Conversations with David Foster Wallace

Just Asking . . . David Foster Wallace

158 Just Asking . . . David Foster Wallace Christopher John Farley/2008 From Wall Street Journal, 31 May 2008. © 2008 by Dow Jones & Co. Reprinted by permission. David Foster Wallace, author of the novel Infinite Jest, was asked by Rolling Stone magazine to cover John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000. That assignment became a chapter in his essay collection Consider the Lobster (2005); the essay has now been issued as a stand-alone book, McCain’s Promise. In a phone interview, Mr. Wallace said he came away from the experience marveling at “how unknowable and layered these candidates are.” Mr. Wallace also answered questions via email about presidential hopefuls, the youth vote, and smiley faces. WSJ: So why would a novelist want to travel around on a campaign bus? Mr. Wallace: What made the McCain idea interesting to me was that I’d seen a tape of his appearance on Charlie Rose at some point the previous year, in which he spoke so candidly and bluntly about stuff like campaign finance and partisan ickiness, stuff I’d not heard any national-level politician say. There was also the fact that my own politics were about 179 degrees from his, so there was no worry that I’d somehow get seduced into writing an infomercial. Q: Have you changed your mind about any of the points that you made in the book? A: In the best political tradition, I reject the premise of your question. The essay quite specifically concerns a couple weeks in February 2000 and the situation of both McCain [and] national politics in those couple weeks. It is heavily context-dependent. And that context now seems a long, long, long time ago. McCain himself has obviously changed; his flipperoos and weaselings on Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq time- CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY / 2008 159 tables, etc., are just some of what make him a less interesting, more depressing political figure now—for me, at least. Q: You write that John McCain, in 2000, had become “the great populist hope of American politics.” What parallels do you see between McCain in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008? A: There are some similarities—the ability to attract new voters, Independents ; the ability to raise serious money in a grassroots way via the Web. But there are also lots of differences, many too obvious to need pointing out. Obama is an orator, for one thing—a rhetorician of the old school. To me, that seems more classically populist than McCain, who’s not a good speechmaker and whose great strengths are Q&As and small-group press confabs. But there’s a bigger [reason]. The truth—as I see it—is that the previous seven years and four months of the Bush Administration have been such an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism, and contempt for the electorate that it’s very difficult to imagine how a self-identified Republican could try to position himself as a populist. Q: In the book, you talk about why many young people are turned off by politics. What do you think could get young people to the voting booth this election? A: Well, it’s a very different situation. If nothing else, the previous seven years and four months have helped make it clear that it actually matters a whole, whole lot who gets elected president. A whole lot. There’s also the fact that there are now certain really urgent, galvanizing problems—price of oil, carbon emissions, Iraq—that are apt to get more voters of all ages and education levels to the polls. Q: You’re known for writing big, complex books. Your novel Infinite Jest is 1,079 pages long, but McCain’s Promise is a trim 124 pages. What made you decide to drop a few weight classes for this release? A: The truth is that this book is really a magazine article whose subject just turned out to be too big and thorny and multiramified to be doable at article length. Q: I have an advance copy of Infinite Jest that your publishing house sent me in 1996. It’s signed—apparently—by you and there’s a little smiley face under your name. I’ve always wondered—did you actually draw that smiley face? 160 CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID FOSTER WALLACE A: One prong...