erupture no.9
music reviews
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mel's rant
he's big! he's huge! he's
david foster wallace!

he's big! he's huge!
he's mungo!

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write me, baby

Love, Sex and David Foster Wallace

Lovingly culled by Melpomene Whitehead

A lot of people who read and discuss the works of David Foster Wallace accuse him of shying away from topics like sex and love. I decided to go back through his works (the things I have here in the apartment anyway) and pull some lascivious and salacious quotes from DFW. I know, I know, it sounds painful! And, as it turns out, I had a veritable treasure trove of quotes to chose from. And they weren't all from Adult World.

"...[T]he man meets a half-way or even quarterway desirable woman, and he immediately falls head over heels in love with her, right there, first thing, on the spot, and blurts out 'I love you' as practically the first thing he says, because he can't control the intensely warm feelings of love, not just lust, now, it's made clear, but deep, emotionally intricate, passionate love, the feelings that wash over him, and so immediately at the first opportunity he says 'I love you,' and his pupils dilate until they fill practically his whole eyes, and he moves unself-consciously towards the woman in question as if to touch her in a sexual way, and the women he does this to, which is more or less every woman he meets, quite understandably don't react positively to this, a man who says, 'I love you' right away..."
The Broom of the System, p. 205

...U.S.S Millicent stopped them in an unprickly thicket of what later turned out to be poison sumac and turned with a strange glint in the one eye that wasn't in pine-shadow and crushed Mario's large head to the area just below her breasts and said she needed to confess that Mario's eyelashes and vest with extendable police lock he used for staying upright in one place had for quite some time now driven her right around the bend with sensual feeling. What Mario perceived as a sudden radical drop in the prevailing temperature was in fact the U.S.S. Millicent Kent's sexual stimulation sucking tremendous quantities of ambient energy out of the air surrounding them. [...] U.S.S.M.K. was trying to undo Mario's corduroys but was frustrated by the complex system of snaps and fasteners at the bottom of his police lock's Velcro vest, which overlapped his trouser's own fasteners, and Mario tried to reconfigure his mouth somehow to both breathe and warm the U.S.S.M.K. that he was incredibly ticklish in the are of the bellybutton and directly below.
Infinite Jest, p. 125

For a regular civilian male, hanging out in a hotel suite with porn starlets is a tense and emotionally convolved affair.
Neither Adult nor Entertainment (written by Willem R. DeGroot and Matt Rundlet) from Premiere 9/98 , p. 93

I know how this sounds, trust me. I know your type and I know what you're bound to ask. Ask it now. I felt she could save me I said. Ask me now. Say it. I stand here naked before you. Judge me, you chilly cunt. You dyke, you bitch, cooze, slut, gash, cunt. Happy now? All judgments confirmed? Be happy. I do not care. I knew she could. I knew I loved her. End of story.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #6 from The Paris Review 144, p 68

I suddenly get this memory of my father waggling his dick in my face one time when I was a little kid.
Nothing Happened, from Open City 5, p 63

"What do you say if you just shouted 'Victory for the Forces of Democratic Freedom!' right when you came?"
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #14, from Harper's Magazine, Oct 1998, p 42

"I've already told you. I weep. It is then that I weep. Have you been paying even the slightest attention, slouched there? I lie down beside them and weep and explain to them the psychological origins of the game and the needs it serves in me. I open my innermost psyche to them and beg compassion. Rare is the subject who is not deeply, deeply moved. They comfort me as best they can, restricted as they are by the bonds I've made."
Ibid., p 53

You are loved.
Westward the Course of the Empire Takes Its Way, from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 373

'A show of hands on the part of those who are willing to believe that I kiss her photo?'
Here and There, from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 151

'I could unlock her like a differential, work her like an engine.'
Ibid., p. 152

Cinnamon girl. Full-lippped, candy-skinned, brandy-haired South-American-type girl. A type: a girl the color of dirty light, eyes a well-boiled white and hair like liquor, scintillant and smoky; precisely pointed breasts that shimmy when her chest caves in, when her chest caves in and hand flutters worried about the breastbone, from the laughter....A merriment that is almost on the edge of pain.
Say Never, from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 213

The sort of glorious girl whose kiss taste of liquor when she's had no liquor to drink. Cassis, berries, gumdrops, all steamy and soft. Quote unquote.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #6 from The Paris Review 144, p 45

She is looking outside, from where she is sitting, and I look at her, and there is something in me that can not close up, in that looking. Mayfly has a body. And she is my morning. Say her name.
Everything is Green , from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 230

That night Gimlet and Tit fellated me, and Boltpin did as well. Gimlet and Tit made me happy but Boltpin did not, therefore I am not a bisexual. Gimlet allowed me to burn her slightly and I felt that she was an outstanding person.
Girl with Curious Hair, from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 63

"Being involved with a woman doesn't automatically make you a lesbian."
Little Expressionless Animals, from Girl with Curious Hair, p. 32

She tried making pleased, excited sounds with her mouth full of his thingie, the, lying awake later, she sometimes worried that the sounds she had made had perhaps sounded strangled or distressing and had only added to his tension.
adult world 1, from Esquire Magazine July 1998, p. 79

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