Quotes from book
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments is a 1997 collection of nonfiction writing by David Foster Wallace.


David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace photo

“I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously.”

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Essays
Context: I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.

Similar authors

David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace 185
American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008
Edward Abbey photo
Edward Abbey 146
American author and essayist
Paul Valéry photo
Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author
Mario Vargas Llosa photo
Mario Vargas Llosa 30
Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist
Svetlana Alexievich photo
Svetlana Alexievich 8
Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose w…
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Jorge Luis Borges 213
Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator…
Christopher Morley photo
Christopher Morley 30
American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
Marcel Proust photo
Marcel Proust 41
French novelist, critic, and essayist
Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer