Book Club: A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again

I had never heard of David Foster Wallace before he hung himself last fall. Upon his death I read a bunch about him from various sources, and a few of his essay's available online. That whet my appetite, but I doubted that jumping into his work with the epic-long novel "Infinite Jest" was the best idea. So I went to the local bookstore to see what was available, hoping for either this collection of nonfiction pieces or Consider the Lobster. This is what they had.

Wallace's style takes some getting used to. The prose is as good as it gets, but the advanced vocabulary and numerous lengthy footnotes can be tricky. But where else can you read an essay on the Illinois State Fair that uses the word "rictus" not once but twice. That essay, along with the titular piece in which Wallace takes a Caribbean cruise are the clear highlights of this book. But it also includes five others including an analysis of David Lynch's Lost Highway, a trip to the Canadian Open (Wallace was big into tennis), and an article about television that I quoted before.

It's a hilarious book, particularly when Wallace immerses himself in Americana. He's a bit of an elitist, but the elitism is grounded in a kind of self-concious earnest voice. And that voice has got a hell of a way with words. The state fair expo is a "Xanadu of chinzola." His bathroom on the cruise ship is "bitchingly nice." A tropical moon is "a sort of obscenely large and dangling lemon." I could go on and on with this stuff. In fact, just for the hell of it, here's a couple grafs gratuitously copy-pasted from some random blog found by googling "xanadu of chintzola":

Booth after booth. A Xanadu of chintzola. Obscure non-stick cookware. "EYE GLASSES CLEANED FREE." A booth with anti-cellulite sponges. More DIPPIN DOTS futuristic ice cream. A woman with Velcro straps on her shoes gets fountain-pen ink out of a linen tablecloth with a Chapsticky-looking spot remover whose banner says "AS SEEN ON 'AMAZING DISCOVERIES,'" a wee-hour infomercial I'm kind of a fan of. A plywood booth that for $9.95 will take a photo and superimpose your face on either an FBI Wanted poster or a Penthouse cover. An MIA--BRING THEM HOME! booth staffed by women playing Go Fish. An anti-abortion booth called LIVESAVERS that lures you over with free candy. Sand Art. Shredded-Ribbon Art. Therm-L-Seal Double Pane Windows. An indescribable booth for "LATEST ADVANCE ROTARY NOSE HAIR CLIPPERS" whose other sign reads (I kid you not) "Do Not Pull Hair From Nose, May Cause Fatal Infection." Two different booths for collectible sports cards, "Top Ranked Investment Of The Nineties." And tucked away back on one curve of the mezzanine's ellipse: yes: black velvet paintings, including several of Elvis in pensive poses.

And people are buying this stuff. The Expo's unique products are targeted at a certain type of Midwestern person I'd all but forgotten. I'd somehow not noticed these persons' absence from the paths and exhibits. This is going to sound not just East-Coastish but elitist and snotty. But facts are facts. The special community of shoppers in the Expo Bldg. are a Midwestern subphylum commonly if unkindly known as Kmart People. Farther south they'd be a certain fringe-type of White Trash. Kmart People tend to be overweight, polyestered, grim-faced, toting glazed unhappy children. Toupees are the movingly obvious shiny square-cut kind, and the women's makeup is garish and often asymmetrically applied, giving many of the female faces a kind of demented look. They are sharp-voiced and snap at their families. They're the type you see slapping their kids in supermarket checkouts. They are people who work at like Champaign's Kraft and Decatur's A. E. Staley and think pro wrestling is real. I'm sorry, but this is all true. I went to high school with Kmart People. I know them. They own firearms and do not hunt. The aspire to own mobile homes. They read the Star without even a pretense of contempt and have toilet paper with little off-color jokes printed on it. A few of these folks might check out the Tractor Pull or U.S.A.C. race, but most are in the Expo to stay. This is what they've come for. They couldn't give one fat damn about ethanol exhibits or carnival rides whose seats are hard to squeeze into. Agriculture shmagriculture. And Gov. Edgar's a closet pinko: they heard it on Rush. They plod up and down, looking put out and intensely puzzled, as if they're sure what they've come for's got to be here someplace. I wish Native C. were here; she's highly quotable on the subject of Kmart People. One big girl with tattoos and a heavy-diapered infant wears a T-shirt that says "WARNING: I GO FROM 0 TO HORNEY IN 2.5 BEERS."