Short Story Club: The Depressed Person by David Foster Wallace

[King Mob]

This second half of november we will be reading and discussing The Depressed Person by David Foster Wallace.

(sorry for the delay)

[Sapphire]

I found this url - is that the right story?

[Rores28]

Good find that looks like it.... although I'm not sure that it is in full... I'll get back to you when I'm near my book.

This story can also be found in DFW's short story collection "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

[Rores28]

So what did people think of this? Brilliant? Tedious and self-indulgent? Formal devices innovative or douchey?

[King Mob]

I finished reading it today and I have to say I really liked it. At times it is kind of boring but it's as if it is its very intention to be that way, the way the depressed person herself is to some degree. To what the short story set out to do, I think it is masterfully written: all the repetitions and parentheses, the very long footnotes, the extremely detailed report of everything that goes on in the depressed person's life and head.

It is hyperanalytical, just like a person suffering from depression usually is, so it is understandable that we are bombarded with details that to us seem utterly unimportant, but in the depressed person's mind are of the most important value. It is maybe self indulgent, but in so a self-conscious way that makes the story a complex one and not just a whiny complaint of how horrible the depression of one person is while everybody else live "full, vibrant, joyful lives".

At some point I had this strange feeling when I remembered this was written by a genius who comitted suicide. It adds to the story a kind of sadness, irony and morbid beauty.

What had me a little confused was the ending, I don't know really what to make of it. I've read interviews in which David Foster Wallace talks about how he wants to write not only of the problems of human beings but also, and more importantly, of some kind of sulutions and redemption. In this story I can't seem able to see even a little hope for the depressed person. Maybe at the end she will ultimately fall over the edge and end up like her psychologist, or maybe all that final epiphany will be an atomic bomb of catharsis and she will start a new life.

What do you think?

[Rores28]

I'm glad you liked it. If you've begun to read any more DFW you'll soon realize that he pretty much doesn't "end" any of his stories, that is not in the traditional sense. It is possible that this final realization is the one to finally wake up the The Depressed Person, but I find that outcome doubtful. I think the point is no matter what her friend says, it will ultimately be meaningless as The Depressed Person will, even in the light of an optimistic response, analyze it to death and continue to have doubts. Did they just say that to make me happy etc....

DFW himself suffered from extreme depression, and I don't think this story could have been written by someone who hadn't. Having gone through transient periods of extreme depression myself (brought on my medication issues), I can attest to this ever collapsing and inescapable analysis issue, and by this virtue found the story incredibly poignant while at the same time remaining comical. This, I think is the key to the redemptive quality of the story, it is therapeutic not in its content but in the interpretation, which seeks at once to have you identify with the depressed person while simultaneously realizing how ludicrous some of her reasoning is.

I have heard DFW say something like "The purpose of literature is to prove that we are not alone," and I don't think anything I've read by him so far better encapsulates that statement.

I've heard people say that they thought this was a great story and it was funny how he went so in depth to show such a terrible and selfish person. I think such an interpretation really robs one of the true quality of this story. DFW himself was depressed and no doubt had such cerebrations himself, so I would find it extremely improbable that this story was made merely to lambaste The Depressed Person. I think DFW is asking you to see how truly bad it is to be depressed. I think he is at once showcaseing the irony of a depressed person leaning on someone who is terminally ill with cancer, while at the same time illustrating that maybe The Depressed Person does in fact have it worse. Is a perpetual living hell worse than an increasingly finite, but generally happy existence. I would say yes.

[Rores28]

As for motifs, theme, etc..

I would start by saying that this is the modern equivalent of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground," both of which are heavily reliant on the theme of paralysis by analysis, and isolation.

***Spoilers***
Although I find that I slightly empathize more with the depressed person who seems less masochistic and more needy. Here too I think that isolation isn't just born out by the psychology of the individual, but heavily by the culture and technology that individual inhabits. This I think has support in the fact that the therapist, is also depressed though unbeknown to both the reader and the depressed person and ultimately kills herself. That is to say, there is something disturbing and deeply ironic that we the reader who are privy to such a flood of seemingly trivial information (further augmented by footnotes), are completely unaware of the therapists depression. I think the footnotes, which DFW is fond of in many of his stories, are a formal maifestation and critique of the information age. Not only do they manage to pack a single page with an even greater density of info (by virtue of their small font), but they steal your attention, and sometimes even mid-sentence, (which I can't help but see a connection to the pop-up ads and embedded links common to the internet.... or maybe more relevant to the writing of this, commercials and product placement) causing you to often forget what is was you were reading in the first place.

Notice to the depressed person's reliance on the telephone as a means of communication, furthering the isolation motif. She can hear their voices, but ultimately has no idea if they are rolling their eyes or mouthing "I'm sorry's" to their friends etc... Though even if she did would still continue to question their sincerity. The therapist, or the only person she does talk to face-to-face, of course has professional motives to be ungenuine, and ultimately she really seems to know nothing about her either.
Here technology, long-distance communication such as telephones, and culture, the dissolution of community and family units in favor of individual progress and success, give way to environment of increasing isolation.

[King Mob]

Thanks for your comments. It is indeed the first thing i've read by DFW so I will be expecting this type of endings in future readings, which hopefully is a type of ending I love (probably part of Pynchon's influence on DFW).

Now that you pointed out where the redemptive aspect of the story lies, it makes more sense in accordance to DFW's claims. It is indeed comical and absurd. It reminds of Samuel Beckett, whom I greatly admire, whose work is seen by many as depressive while in fact I find it absurdly funny, albeit, yes, powerful and sometimes disturbing.

I agree with you with all the isolation aspects as regards posmodern society. It echoes the first little story piece of the collection "A RADICALLY CONDENSED HISTORY OF POSTINDUSTRIAL LIFE", where it seems that the bottom line is always loneliness, isolation and paranoia for almost everyone.

Hopefully with more writers like DFW who wrote about "what it is to be a f***ing human being" we can overcome our present's society's madness and alienation.

I'll be reading Infinte Jest in the hopefully near future (first I have to finish Pynchon's Gravity's Ranbow, which I recently started).

[Rores28]

I haven't yet read Infinite Jest either... though it is sitting on my bookshelf, there is a wiki page specifically dedicated to analyzing every single page of that book, right down to word choice and explaining mathematical calculations etc....

I have yet to read Beckett either, but Waiting for Godot is high up there on my to read list.

[laymonite]

Just finished. Good pick. I have read DFW's novel The Broom of the System and his essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (the essay on David Lynch's Lost Highway being my favorite). This story showcases not only DFW's pleasingly exhaustive writing and critical-paranoiac articulation à la Salvador Dali paintings but also the trademark DFW footnotes, which are often mini essays themselves, and, of course, irony.

As already stated, the narration of the story is hypercritical and I felt that the constant parenthetical i.e.'s worked not only to resolve the pronoun for the read but also to convey the Depressed Person's incessant need to be understood. I.e. the parenthetical clarifications stem from the Depressed Person's often expressed need to be understood in such as way that she feels her depression, her despair, is shared.

As for the ending, I agree with you, Rores: chalking it up to DFW suggesting that the Depressed Person is the self-proclaimed selfish $#%@! robs the story of depth. At the same time, however, I think he is suggesting that the Depressed Person is indeed self-centered. What's interesting is that, after all, it doesn't seem that she really needed the therapist at all--she (i.e. the Depressed Person) was clearly able to label her behavior and psychoanalytically trace it to its roots (there's even a footnote in which the Depressed Person avoids mentioning something because she knows exactly how the therapist with analyze it). For me, all of this suggest the powerful fact that human beings are highly complex organisms. This is what sparked DFW's curiosity and kept him hyperanalyzing human behavior and thought until the end. So, in sum, I think the story ends with the suggestion that human beings are too complex to simply label and move on--especially a person in the vice grips of depression.

Plus, let's assume the cancer-addled friend were to answer the Depressed Person's question. What then? Cured? I think not. Consider these opening lines from Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

I believe, in a sense, the Depressed Person's friend would have been like the falconer.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts, which are always subject to change. Thanks for a great story selection. This was my first Short Story Club post on the forum, and I'm looking forward to reading the Kafka story I saw posted for December!

[Rores28]

As already stated, the narration of the story is hypercritical and I felt that the constant parenthetical i.e.'s worked not only to resolve the pronoun for the read but also to convey the Depressed Person's incessant need to be understood. I.e. the parenthetical clarifications stem from the Depressed Person's often expressed need to be understood in such as way that she feels her depression, her despair, is shared.

Yes and this theme is quite common throughout many of his short stories.

What's interesting is that, after all, it doesn't seem that she really needed the therapist at all--she (i.e. the Depressed Person) was clearly able to label her behavior and psychoanalytically trace it to its roots (there's even a footnote in which the Depressed Person avoids mentioning something because she knows exactly how the therapist with analyze it). For me, all of this suggest the powerful fact that human beings are highly complex organisms.

Studies have actually been performed that have concluded that talk therapy has no therapeutic advantage over simply not engaging in talk therapy. That is to say the time it takes for people to "get over it" or feel normal are the same.

There is actually a story in the Oblivion collection called "Good Old Neon" that center's around a suicidal man trying every avenue available to him including talk therapy and his is I think and even more russian dollish analysis of his and the therapists relationship. In fact he seems far more concerned with analyzing the therapist than being analyzed.

[laymonite]

I'm glad that DFW left a great deal of work behind. Just might read Infinite Jest over the Christmas break! "Good Old Neon" sounds like my immediate next DFW read, though.

[baaaaadgoatjoke]

I haven't been able to finish this one, but I thought I'd throw out a possible reason for having the depressed person lean on a cancer patient. I think DFW may be trying to link the two diseases because, from what I know about both, there are some similarities.

If you read a lot about depression and the drugs currently available, the goal is remission of the illness. Somone else might know more than me, but on the cancer front I believe the desired result of medication is remission. A lot of people, DFW notably included, experience refractory depression. Now, DFW did stop taking his antidepressant, but it's very very common for someone to have what's called "poop out" with a drug that has been working wonderfully. Even if it's been working for years. Neither illness has a cure. I know that, with cancer, if you catch it early enough you can remove it and maybe the same is true for depression. It seems to me that the last resort treatment for both illnesses is, again, similar. For depression, that option is electroconvulsive therapy. For cancer, radiation and/or chemotherapy. In both cases the "cure" could be considered worse than the disease and may not even be successful.

Also, depending on his state of mind while writing the story he may have felt the end result of both is death by illness.