David Wallace's “Ticket to the Fair”

David Foster Wallace’s narrative essay, "Ticket to the Fair," an intense, feverish depiction of life amidst the fair’s numerous allures and dangers, engrosses the readers by taking them on a trip through David’s personal tales which address social struggles and offer the reader with apparently complete access to his opinions and feelings. David does not just write to tell a story, but rather, uses his story as a device to aid readers in comprehending his character and image.

In a style and voice that’s cynical and sarcastic, David recounts his journey to the 1993 Illinois State Fair he's been given to cover. This narrative essay, prepared into units consistent with the month, day, time, and place, adds to David’s almost anthropological tactic, his journal-like arrangement of thoughts, to composing his experience. Sections such as “August 5, 1993, Interstate 55, Westbound, 8:00 A.M.” assist David in splitting up what would otherwise be a tedious, lengthy observation of his experiences at the fair (Wallace 35). In addition, David utilizes the pieces from the time stamped sections to match the amount of activity taking place throughout the day. By employing a smaller quantity of short paragraphs to label times early in the day and a larger quantity of paragraphs to label times later in the day, David creates an image that reveals to the readers the most frenetic times he faced at the fair. By supplying the reader with an excess of specifics, mounding description upon description throughout his essay, about the different types of food and animals and people, David exposes his character without writing about trite background details.

By adding figurative language and overstatements and wit to these descriptions of the fair, David leaves the readers sensing as if they can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear everything he does. The statement “The Zipper’s operator is ageless and burnt-brown and has a mustache waxed to wicked points like steer’s horns, rolling a Drum cigarette with one hand as he nudges levers upward and the ellipse of cars speeds up and the individual cars themselves start to spin on their hinges” (Wallace 41) provides a case of David’s exhaustive description of his characters, shows, landscapes, and barns throughout his essay to present the reader an image in order to better understand the similarities of the people and their lifestyles in the Midwest.

Statements such as “The words “excited,” “proud,” and “opportunity” are used repeatedly. Ms. Illinois County Fairs, tiara bolted to the tallest coiffure I’ve ever seen (bun atop bun, multiple layers, a ziggurat of hair), is proudly excited to have the opportunity to present two corporate guys, sweating freely in suits, who report the excited pride of McDonald’s and Wal-Mart to have the opportunity to be this year’s corporate sponsors” aid in portraying David and his outlook through derision (Wallace 36). David doesn’t falter to deride either Harper’s, by informing of his take on the entire enterprise, “Why exactly they’re interested in the Illinois State Fair remains unclear to me. I suspect that every so often editors at East Coast magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90 percent of the United States lies between the coasts, and figure they'll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish” (Wallace 35), or himself, by stating, “It’s so hot that we move in quick vectors between areas of shade. I’m reluctant to go shirtless because there’d be no way to display my credentials” (Wallace 40).

Although its David’s first trip to the fair, he derides almost everything – the food, the people, the weather, the music, the animals – and describes the landscape of the rural Midwest as marooned, both physically and spiritually, and vacant. He even depicted and viewed the horses in the livestock venues as strange, stating: “The horses’ faces are long and somehow suggestive of coffins” (Wallace 38).

David also utilizes a comically pragmatic persona to recount specific messages to readers through a mixture of both colloquial and formal diction, though he tends to employ more formal diction when referring to his personal opinions and informal diction to anyone else’s. “After the hacks introduce him, he speaks sanely and, I think, well. He invites everybody to get in there and have a really good time and to revel in watching everybody else also having a good time – a kind of reflexive exercise in civics. The press corps seems unmoved” (Wallace 38) depicts how David’s colloquial diction harmonizes with his formal diction in generating a melodious beat for the readers.

Beyond the distinguishing use of references and episode after vivid episode of descriptions of images, David also incorporates his singular approach. This is shown, through distortion and exaggeration, as David provides his female friend, his “Native Companion,” dramatic lines, intentionally misspelling words and emphasizing certain parts of the quote when quoting her so that the readers can hear what her voice would essentially sound like: “Instead, she bounds out. “That was fucking great! Joo see that? Son of a bitch spun that car sixteen times, did you see?” This woman is native Midwestern, from my hometown. My prom date a dozen years ago. Her color is high. Her dress looks like the world’s worst case of static cling” (Wallace 41).

Moreover, while David utilizes himself as a subject when noting his judgments and comments, he also, in his narrative essay, frequently holds “you” as a subject when mentioning cases to which the reader could relate. “I suspect that part of the self-conscious community thing here has to do with space… The land is basically a factory. You live in the same factory you work in. You spend an enormous amount of time with the land, but you’re still alienated from it in some way. I theorize…” (Wallace 38) illustrates how he coherently switches to and fro from “I” to “you.”

David accounts his journey to the 1993 Illinois State Fair as an approach to get the readers to understand his character and image. Exemplified by his extremely descriptive language and remarks on everyday irrationalities, David recounts realities comically and logically through his character and thoughts. From the minute they start reading the narrative essay, Ticket to the Fair, readers will sense as if they have entered David’s mind. Rather than bringing the readers to an exotic place, David voyages to the most ordinary location to exemplify the image that extraordinary places are ubiquitous. David Foster Wallace ends his essay by stating: “The real spectacle that draws us here is us” (Wallace 54).