David Foster Wallace, "Another Pioneer"

A narrator recalls a story a friend told him he overheard one passenger tell another in the row in front of him on a plane.

(from Oblivion)

This is an amazing parable within a story, unnecessarily, so unreliably related and so devoid of facts it’s kinda worthless to our narrator’s presumed audience. But to the reader it’s just brilliant. Layered, funny, unique in unique ways. I’ve been thinking about David Foster Wallace recently because summer’s coming up and I’ve got this kind of mild Alexander the Great complex when it comes to Infinite Jest. I miss it. And I’ve been listening to the audiobook of David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, about spending a week on the road with DFW just after Infinite Jest came out. It’s tough to think of the guy in that weeklong conversation leaving like he did.
Looks like you can read “Another Pioneer” here. No paragraph breaks, so, good luck.

Big thanks for Mike My Brother, who saved this site from the curious abyss of Blogspot’s befuddling new FTP policy, not that I know what that even stands for.

One thought on “David Foster Wallace, "Another Pioneer"

  1. Anonymous

    Hi,
    I liked this story too. But I liked
    The Suffering Channel better. ‘Incarnations of Burned Children’ was more of a horror story for me.

    Ajay

    Reply

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