Perhaps a good way to truly gauge viewers’ interest in the
upcoming film The End of the Tour, starring comedic actor Jason Segel as the
literary genius David Foster Wallace, would be to allow people to see the film only
if they’ve read Wallace’s behemoth, 1,000-plus page novel Infinite Jest, the
book that Wallace is touring behind in the film. This juggernaut of a novel is
a sprawling meditation on the “Pursuit of Happiness” in America and what exactly
that phrase, or idea, means to Americans, from the '90s through to today. The
reason I bring up the idea of mandatory Infinite Jest readership is that while the supposed intelligentsia of our
great nation love to spew about how much they love DFW, upon pressing them,
most will admit they’ve never actually taken the mammoth amount of time and
effort it takes to digest a book that that not only caused its author to be
dubbed a genius, but would assuredly cause a concussion if thrown at someone’s
head. Case in point: I’ve met someone who claimed DFW as their favorite author,
only to promptly confess they’d never read his greatest accomplishment, and
musician Marnie Stern’s song “Year of the Glad” is a direct reference to Infinite Jest, even though she herself admits to never having read the book.
This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’ve read Infinite Jest
twice, and it’s a doozy. It’s dense, chock full of academic jargon, including
the chemical breakdowns of drugs, both legal and illegal, and has over a
hundred pages of endnotes that the reader must constantly flip to in order to
flesh out the quasi-science fiction alternate reality Wallace creates (On an
appalling sidenote, the recently released audiobook version of the book left out
the footnotes completely, probably because they would have had to pay the
reader quadruple-overtime to record them). It’s also a dark, dark work,
struggling with the nature of addiction, sadness, and loss, all in the face of
the American dream and what that term means in the 21st century. So no
wonder a lot of people don’t really want to slog through this trench of
really-really smart person despair. What it seems a lot of people do want
is for everyone to know that they know who DFW is, that they know what Infinite Jest is, and that they know how important it is to “literature.”
Which brings us to the trailer for The End of the Tour.
Jason Segel, best known for comedic works like the television shows Freaks and
Geeks and How I Met Your Mother, stars as David Foster Wallace while on a
book tour following the success of Infinite Jest in 1996. Jesse Eisenberg co-stars
as David Lipsky, the Rolling Stone writer who was sent to cover the end of the
book tour and write an article about Wallace. That article never came to be,
but following Wallace’s suicide in 2008 Lipsky released the book Although Of
Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, composed of the transcriptions of the cassette
tapes of his and Wallace’s conversations during the tour. It’s an intimate,
fragmented portrait of Wallace at the time, and comes with sporadic
interjections that Lipsky added as a sort of narration. From these two elements
comes the narrative that, at least after seeing the trailer, I assume The End
of the Tour is seeking to portray: A smart, successful guy wanting to be this
other super-smart, super-successful guy. Lipsky never says anything so
bald-facedly in Although, but he does pine at certain moments about Wallace
being smarter than him, and feels envious at the copious attention Wallace receives during the tour.
Yet Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself only
covered about four days in the life of Wallace, during which he denied
being a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, as well as attending AA to deal
with these issues. Given that his real-life experiences with addiction, as well
as his friendships with his fellow AA members, gave his much of the inspiration
for Infinite Jest, his unwillingness to discuss this part of his past seems
like a glaring omission in the face of the book’s success. If anything, Although paints a rather rosy picture of Wallace, one of him as being
self-effacing and kind, and I’m not saying he didn’t have those qualities. However, Every Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life Of David Foster Wallace, the 2012
biography of Wallace, detailed a much darker story surrounding the genesis of Infinite Jest, one that, frankly, makes more sense regarding the nature of
the work. No need to go into gory details, but safe say to the Wallace of Although is a much more movie-ready version of the beloved author.
So the question remains of why The End of the Tour was made,
and what it is trying to achieve. The David Foster Wallace Literary Estate does
not support the film, on the grounds that Wallace would never have allowed
himself to be portrayed in a movie. Considering that in Wallace's novel the term "Infinite Jest" refers to a film so seductive its viewers lose the will to do anything but endlessly watch the film until their death, this was a man who had serious reservations about commercialized entertainment simply as a viewer, let alone being any kind of public celebrity himself. So perhaps, like all those people who seem to
love the idea of loving an American literary genius, rather than his actual
work, Eisenberg’s Lipsky is the true identification figure of the film, someone who wants to
be successful genius without really understanding what that truly entails. Wallace
led a dark life that ended in suicide, and that darkness is only ever hinted at
in Although. The credibility of The End of the Tour as a portrayal of DFW
is contingent on the parts of the script that aren’t in Although; while much
of the dialogue that appears in the film is from the book verbatim, a bit where
Wallace is imploring Lipsky to “just be a good guy” seems less like an actual
conversation and more like typical feelgood movie gobbledy-gook.
But Lipsky didn’t write the script. David Margulies adapted
it. So most likely this is a case of another movie-biography adaptation cliché,
a feelgood romp that allows us to feel closer to Wallace through Segel’s
impersonation. Four days is hardly enough to get to know a person, especially
considering it takes at least ten times as long to read Infinite Jest. Pretty ironic, as the book could be considered a look inside Wallace’s mind. Most people
who see this The End of the Tour will probably never read it.
