Swan Songs

By Josh Corman

What If?

What if John Lennon had been shot in 1969 rather than 1980? What if, just weeks before the release of Abbey Road, the most significant member of the most significant musical group in history had left this world? And what if, instead of leaving behind a fully recorded, mixed, and mastered piece of visionary art, John had struggled to finish some of his compositions. What if only half the vocals had been laid down, or what if he had never quite been satisfied with the guitar on "Come Together?" What would the rest of the group have done? What would the release day for Abbey Road have looked like if fans knew, beyond any doubt, that the last glimpse into John Lennon's genius, moving full steam ahead, would come on October 1st, 1969, and that it really didn't look like what he would have wanted out there?

What a shame it would have been, obviously. It's sad enough when a towering creative figure dies at the end of a long, productive life and career, or even when they die young, but with their best creative days likely behind them. But when a Kurt Cobain or James Dean goes, right at what should be the apex of what they've striven to give the world? We listen to that last record or watch that last film, and we search for something, some flicker of the promise we know we've lost, and it comforts and pains us all at the same time.

The Pedestal

The most fascinating novel ever written about taxes and accounting.

For a number of reasons, I looked forward with near unhinged madness to this year's Spring Break. Besides all the usual perks of a work-free week, I had been saving something very important: David Foster Wallace's final novel, The Pale King. The combination of wild anticipation and anxiousness with which I had looked forward to reading Wallace's final work (he committed suicide in 2008 after a long, troubled battle with depression and addiction) was something that I hadn't experienced since reading the final Harry Potter novel in 2007. In that case, I was only anxious because I wanted so badly to love the story and discover the answers to questions I'd been asking for years. The Pale King brought with it a different layer of emotion. This was the last time I would read a novel by one of my three favorite writers of all time, and knowing you're losing a character doesn't feel nearly as bad as losing an author. I had devoured Wallace's previous two novels, The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest, near the beginning of last year and read one of his two nonfiction collections, Consider the Lobster, the previous Christmas. In the time between reading those works and opening The Pale King, I had watched approximately ten hours of interviews with Wallace, read his Kenyon College Commencement speech, "This is Water," probably fifteen times, and gobbled up every interview, profile, and review I could find written about the man or his work.

This is dangerous behavior. I'd put DFW on a pedestal. Rarely, if ever, does anything good come from putting a writer, musician, actor, or sports star on a pedestal. Creating hopelessly high expectations (especially for a dead person) leads mostly to deflation and letdown because of the narrow pathway it leaves for our idols to tread. Take Cobain as an example (my Verbal Infusion contract requires me to make mention of Nirvana or Kurt Cobain no fewer than twenty times per year; I'm trying to add a few tallies to that ledger). When In Utero came out, a lot of people were disappointed with the record's raw sound, but that disappointment didn't really stem from the quality of In Utero. Rather, it was that In Utero didn't sound enough like Nevermind for many fans' tastes. They had created a Platonic version of Nirvana in their minds, and when In Utero didn't mesh with that narrow conception of what the band should be, they reacted unkindly. History has a way of salving the sting in most instances like this (and it certainly has for Nirvana's second album), but time and again the pedestal effect plays itself out.

And so, having placed The Pale King on a pedestal next to its author, setting aside a week to read it during which I would have plenty of time and focus to spare and essentially creating an environment in which the book could do little but disappoint me, I finally read the thing.

Man, did it hurt. The Pale King is funny, poignant, and philosophical, and it shows flashes of brilliance that even Steinbeck can't match for their harrowing, pummeling pathos. And now, 560 pages later, it's all gone. I knew this ache would come. The effect of feeling, for real, that I would never get to engage with this voice (in this form, at least; Wallace has short fiction collections and one more nonfiction collection that I'm working hard to create pedestals for) in a fresh way again. It doesn't feel like regret, exactly, but it stings in kind of the same way.

The Afterglow


One of the hardest feelings for me to describe to people is that of having just finished a book that you know is going to stick with you for a long time. The words are simultaneously buzzing around in my head, striving to leave a singular impression and quickly fading from memory. What's left is usually just a holistic impression that feels unworthy of the massive effort that you know went into what's been read.

My immediate holistic verdict was one of gratitude and awe. Gratitude because when Wallace died, his editor put a tremendous amount of work into marrying the three hundred or so neatly typed pages that represented the most complete part of The Pale King and then cobbling the rest of it together using found notes, rough drafts, and computer files. The result is, as the cover indicates, unfinished, a word that only adds to the ache I mentioned earlier. The awe I felt wasn't new. The way guitar players are in awe of Hendrix or Morello, poets in awe of Whitman or Eliot, actors in awe of Brando or Lewis, that's the feeling even two or three consecutive DFW sentences make me feel. The fear that "unfinished" meant "lacking quality" vanished pretty quickly. The Pale King met the immense challenge I had set for it, but it made me wonder about what will come next.

David Foster Wallace is my John Lennon (even though John Lennon is also my John Lennon, he was dead five years before I was born, so it doesn't work the same way), my Kurt Cobain, my James Dean. He left behind a few thousand pages, and as I've worked through them, I've thought about this end point often. The way I see it, I've got one of two choices: I can convince myself that finishing Wallace's last novel is tantamount to losing a best friend, develop an unhealthy literary solipsism where I see everything through the DFW lens, thereby ensuring that I hate ninety-five percent of what I read because it doesn't measure up, or I can acknowledge that it's been a hell of a ride, that my twelve pound copy of Infinite Jest isn't going anywhere, and that Wallace will always be there, waiting to be reread and rooting for me to find something that's just as great as he was. Instead of being bummed or even afraid because I've read his every word, I should just appreciate what he gave me and move on.

That second choice is really the only choice for us, if we want to enjoy our favorite pastimes, but I don't know if it's the one we choose most often. If you saw the story in the news about the Tupac Shakur hologram closing out Dr. Dre's set at the Coachella music festival last weekend, you might understand what I mean. Tupac was a titan of his field, to be sure, and for much of the last seventeen years, a lot of hip-hop fans have been hung up on what his loss meant, and what his death cost in terms of his art. It's a callous way to approach the loss of a life, but when we lose an artist, it's hard not to think about their work first, because it's really the only connection we have to them.

The concept of a rapping Tupac hologram is weird, but it's also frightening. Dr. Dre, the man who dreamed up the idea, has said that this is only the beginning for this technology and that there are plans to send the hologram on tour. How long do you think it took for someone to call Yoko Ono's or Courtney Love's agents and pitch the idea of a Beatles or Nirvana reunion. I can only pray that neither one of them would have the audacity to give such a plan the thumb's up, but until I hear a definitive "no," I'm going to be a little nervous. But there are those who might get excited at the prospect. I am afraid of these people.

See, I don't want to be somebody who can't let go. I won't ever read a new David Foster Wallace novel or listen to a new Beatles record or see a new Heath Ledger movie, and I need to be okay with that. Increasingly, I think I am.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman