What’s the difference between a Hollywood special-effects blockbuster like “Terminator 2” and a hard-core porn film? Very little, claims novelist, essayist and footnote fetishist David Foster Wallace.
[As a rule I dislike the use of “(blank) Porn” (e.g. “Torture Porn”) but I’ll let it slide here because this was written over a decade ago and by DFW.]
Of all the bizarre things David Foster Wallace sticks into the endnotes of Infinite Jest, I absolutely loved the fictitious filmography of James Incandenza, which includes a film bearing a wonderful resemblance to the scenes of the terrifying Mickey Eye theme park from Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s Seaguy:
Cage III—Free Show. B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernetron Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P.A. Heaven, Everard Maynell, Pam Heath; partial animation; 35 mm.; 65 minutes; black and white; sound. The figure of Death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators’ eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of Life (Heaven) uses a megaphone to invite fairgoers to an exhibition in which, if the fairgoers consent to undergo unspeakable degradations, they can witness ordinary persons gradually turn into gigantic eyeballs. INTERLACE TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE #357-65-65
Marie Mundaca on designing books for David Foster Wallace
Book design is likely one of the most underappreciated arts, but I find it fascinating.
