David Foster Wallace: Conservative?

Like Mr. Carter Skeel, I have been deliberately deceptive in titling this little essay. Those who are avid fans of Mr. Wallace need not be alarmed. I know he never considered himself a conservative, nor can he be interpreted as being one now. Yet my purpose is to suggest that there are currents in his thought, ideas that once rumbled through his head, which reflect a remarkable sensitivity to the concerns of conservatives, especially concerning the disorientating effect of technology, and students who are looking for compelling ways to articulate conservatism might start seasoning their arguments with the words of David Foster Wallace.

Below are some excerpts from an interview concerning his novel Infinite Jest. He begins by describing the state of technology in his imagined, future world.

Entertainment technology has progressed to the point where pretty much anything you want is available. … People are essentially connected, I guess, in all the sorts of ways that the great champions of the Internet … are so excited about now.

The book is centered around a kind of movie that’s actually fatally good. (Viewers watch it on repeat until they die of dehydration.) Its a kind of parodic exaggeration of people’s relation to technology, to entertainment now, but I don’t think it’s all that different. Part of the question is whether US citizens have the wherewithal to keep from entertaining themselves to death or not.

He then offers a critique that, if spoken in either an English or a New York accent, could have been uttered by either Roger Scruton or Cardinal Dolan, respectively.

In the next fifteen years we’re going to have virtual reality pornography, which I would just invite you to think about, given the level of people’s lives that are ruined just by addiction to sort-of video peep-show shops.

Concerning the role of the state, he offers this little gem of an idea:

A lot of the sort of hugger-mugger in the book comes down to the fact that government really can’t do a whole lot, that our decisions about how we relate to fun and entertainment … are very personal, private … between us and our heart.

The interviewer asks Mr. Wallace, toward the end of the interview, about the Christian Right, which is “dealing with this question more than any other part of society.” His answer is revealing.

The Christian right basically wants to take a away the power of people’s choices to make their own decisions and wants to make those choices for them. … The form of fascism that, I think, goes under the name the “Christian right” is gonna look viable to a lot of people.

If I have one constant complaint regarding fellow conservatives, it is their lack of a humanist sensibility. As long as people on the Right, both Christian and not, express a grating rhetoric, the conservative mind-set and the Christian religion will remain unappealing for intellectuals like Mr. Wallace. The irony is that certain conservative rhetoric arises from a sense of cultural alienation, but may in fact perpetuate that alienation.

Russell Kirk wrote that conservatism at its highest is concerned with “the regeneration of the spirit.” Reading Infinite Jest, I was struck by how much David Foster Wallace was concerned by the degeneration of the spirit. He shows his reader all the hollowness of addiction, pride, cleverness, and greed, and does so with the lightest touch of moralism. Let me suggest that though David Foster Wallace is not Russell Kirk, he does have something to teach conservatives.