Book Review: Everything and More

© 2003 by David Foster Wallace

So I pick up this book on the subject of mathematical infinity from the library a month ago intending to get to it one of these days.  At least crack it open and test drive a chapter.  The cover looks kinda dry, and I’m not sure the topic will sustain me over 305 pages.  But I remember borrowing the book once before and not even doing it the justice of a perusal, so I figure, about two weeks ago, to give it a whirl.

What a whirl!

I read nearly a hundred pages in the first two days.  This is a math book – well, a book about math – that is unlike any other math book, er, book about math I’ve read.

To greater and lesser degrees, it manages to be:

Hip without being stupid

Geeky without being Wolowitzian

Trivia-laden without being trivial

Non-conformist without being conformed to nonconformism

Interesting without being shallow

Non-conventional without being unreadable

Knowledgeable without being self-important

Does any of that make sense? 

Maybe this does: within ten minutes I was mercilessly hooked.  What have I learned?  Not sure, exactly, save that I would love to read more of this type of stuff.  Does anyone else write this / write like this?

However, it’s not without a downside, and boy, it’s a big downside.  Couple of them, actually.  First, while I was able to follow the philosophy and the math more or less for the first 200 pages, I’m completely at a loss in the final haul.  Wallace seems to me to be leaping forward in bigger bounds than the average reader (assuming I’m an average reader; dunno; Wallace seems unsure of his target audience, though I’d guess I’d be somewhere in the vicinity of that bullseye) can keep pace with.  If we were holding hands exploring infinity the first five chapters, now he’s let me go in a mad rush forward to see where all this is leading, writing for himself, it seems, rather than for me. 

Also, while researching the book itself, I came across some opinion that Wallace is peddling – probably unknowingly – facts that aren’t quite a hundred percent factual.  As to that, I rely on the authority of the claimants / complainants I’ve read; me, I’m lost and couldn’t tell a true transfinite operation from a false one.  I also note only one serious critique by someone I’ve read. 

See that list of qualities I wrote above of the book having?  Re-read them please.  Now, they’re still true.  And add on top of this the most shocking fact I discovered two days ago.  Mr. Wallace, after years and years of struggling with depression and medication for depression, committed suicide in 2008.  I actually exclaimed “No!” aloud, loud enough for my wife to cock an eyebrow at me and wonder what all the commotion was about.  Then all I thought about was what a waste and God rest his soul and poor me, now I will never get a chance to read wherever else he intends to investigate …

Grade: solid-A.  Everything and More is something I will definitely purchase and re-read in the future.