The Oakland Review Blog

Introducing a new literary blog from the editorial staff of The Oakland Review, specializing in book/poetry reviews, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

February 13, 2025

Why You Should Try Reading Infinite Jest

By Jack Kiggins

On average, people are awake for 900 minutes a day. Nowadays, kids in the United States devote about a third of that time to devices, spending roughly 270 minutes on weekdays glued to screens. From 2003 to 2023, face-to-face socializing has taken a nosedive — particularly for unmarried individuals and those without a high school diploma. During COVID, time spent inside skyrocketed due to quarantine mandates; yet this tendency to remain at home has persisted since 2020. There is a rapidly increasing number of opportunities for engagement with technology, which pulls us away from each other and the world.

This data comes from Derek Thompson and Max Guther’s recent article in The Atlantic, entitled, “The Anti-Social Century.” Throughout, they make light of how our society is evolving in response to our devices; innovations such as webcamming and artificial intelligence have altered the world to a point where we can, and frequently do, derive entertainment in solitude. Complete isolation is a possibility, and, for some, a habit.

Infinite Jest, a novel by David Foster Wallace, addresses this idea of total solitary absorption in one of its subplots; a character’s father is a diligent filmmaker and created as his opus a film so engaging that anyone watching becomes completely engrossed in it. Viewers lose all regard for the world and slowly decay before the screen, watching and rewatching the film ad nauseam.

Interestingly, Infinite Jest precedes our current affair with technology by about twenty years, having been first published in 1996. One of the most prophetic works from Wallace’s library, the novel takes a critical look at the state of consumerism in the United States, satirizing our obsession with products and novelty. Take, as an example, the chapters of Infinite Jest, which are each devoted to a particular year. Yet years in this dystopian world have been commodified and sold to the highest bidder — what would be “2009,” for instance, is the “Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.” Others include “Year of the Whopper” and “Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar.”

The plot dives more deeply into American cultural identity, following a wide array of characters, principal among which being Hal Incandenza and Don Gately. The former is a student at Enfield Tennis Academy in Massachusetts, struggling to cope with the pressures of academia and competitive sport. The latter, Gately, is a recovering narcotics addict at a halfway house in the same area as the Enfield Academy, surrounded by a cast of characters at different stages of the recovery process. Undoubtedly, it’s grim; but Wallace intersperses moments of wry commentary to create a balance between clever humor and heavy emotional hits.

Fundamentally, Infinite Jest is a story about pleasure and the paths we take to achieve it; there are the unparalleled highs and cavernous lows of competition, the immediacy and subsequent fallout of drug abuse, the dangers of overindulgence. Understanding why and how we seek the pleasures that we do is one of the great philosophical questions and a defining element of what makes us human.

If you enjoy dystopian fiction, this book could certainly be up your alley. Its plotline is non-linear and fragmented, with chapters told from different perspectives that lack a real sense of singularity — we learn so much about so many places and people that keeping yourself grounded in one of them can be tricky. Some stories merge, others remain separate, creating moments of intersection here and there.

One of my personal favorite traits of the book is Wallace’s unique use of language, as he throws neologism after neologism at you in quick succession. I’m a huge fan of authors getting creative with language, molding it to fit their story and add depth for the reader, and I think Wallace does an excellent job of that here. If you decide to read and want to learn more about the diction, there is a website — infinitejest.wallacewiki.com — with annotations for every page. I relied on it quite a bit.

Those ideas aside, it is long. Roughly a thousand pages in total, footnotes included (yes, there are footnotes). There are countless videos and essays on the internet trying to answer the question of whether or not you should read this book, and, despite having reviewed several of them, I’m not sure there’s a clear answer.

There are plenty of arguments in favor of reading Infinite Jest simply because it’s one of the great American novels. However, I would argue that its significance extends slightly deeper than that. It is certainly long, and occasionally tedious; at points, I, myself, thought Wallace could have taken a red pen and trimmed some of the detail. But the story itself is worth a read for its relevance alone, as we try to answer many of the same questions driving the book’s characters. Given our evolving relationship with technology, it’s valuable to ask ourselves how we truly want to be entertained with the time that we have.

January 18, 2025

TRAGEDY AND BEING AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN

By Allison Blair

For the longest time, my favorite Shakespeare play has been Macbeth. Underlying my decision to study English is my love of this play — which I first read in my sophomore year of high school. It has been four years since then, but I still am not sure exactly what it is about Macbeth that has had such a profound impact on me. 

Perhaps it is Lady Macbeth, a character that feels stuck to my soul. She is a girlboss who was so ambitious that Shakespeare had no choice but to kill her off. Her rapid descent from a woman with clarity in her desire to be something greater than herself to a confused, mad queen has never totally sat right with me. 

When I write, I find myself returning over and over again to Lady Macbeth’s arc. Maybe it’s out of concern for my own ambition which I sometimes fear will be my downfall; I push myself to be the best at everything I do, even if it’s to my detriment. Maybe my fixation comes from my desire to be something beyond myself, something more. Or maybe, it’s the imaginary blood staining her hands the way my unsaid and unwritten words stain mine. I don’t know, and I’ll probably never know. I’m haunted by words I have not yet written, and I’ll just keep writing to get all the words out as Lady Macbeth scrubs the blood away, both futile attempts, but attempts nonetheless. There will always be something else to write, always something to improve on.  

From the time I learned to write, I was always completely terrified of showing anyone else what I’d written. Half the time I still cannot bring myself to write, even when I desperately want to get the words out of my head. I find myself filled with perfectionist pressures and anxiety to be the best writer I can. What if my writing isn’t good enough? What if I’m not good enough? I itch whenever I see a submission comment on one of my papers. I vehemently refuse to look at written feedback on my assignments unless I have to. 

Like Lady Macbeth, I let my ambition get the better of me, which only leads to my own downfall. I am my own worst critic. I set impossible expectations, and then find myself disappointed when I cannot live up to them. Whether you love him or hate him, it is undeniable that Shakespeare is a great writer; if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be as widely known and taught as he is. I’m no Shakespeare. I’m just me and sometimes I fear that will never be good enough for me. What is enough? How do I define enough? I don’t. I can give it my all and it still won’t be able to reach my impossible threshold of enough. I don’t want to be Shakespeare, I just want to be someone I can be proud of. I want to write, not to be the best, but because I love the craft. 

The first time I fell in love with writing was when I found myself in the principal’s office. I have only the vaguest memory of my teacher complimenting my writing and deciding, for some reason unbeknownst to me, that a paragraph about my breakfast was something the principal needed to see. As I sat showing off my description of cereal, I remember feeling proud, not just because of the validation from the adults around me, but because it was the first time in my young life that I made something that felt truly mine. 

The second time I fell in love with writing was at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program for communicative arts the summer after my junior year of high school. There, I took a class on retelling a story from a side character’s perspective. I wrote Lady Macbeth a new monologue to be spoken right before she takes her own life. This piece was selected to be performed in front of all the other students at the program. I remember feeling proud, not just because I did not feel the slightest bit of anxiety about performing my writing (a first for me), but because I was in love with the craft the same way I had been sitting in the principal’s office twelve years prior. Writing this monologue, I finally felt that I was writing, not to be the best, but because I was in love with the art of writing. Writing was finally about more than accomplishment, it was about my own happiness. 

The one book I brought with me to Carnegie Mellon at the beginning of my freshman year was my copy of Macbeth. Even though I have not had the chance to study the play in any of my classes, it is the one book to have a permanent space on my ever revolving bookshelf. It sits in front of my desk as a constant reminder of where I’ve been and what has yet to come. There is so much left to write, and I will continue to do so until my Lady Macbeth finally gets out that damned spot. 

November 8, 2024

On Being a Vessel

By Dylan Courtney 

Though this may read like a love letter to Carnegie Mellon, I’ve still felt the panic, mercilessness, and trepidation that comes with being a student at a top university. Transferring here, this grand, massively important crucible of a school, has been the most profound shift of my life. And that’s coming from a kid who switched high schools four times while living in four different houses, and grew up in a family that embraced change instead of running from it. But there’s something singular, something piercing about being here; nothing quite like it. Even the seasons feel monumental, and I can’t help but think: Now I understand the poets. Now I understand The Secret History. Now I understand scarf strangulation and pumpkin-spiced lattes that somehow make me more tired than before.  

Carnegie Mellon feels less like a university and more like a montessori, where loneliness is an unspoken part of the deal. Knowledge is the closest thing to a deity and everyone is devoted, even if it means sacrificing sleep and connection. The implied truth is that greatness here calls for the surrender of the “normal” college experience, however one might define it. That said, I’m an upperclassman at a new school in a new city surrounded by new peers. The freshman and I are practically soulmates. During fall break, I was asked one too many times how it feels to be here and the only word that came to mind was unsure. There’s an undercurrent of uncertainty that touches everything: every interaction, every comment I make in class, every project I work on. I know this feeling is part of the process, an initiation of sorts, but I'm intimidated nevertheless. I’m catching up to everyone my age, networking, and establishing myself and my “brand.” But the process is shaky. I believe it’s the anxiety that stems from the desire to be seen as equal that fuels me the most, like the beta-alanine in pre-workout; uncomfortable tingles, but the best workout of your life. 

And despite being a Creative Writing major, I haven’t been writing much. I’ve been reading, sure, but I’ve lost the internal stability that comes from seeing words made concrete on the page: the Didion thought of being immortalized by preserving your public narrative. This semester, I’ve become somewhat of a vessel for content, constantly absorbing class lectures, books, shows, and music. I’m overstuffed and weighed down by consumption. And while this isn’t bad since I’m getting the education of a lifetime, I’ve been on edge. I’m terrified that there’s only so much I can absorb, like I’m approaching some unseen limit, and after that, everything else will spill over, lost to the ether. And, not to be grotesque, but writing has always been my emotional laxative, a "shit," relieving mental constipation. The door is wide open. Feel uncomfortable? 

I guess I’ve started to feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer. Maybe it’s the small body of work, or maybe it’s that quiet sense of imposter syndrome that seeps in when saddled with any title. Being called something, “a writer,” “an actor," feels like a bizarre claim, as though putting a name to it makes it real, or like I’m committing to some universal standard. I tell myself that owning these titles is not narcissistic, yet I pause. I’m acting in a few short plays right now, more for the fun of it and the deep-seated pull I've always felt toward performing, but I would never call myself an actor, even while doing precisely what the title suggests. I’ve taken dance classes, but I wouldn’t label myself a dancer. I’ve learned to play the bass, but I wouldn’t dare call myself a musician. A fan of rock? Absolutely. There’s something about titles that feels final, grounding but perhaps too confining. For me, at least.

It's almost November now, and I'm still establishing the setting. I'm not even close to the rising action. It's all the mystery. Yet I've never been more ready in my life to squeeze every iota of knowledge out of CMU. I even launched a book podcast (So yes, this entire blog post has been an ad for the CMU Book Pod). I’m still a new face, with new ideas, and the mere act of starting something at this school proves to be greatly rewarding. While I’m not one for titles, being a Tartan feels right.

October 20, 2024

On Pointless Passions, Dead-End Deaths, and ‘Stoner’ by John Williams

By Stephen Makin

On Thursday, September 9th, I completed my read of Stoner, a biographical novel by John Williams published in the 1960s. The novel was a present from my father—a regifting, I should note, as he was gifted the book by his brother about a year prior. My uncle, a general cynic, attended graduate school for the humanities, and I had rashly assumed that it was this begrudged pursuit of academia which had inspired him to pass along the story to my father—who once upon a time also considered academia but instead went into law. Like my uncle, the novel’s protagonist, William Stoner, chooses to pursue academia, finding himself entrenched and at home in the spirit of education, yet altogether humiliated by the way in which his life continues to disappoint him the longer he spends on a college campus.

Stoner, like many a “natural-born” English student, is initially drawn into education by a particularly passionate educator, Archer Sloane. I remember my own: Mr. Cusick, probably, among others. I digress. Trying to recapture the particular high of Sloane’s lectures, Stoner attends graduate school at his undergraduate alma mater and is first promoted to assistant professor by Sloane. He wonders if he is, for the very first time in his life, happy or fulfilled. But having married himself to the field of English, difficult choices ensue, and a conflict of morals erupts with the new Department Chair over the fate of a student who is totally underqualified for graduate level education. Stoner wants the student expelled. His boss does not. Stoner finds himself in a bind, and having permanently angered higher-ups, he is never again given any serious chance to rise up in the ranks. The road to fulfillment morphs into a rigid stalemate.

The aforementioned Department Chair is so very fond of the underqualified student, I should note, because both suffer from a similar physically debilitating ailment. The former harbors pity for the latter, as well as a hidden desire to advance physically disabled students in academia. And I may be reading into this a little, but I fear there may be a nonzero chance of the two men sharing in a covert sexual relationship throughout. But whatever the case, William Stoner becomes an inadvertent obstacle to this secret will, and very quickly, he finds that his tenured position is the only thing keeping him from the proverbial chopping block. To this end, even though Stoner remains only an assistant professor, all his enemy can do is assign him a miserable teaching schedule year after year after year, beholden to freshman seminars and introductory courses. Stoner is employed, but miserable.

My uncle has often expressed similar sentiments about the politics of academia, especially as it may pertain to the humanities. With a limited number of employment opportunities available in such a field, even something so simple as spite/politics-of-opinion can stifle one’s progress to the top. It is likely for one to have to endure the same boss for extremely long periods of time, and equally likely for one to lack better prospects at some other, similar-tier university.

This is certainly one take to be had from John Williams’s masterpiece. But I do suspect that the real reason for my uncle’s gifting of the novel lies later on in its contents, at the story’s end, when Stoner is dying from a long-hidden cancer centered somewhere in his lower body. Last year, my father and his brother watched their cousin die of cancer, far too young, in New York City. They were all very close as children, and I couldn’t help but think that my father probably had some difficulty coping. Even I dealt poorly with the whole matter, albeit secretly. But reading this novel alleviated some pain. Williams’s description of a slow ease into death—“There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.”—is so astutely wrought with critical emotion that a reader almost wishes it into existence, prays for its roots to remain somewhere within the scattered realm of realism. The novel’s end becomes a show of wishful thinking for the dying.

As William Stoner lies on his deathbed, his only friend is in the next room over, talking with Stoner’s wife. The dying professor can only make out brief phrases of their conversation. He surmises that the two of them must be talking about his impending doom. He imagines also, at first, that they are not saying anything good—and how could they be? His life, he decides, simply must appear quite shameful, at least to the untrained eye. John Williams employs the adverb “mercilessly” to qualify Stoner’s initial thinking. But more immediately before his passing, he chooses to reverse course—the words exchanged in the next room (between his best friend and his wife of all people) are more than likely positive, and even in the case that they aren’t, why should he, a dying man, give them any kind of creedence? Taking its time to get there, admittedly, Stoner becomes something of a comforting read in its last few paragraphs. It is difficult to spin death into a hopeful ending, but Williams accomplishes it with genius poise. Of course, a long time has passed since the 1960s, but cancer persists even now. Death persists. It always will. So too, however, does the comfort that accompanies assumptions of dying men leaving little shame behind to linger. 

So those are the opinions of the working adults in my family, at least as far as I can tell or am willing to assume. But what did I—decidedly green with regards to professional writing, and still a college underclassman—think about the novel?

The very first thought to occur here is that I think it’s a shame how so many people allow their very lives to outrun them. In the novel, Stoner does not want to retire from his teaching position when he hits the ripe, old age of 65. In an effort to convince the man to do so (it is the only way left to get rid of him), the insidious Department Head exclaims that Stoner should steal back all the time that he can manage to get his hands on, if for no other reason than the sake of writing more books and allowing his expertise to flow freely back into academia. Stoner refuses. He no longer wants to write. His life—that is, his creative existence—has outrun him. He feels that he has nothing left to offer the young—having spent so long teaching the works of famous writers and providing commentary from the same old textbooks again and again and again. He sees that creation is a gift that is given to the youthful, often wasted. 

College students are a fortunate bunch, and not just in the way that pompous, self-hating graduates spew about on the internet. Many are endowed with time and housing. Those who are gifted neither, and who have to work multiple jobs throughout so as simply to support themselves financially, are still utterly surrounded by ingenious mentors from their given fields. Help abounds, as does critical mentorship. The student wants to grow up fast to reach these mentors’ levels. The student wants to impress them with their own quick wit, with their own fast and silver tongue. And finally, above all, the student wants to surpass them. If one cannot do, as they say, one teaches, and one rarely wants to teach from the outset. There is a brief consensus among undergraduates of a certain age that education is a whole lot more than just the sum of its parts, which at face value would be nothing more than job training. It is this consensus that, however true or untrue, justifies briefly the exorbitant price tag. Go on and tell a man in his fifties to go off to college and make himself learned in the arts and languages simply for the sake of doing so. He will not. Even Stoner himself, at the very beginning of the novel, does not choose to pursue higher education for this purpose. Instead, his impoverished parents send him off to go and learn about agriculture, and when he leaves this degree path, he does so in secret.

I should note here that readers should take care not to reduce these sentiments to anything even remotely along the lines of “old people can’t write.” That would be an unfortunate and untrue reading of this blog post. On the contrary, I myself rely almost exclusively upon the writing critiques of people older than thirty before I send my pieces anywhere. These people have experience. But there is a time and a place to go out and gather that experience. It is difficult to begin the writing journey in the midst of a professional career or between the hours spent with spouse and children. William Stoner feels all of these emotions. He faces down the challenges. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t even say that he loses outright—he succumbs to the world, surrenders to it. Again, I am not writing to discourage older writers. I am attempting to inspire young writers to finally get going. If you’ve been thinking about maybe, just maybe scratching that quiet, subcutaneous itch that you’ve recognized as something real and often crippling, the one that nags you over and over to bring forth new wisdom to the human table, just remember that the clock is ticking and—at sometime or another—the bell will finally toll.

As another note, do read Stoner by John Williams. The book is really something.

October 3, 2024

Why We Write

By Kathryn Bell

Writers are constantly bombarded with questions about how they do their job. Is there a certain headspace you need to be in to write? How do you manage the editing process? Are you a stream of conscious writer or do you deliberate on each and every word before putting it on the page? Which came first, the writing or the world you wrote about? For such a complicated, tiring, and unique process, it is remarkable that every writer is asked the same questions. 

But why? For starters, most jobs have a simple timeline of beginning to end. Architects begin with a blueprint, then source materials, then build, and, finally, sell. Surgeons diagnose, cut, remove organs, replace organs, sew up, and release. But writers don’t work this way. A writer lives in the in-between, in the idea, in the process. Their contemplative process forces them to deliberate, write, edit, rewrite, plateau into a mental breakdown about how the piece will never say what they need it to say, spot a bug crawling around the floor that inspires a breakthrough, finish the piece, rinse and repeat. But even once the piece is “finished,” writers may find it in their bottom drawer five years later and decide on a different take. It’s agitating and emotionally draining and means that your mind never really stops writing. It’s exhausting; so why do we do this?

I began writing at ten years old, before I had any sense of identity.  I didn’t think of my future with writing, I didn’t think I was becoming a writer, I didn’t even realize what tiring and rigorous and rewarding of a field I was going to, one day, want to come into.

I grew up in extremely struggling quarters. My father tried to provide for a family of seven with less than equitable means. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who pulled shifts at the daycare me and my brothers went through. I never knew we were poor. I’ve lived in hotel rooms, and in family’s houses, and most days when I left school, I didn’t know if I would be returning to a house. I knew the word eviction before I knew the word college. But there wasn’t time to complain and more importantly, there wasn’t anyone to hear. My parents had to spend their time making sure we slept in a bed, and I was thankful for everything they did to make that happen. And I still am. But no matter how soft my mattress was, all I could think about was the one I lost in our last eviction. I struggled to talk about my emotions, my sadness, my fear. I was lonely. And I began writing to cope with it. I literally learned how to write before I learned how to talk about myself. But it saved me.

When you grow up not knowing if there will be a kitchen to eat breakfast in, you need something constant. My constant was my journal. Every night,—no matter where I was sleeping, who was in my house, how bad or scared I was feeling—I wrote. My written feelings morphed into prayers, then into poem. A year after my parents’ divorce, I decided I would become a writer. It changed everything: school became the most important thing to me, I got good grades, and suddenly everyone was expecting me to get a scholarship to a good school and save us from this world. In the barrio, I was called “The one who made it out.” My life was no longer only about my dreams; it was about everyone’s dreams put upon my pen. One day, the pain and pressure of this became too much. It was a lonely world. But I couldn’t complain. My writing, my success was a gift, it was hope— until it became overwhelming. I began to perform my poetry at the Dallas Poetry Slam, poems of how I felt I was falling into someone else’ version of my future. Rhymes of wondering if I was good enough. The snaps and cheers and hosts telling me that they want to hear more from me, that they can tell the care behind my words, a whole community calling me a writer: it showed me I wasn’t alone in my dream. The poems later became a portfolio that I sent to the Creative Writing Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Which followed with an acceptance, a scholarship, and an answer to my family’s dream. And validation that all the pain, anger, loneliness, and fear from how I grew up was answered before I knew what it meant to be a writer.

I’m not sure what my future as a writer will be, but what I know is that I’m not just surviving. Writing is not a life vest, not a dream, not an identity, it’s not just all I know: it’s my choice, my life, my passion.

During the last conversation I had with my dad before he passed, I talked to him about being and becoming a writer and he didn’t really understand it. But he told me, “Make sure you living with a love of writing, not writing to live.” I think I’m finally understanding that.