by David Foster Wallace
So - either I understand David Foster Wallace or he was so much smarter than me that I don't even know I'm not getting it. I had to put that out there.
This was a really really short story because I was supposed to post this yesterday. I have to get back on track! The story focused on the narrator who tells the reader about a dream he seems to have. In this dream, he seems to be blind which makes him cry. He describes how he wakes up crying which blurs his vision making him think he's still in his dream, blind. It's only until his girlfriend wakes him up where he realizes that he's just dreaming.
The author goes on to describe how the dream appears to sink into any and every part of his day. It gets so bad that he needs to leave work in order to go home and sleep - almost as if to recuperate what the dream took from him.
This was simply a strange story. Was it even a story? I guess. I felt like I was just taking a glimpse into someone's life. A photo still. Nothing wrong with that, just that Wallace seems to have done quite a bit of that. Interesting.
The main idea of the story, in my opinion, is the idea of awareness. The narrator gains a sense of awareness from his dream - as in, he becomes aware of how wonderful it is to see and how life could be if he couldn't see. However, at the same time, he isn't aware in a practical or helpful sense. This meaning that he is still unable to be empathetic toward the blind people he comes across and he chooses to go home and go to sleep instead of facing his day, head on.
Verdict
Just like the previous story of Wallace's I reviewed, Death is Not the End, it's for a particular reader. Other readers may get more from his writing than I have so far - some may not even want to give it a shot. I say, give it a shot, take it for what it is and allow yourself to analyze for a bit and then move on. Thinking too much about it won't be good for the soul - I don't know why, but that's my feeling.
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