Paris Hilton and David Foster Wallace

My book club is reading Infinite Jest at the moment, where-in-which at our last meeting I characteristically had not read the allocated pages and sat nodding dumbly as I stared at my reflection in the Facetime camera (I looked cute that day). A girl commented that the book made her wish she could write, to which I thought to myself, perhaps I should actually read said book instead of mindlessly skimming pages of Wallace's psychobabble. To be honest, it is psychobabble. Infinite Jest reads like the monologue of a ridiculously intelligent, spiralling man who took the time to sit down and write the most epic, inner-voice-replicating autobiography slash character study slash society study that he could. He wrote the world as he knew it into a book, with fun footnotes and all. His voice is satirical and ironic, yet somehow you know he means every word he's written - in all its absurdity. It all probably really happened to him. He seems narcissistic enough that he'd write specifics as they happened to him. Real life is absurd like that, after all.

I cannot think of any way to describe the book besides... reflective of the modern condition, as cliche as that sounds. The author has a cyclone mind. He makes me think of that character from Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends - another one of her silly elitist female Irish characters who is probably pale and drinks tea while staring at the ocean - or are the ocean-watchers Scottish? Anyway, her name is Frances, and she narrates, "I fantasised that I was smarter than all the teachers, smarter than any other student who had been in the school before... I'm going to be so smart that nobody understands me." Wallace's cyclone brain is whirring within his skull as his expression remains placid. I doubt his words came out in real life as they do on the page. I mean, he introduces the novel with silent words and a seizure in the middle of a college-admissions interview. As a friend messaged me, in anxiety-inducing social situations she is like :|. A realisation I've been coming to recently is that respect must be earned, and minds cannot be read. 

Last night I painted my toenails, with little pink toe separators and all, while watching Paris Hilton open her glittering notebook filled with recipes written in colourful texta. "This is so you," Kim Kardashian-West chuckles. "I swear travelling with Paris is just... do you remember? You'd bring all these stickers and we'd sit on the plane and all we'd do is collage for the entire trip." As absurd as the specifics of Wallace's characters (or should I say, Wallace himself) are, the specifics of Paris are both endearing and filled with personality - from her stiletto shaped spatulas to her pet pig, Princess Pigalette. Paris has never tried too hard to demand respect from the public. Instead she's always milked the blonde bimbo persona. She built an empire out of not caring and being dumb.

Paris has a barbie voice on Cooking With Paris, with her on-brand quotes lighting the screen: "Couture in the kitchen means dry cleaning bills." You get the gist. Yet occasionally her guest of honour will share a serious detail about themselves, and her voice will slip into normalcy - not just normalcy, but the deep intelligent voice of an introspective girl friend and the founder of an empire. On The Simple Life (2003-2007), Paris is relatively conservative compared to her more brazen co-star, Nicole; and on her podcast This is Paris, her opinions are almost entirely neutral. Her only nuggets of wisdom are given as bedazzled anecdotes: "Be like that Chanel bag that nobody can touch. Don't be the fake on Canal Rd. that everybody can put their hands on." Paris doesn't offer us anything. The world floats around her: a seemingly simple-minded star who may or may not have a cyclone circling within. I mean, she doesn't strike me as easy-going (I have yet to watch her documentary).

To have a mind like Wallace but instead write it like Paris. That is how I'll conclude this Thursday night brain fart.

Disclaimer: We'll never really know about Paris. As @kardashian_kolloquium's theory goes, oversharing can be a form of defence. Make so much noise that the world doesn't know what's really going on.

Love,
M