excerpt from “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself”
Lipsky asks: Where else do you see that kind of nice stuff rising out of shit pop culture?
[David Foster] Wallace says: Wow. Oh, God, everything. I mean even—-we were making jokes about Love Boat and Baywatch. These really-the really commercial, really reductive shows that we so love to sneer at. Are also tremendously compelling. Because the predictability in popular art, the really formulaic stuff, the stuff that makes no attempt to surprise or do anything artistic, is so profoundly soothing. And it even, even the densest or most tired viewer can see what’s coming. And it gives you a sense of order, that everything’s going to be all right, that this is a narrative that will take care of you, and won’t in any way challenge you. It’s like being wrapped up in a chamois blanket and nestled against a big, generous tit, you know? And that, OK, artwise may not be the greatest art. But the function it provides is deep in a certain way. That all this stuff is like deadly serious and really deep all the time. I mean, it doesn’t mean that you should go around being some kind of scholar of popular culture and dismantling all the stuff. But that it’s-that we find, that art finds a way to take care of you, and take part. Kind of despite itself…and like crabgrass, or like Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.” You know?
