Books: “Something to Do with Paying Attention” by David Foster Wallace

Epiphanies, or “aha” moments, have existed for an serenity. Some of the more fabled examples include the moment Archimedes yelled “Eureka”

while sitting in a bathtub.  Another was Newton's realization that a falling apple and the orbiting moon are both pulled by the same gravitational force.

For the hippie-dippie protagonist in David Foster Wallace’s “Something to do with Paying Attention,” his epiphany occurred when he accidentally walked into a college accounting class, listened to a professor lecture on the “heroism” of accountancy—and somehow found God.

This head-scratcher of a novel—more like a novella—was discovered years after Wallace committed suicide in 2008. (Brief aside: that subject itself was covered in a brilliant 2015 film, “The End of the Tour,” starring Jason Segel).

In “Paying Attention,” the unnamed Mr. Protagonist (MP) is a classic mid-1970s “wastoid “ as he calls himself. He wears tacky painters pants, smokes way too much dope, and keeps failing out of colleges, much to the dismay of his straight-laced father who claims his son “couldn’t find his a$$ unless there was a bell attached to it.” A family tragedy suddenly forces MP to determine what he craves most in life: discipline.

The irony of this stoner finding salvation in joining the IRS is what makes the book weirdly fascinating. This is partly because DFW speaks in a language that is unlike anything you’ve ever heard—straightforward but at the same time frantic, mile-a-minute and LOL funny. His sentences, which can run on for 200 words or more, are so fraught with references to daytime TV, Jimmy Carter, and other icons of 70s culture, you can’t wait to see where he’s going with them.

The world is a dimmer place without the charismatic DFW, who died too young, too soon. He was a contributor to The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Paris Review, and his posthumous novel “The Pale King” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. We are lucky to have books like “Paying Attention,” however slight, as part of his legacy.