the piece in third-person as "Rolling Stone.")

Though it makes for a very long story, writing in this style provides good description, and he manages to show, rather than tell, the story.  More than this, however, Wallace uses stream-of-consciousness to engage readers on our level.  Because this is how we think, the story makes perfect sense.  His use of stream-of-consciousness helps the story to flow, causing us to constantly wonder what is coming next.  By writing this way, Wallace draws us into the piece and makes it easy to read; the writing is on the same level as our thoughts.  (He is not the only journalist to use this style.  As The New York Times reported in 2005, for instance, The New Orleans Times-Picayune used stream-of-consciousness in its blog created in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.)

Wallace’s second method, though, is the one that really grabs the reader’s attention.  He gives his personal opinion throughout the piece, and his honesty is riveting.  Wallace admits that Young Voters do not care much about elections, highlighting their cynicism within the story.  He points out that politicians are often corrupt liars whom we cannot trust and that many Americans are weary of the political process, weary of broken promises.  Wallace also, however, tells John McCain’s history as a prisoner of war with awe, admitting that readers should admire the man, if only for his strength.  Wallace also poses several hard-hitting rhetorical questions that hit at the heart of the problems with American politics.  While accusing the Young Voter of not tolerating hard questions about politics, he challenges us to ask why we really dislike our leaders and why we avoid the voting process.  These challenges, as well as his straight personal opinions (such as the one shared in the sentence quoted above), allow the readers to trust Wallace.  This is not a normal political campaign story.  It is also not just a story that exposes the inner workings of the campaign trail.  It is a story that wants us to question American politics, society and citizens.  Wallace’s honesty thus transforms this story from a commentary into a direct provocation, daring us, if not to vote or trust politicians, to understand the complexities of the political process and why it turns us off as it does.

Through his use of stream-of-consciousness and honesty, David Foster Wallace uses “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub” to question the current political process and its many players.  Though he admits he knows nothing about campaign reporting, Wallace delivers much more than a story about McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.  He delivers instead a story that reaches out to this cynical audience 10 years later and asks us to “try to stay awake.”  We must, in essence, remain vigilant and in touch with our own sensibilities in order to understand how they affect how we view the world.  Once we reach this understanding, Wallace suggests, perhaps we can begin to grasp where we can find leaders who truly do effect change we can believe in.

Wallace is appealing to America's bright youth at their finest.


Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Things That Go Boom in the Night

Bam! Bang! Boom!
Onomatopoeia is one of my favorite words.  It rolls off the tongue and is delightfully impossible to spell, and once one knows what it means, chances are he or she will not forget it.  In elementary school, when we were first introduced to the concept of onomatopoeia, our teachers used examples from comics (“Kaboom!”) and nature (“Moo!”).  I always thought that it was a legitimate but slightly silly grammar point.  From what I’ve been able to find, many others associate onomatopoetic words with frivolity as well, such as in an online music quiz from mental_floss or a list of words that should be eliminated from the English language from Cracked.com.  To me, onomatopoeia is something that is used in lighthearted or frivolous pieces.


In “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster,” however, Jon Franklin uses onomatopoeia to grimly remind his audience of the steadiness yet frailty of life, as well as to add suspense.  Published in The Baltimore Sun in 1978, this piece follows in detail a complex and intense brain surgery that ultimately kills the patient.  The descriptive details guide readers through the surgery visually, putting a precise and almost tactile picture of a common yet foreign topic—neurosurgery—in our minds.  With sentences such as “The aneurysm finally appears at the end of the tunnel, throbbing, visibly thin, a lumpy, overstretched bag, the color of rich cream, swelling out from the once-strong arterial wall, a tire about to blow out, a balloon ready to burst, a time-bomb the size of a pea,” Franklin paints a perfectly intricate picture.

This imagery, though, is not the thread that keeps the readers going through the story.  Every so often, Franklin will mention this small detail: “The heartbeat goes pop, pop, pop, 70 beats a minute.”  Although it does not at first seem to be very important, this heartbeat is what later indicates an increase in danger, thus facilitating suspense.  It also, at times, stands in stark contrast to the frustration of the surgeons and the perilous situation at hand.  By juxtaposing the terror of the monstrous growth and the helplessness of the surgeons with the steady “pop, pop, pop” of the heartbeat, Franklin reminds us of the senselessness of Mrs. Kelly’s illness and death.  The suspense and helplessness are conveyed by one tiny word that perfectly describes the sound of a heartbeat—“pop.”  Upon reaching the end of the piece, my own heart popped a bit, perhaps out of disappointment, or maybe it was the release of suspense.

The numerous emotions depicted by one tiny onomatopoetic word in Jon Franklin’s “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster” have me convinced: onomatopoeia is not just for silliness.  Such words, from an excited roar to a hushed whisper, truly can create a whoosh of feelings that reach far beyond frivolity.