Good Old Neon

by David Foster Wallace

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Novels, Philosophy, Mental Health, School, Psychology

40 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2004

About the author

David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative literary voices of his generation, Wallace is perhaps best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His unfinished final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult one, even by DFW's standards. The story is told by the ghost of 29-year-old Neal who killed himself by crashing his car. Before, well, dying, the advertising executive did therapy with one Dr. Gustafson, trying to investigate his feelings of being a fraud, which, it turns out, are rooted in the fact that human beings are ultimately unable to fully reveal their inner being to others - he is haunted by the human condition as such. Additionally, he does to others what he criticizes: He ascribes motivations to his therapist.

At the end of the story, a character named David Wallace looks into his yearbook at a picture of Neal, trying to figure out what he was really like. So the whole text is about the most classic of Wallace themes: Empathy, and how we should strife for it although (or because) knowing another person is impossible. The text is filled with literary references to works like Young Goodman Brown and The Death of Ivan Ilych, because DFW is one for the nerds, and I love it.

A longish short story that is worth several habilitations.

[Katarína Vyskočová · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unpleasantly straightforward, even with its sprawling sentences. If you've ever suffered through the mental loops of fraudulence, manipulation and looking at yourself only as an observer, the first few pages are gonna feel like a kick in the gut. Is that a good thing? Not sure, but I've never felt this understood.
(I'm also really curious about how people who can't relate view and interpret this story. It definitely strikes me as autobiographical but maybe there are readers searching for underlying metaphors haha)

[Simran Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Foster Wallace captured in excellent accuracy, the fast, messy mental processes of a narcissistic, manipulative, calculating person. It's more of a sketching an outline, the contours and inner world of a being who is disturbingly self aware rather than a short story. And as a reader, I can't help but wonder if it is autobiographical. There's also this small but tantalizing detail--that the narrator first realizes the extent of his fraudulence at the age of 19. DFW was 20 when he had what he called his "mid-life crisis", dropped out of college, and started writing fiction.
The meandering, broken proses represents all the caveats, micro-thoughts, meta-moments, and other flickers of an hyperactive individual. The author exercises the required restraint instead of going into loud theatricality.

I could go on and on with my town swivel-chair diagnosis, but then I remembered the entire point of "Good Old Neon" is basically that every person rightfully considers themselves a sum of the inexpressibly complex fabric of systems going on in their heads constantly, and to judge anyone--no matter how well you know them--is sort of absurdly presumptuous given the truly extreme asymmetry of information between outside and inside.

One can argue this story ends on a relatively positive note, DFW the character reminiscing over a yearbook makes it clear he was imagining what kind of extreme internal machinations could lead a person to such seemingly drastic irrational action (which gets historically sadder obviously when we consider the real author), and there is the fantastic block quote in there about how "of course" you operate from behind an ego and how that's okay and not impossibly fraudulent, so I think part of the overall argument has to do with how confidently we deceive ourselves into believing we can know other people's motives and intentions, while at the same time we should really consider others with the same benefits and anxieties with which we see ourselves.

Highly recommended.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crushing. You think it's pretty clever at the start, and then it leaps up a level of simulation, and then it keeps iterating its own map until you find yourself very very high above life, quite cold, and very very far from ok. Probably a bit dangerous for some people.

Subtlety: it's easy to view this as some kind of critique of rationalism, since his entire problem consists in excessive thought, excessive self-attention, and the narrator notes that he realised his ultimate entrapment during a mathematical logic course. But it's an impossibly naive kind, the one which insists on the "criterion of rightness [or correctness]" being constantly stared at, instead of approximated and mostly obscured behind its sane heuristics. I say impossible but it is of course quite common, one of the 10 curses of major depression.

Detail, probably not accidental: Neal calls his (adoptive) parents his "step-parents". At one remove from him.

The end takes Neal's extraordinary recursive self-understanding / self-destruction to higher order: before he dies, Neal imagines DFW looking at a picture of Neal after he dies, and Neal imagines DFW's inner life, which includes a heartbreakingly deluded reflection on Neal as a perfect, uncontrived popular kid, and DFW's confusion at why Neal would do it, and then Neal imagines DFW's own Nealian disorder, and his continuing battle with himself to maybe not let irony and pessimism ruin this one thing, viz. DFW's attempted imaginative sympathy for Neal. And of course all of that is in DFW the author, one more level down. And after that there's only us.

[Clemensoskar · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me Good Old Neon is the one work of art that comes closest to capturing what the thought spirals that tend to accompany anxiety disorder, OCD or depression actually feel like. The nerve-racking pain of simply feeling wrong. I read it for the 5th time or something like that and I will always come back to it as some sort of therapy. While this is none of the overly abstract things he wrote, it's still full of post-modern playfulness to depict all those infinite things happening all at the same time inside your wrong-wired head. The final catharsis not only comes through the words he uses but how the layered construction of this short story finally reveals itself to you. With every re-read I discover more insights into what D.F.W. was trying to do here. I can imagine that it can be difficult to get through the first part for the first time. All this stressful back and forth is necessary though, for this story to hit as close to home as it does in the end. The final pages are the greatest, the most powerful and most cathartic I’ve ever read and probably ever will read. David Foster Wallace, what a beautiful soul you’ve been.

You can find it online here:

https://sdavidmiller.com/octo/files/n...

[Vidit Singh]

Wallace has left me stumped with his awareness that is so adept at juggling you, losing you in its own force that you're left looking for an exit. And if it's so difficult for you as an outsider, what a tormenting mind cage it must be for himself. This is a vivid, disturbing peek into a mind so burdened by its own self. There really isn't much I can say here. Normally, one feels elated having to see glimmers of yourself in any narrative. This time it was glib, it felt alienating, banal and morbid. I want some rest. Like I'm sure Neal (or let's be real DFW himself) wanted and in the end (a doubtful term loaded with a linear temporality -- the very nature of which I've discovered in the story is mortal and human) found only one way to do it.

I'll find it hard to discuss quality with this one. Or try to 'make sense' or whatever it is one does 'discussing' a piece of 'fiction'. None of that shit. Not another word.

[Rocklee78 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more you try, the less you are, and then you try even more, and in consequence, the lesser you are. This notion sounds pretty familiar. The protagonist is dropped into a loop that reminds heavily proclaimed by Alan Watts - Backwards Law. By being fraudulent, the protagonist circles around, chasing absurd after absurd. David Foster Wallace accurately emphasises paranoia of insecure individualities. In his work, he states that there is no route between love and fear, modern-day men hide behind masculinity, and they often consider fragility a weakness. The story is said from a perspective way of a dead person. There seems to be no external force that can encourage the main character to break the boundaries of fraudulence. The last four pages of the story deliver the densest and most intense writing I have ever experienced in my life. Sometimes we are not what we appear to be, sometimes we are, but we are more than this. What is inside and around us is not enough to define us.

[Shawn Enright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, I'm still processing this story. The funny thing is, I didn't even mean to read it. I opened Youtube this evening to finish a lecture I had started yesterday, and an audio version of this story was in my recommended. So I clicked it. An hour-an-a-half later, I finished listening (while reading along), took some breaths, and just marveled at DFW (as is usually the case).

This story appears in his collection, Oblivion, which I will read when I have the time and, more importantly, the energy to truly engage a work by DFW. Good Old Neon is 41 pages of DFW proving that he can articulate the uniquely troubled, 21st century human condition better than anyone, and do so with pessimistic sincerity. What really haunts me, though, is how autobiographical the story feels. Though it's about the life and death (by suicide, mind you) of a clever, smart, and, in his words, "fraudulently successful" 29-year-old man named Neal (whose ghost narrates the story from beyond the grave), you can't help but see Wallace's own tormented psyche beneath the text. It really is special and horrible and compelling to read.

DFW was, by no stretch of the imagination, a bonafide genius, and it's a damn shame he isn't still around.

[Thomas Cafe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Painfully frustrating, that’s kind of the point though right? This likely deserves 5 stars since it’s so powerfully done, however, I can’t give such a high rating to something that made me so utterly upset and unhinged.

[Yan Castaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

like looking in a very ugly mirror

[Danya · Rating 5 out of 5]

the ending was beautiful and worth being read a few times or reflected upon for a while to let it seep in, had a sort of Interstellar feel

[rushi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it bad this felt like reading my own journal...

I really loved this short story it was so engaging, while it was at times a bit too messy, which had me having to reread sections to get a better understanding. The character of Neal and his ruminations on fraudulence and being authentic and were at times so relatable that it was concerning yet still comforting. However, I did believe that some of the characters notions were insufferable because of the arrogance that accompanied them, I do think at some point you need to also realise that whatever fake personality you perform for others is still coming from you and that it can be categorised as just another side of you. The footnote on time was a really excellent passage I loved the way it reframed time and questions our need to separate it into the past present and future when it all really just bleeds into one another, it definitely shifted my perspective. Also, the little spiel about significance and insignificance was also another very relatable passage, that I can guarantee exists already in my own words somewhere. (4 Stars)

[Sumit Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The protagonist Neal is a caricature who's essence is that he's a fraud, all of his interactions with the world is an act, an performance. Not only that, even in his most private moments he's thinking about how the situation looks from an outside perspective and not actually being present therein. The whole book is mostly his monologue trying to get us to understand how it's like to be him, and honestly we all must admit that we can relate, to however extent that might be.

Also I've decided upon a persistent rating scheme for books that I read, because seemingly I've given either 4 or 5 star to all the books I've read so far, and that's not useful at all. So here's the new rating scheme, mostly for my own re-readings later on

1 star: bad, won't recommend.
2 star: good enough, but you can skip it.
3 star: very good, liked it.
4 star: awesome book, highly recommended.
5 star: one of my favorites.

[Aidan EP · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an awesome read. Wallace’s command of prose is absolutely spectacular, and along with wrestling with the difficult subject matter was indescribably delicious to mull about with my mental tongue. It was difficult however; without trauma-dumping on Goodreads some aspects hit pretty close to home, and it’s given me a lot to think about. His picture of mental illness is intensely profound and I think gets so much right about how human brains work. What I was most impressed by, however, was how he built it up to that frankly terrifying ending - in a weird, chilling sort of way I think this is one of the scariest representations of death I’ve ever encountered. His ideas about time are also absolutely fascinating. Overall it’s one of those short stories with the capacity to change you, and make you feel like life is intensely special, even in the sense that the human mind is such an incredible, finely-tuned piece of biological equipment. I can’t wait to discuss it later today in my FASS2100 class today.

[Lilian Jaquette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somehow this is one of DFW’s less tangential works, and yet he still yanks you through negative thought spirals so frustratingly well-argued that by the end of the story you’re just as ready to give up on him as he is to give up on himself.

Going into this with no background, I was pretty certain this article was a wholly autobiographical suicide-note-slash-last-journal-entry that only survived because DFW’s attempt failed somehow. I was convinced of this until the very end (and after I read Reddit interpretations) because DFW writes with piercingly (and paradoxically) raw and honest detail. In both a seeing and violating way. Of course, even if the exact events or people aren’t from Wallace’s life, there’s no doubt that he experienced similar patterns of self-loathing, or he wouldn’t have written this so accurately.

Without the slice of hope Wallace adds in the very end, this piece could very well drive someone at risk to kill themself. Way more so than a single line from Cheers. By the end he has you wondering if authenticity is even possible to squeeze out from the prison of a mind containing multitudes. Thank god my mind is far from the illness Neal experiences; but there are certainly echoes of it in my own psyche - see excessive self-awareness, the smugness, isolation, and guilt of feeling smarter than others, the desire to be more than a cliché but knowing deep down that’s inescapable. The fear of boring other people, of not loving the “right” way.

I think the biggest issue with Neal’s thinking, aside from the endless self analyzation, is its logical black and whiteness. He said himself that the flashes of thoughts we experience are incompatible with sequential time, and yet knowingly tried to squeeze his perspective into a logical formula. The truth is that paradoxes exist, they always will - there is an art to leaving things unresolved. Messiness is inescapable, and though words can hazily outline feelings, there are truly parts of you that will never escape the prison of your body, parts that you’ll never know or understand completely. And you just have to learn to be okay with that.

Upon reaching the second to last page I shed a singular tear from my right eye, which I then observed as melodramatic from the state the story had put me in, but then thought fuck it I’m just a crier, but are the tears then inauthentic if I continue crying while imagining how I’ll frame it in a goodreads review, is it a performance to see myself as beautiful and deep when I cry alone, perhaps a performance not for others but for myself, is it a performance when I express myself in laughter, in tongues, in music.

The answer, as Wallace states, is “of course it is”. Of course we exist as a performance, there’s no possible way we can express our entire being outwardly in even a semi-complete way. But maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe allowing yourself to be friends with yourself, to understand that only the love you give to yourself will feel most authentic because the person who knows you most authentically will always be yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a community outside yourself. It just means, however cliché it sounds, you have to love yourself before you can love others.

Perhaps the keyhole we see people through can be a blessing as well as a curse- after all, the mystery of a person is the fun part, the enticing element of surprise that keeps you coming back. Or maybe that’s just a desperate, optimistic spin on it.

One metaphor that will stick with me from Neal’s sessions with Dr. G is the whitecap metaphor: “The whole ‘my life flashed before me’ phenomenon at the end is more like being a whitecap on the surface of the ocean, meaning that it’s only at the moment you subside and start sliding back in that you’re really even aware there’s an ocean at all. When you’re up and out there as a whitecap you might talk and act as if you know you’re just a whitecap on the ocean, but deep down you don’t really think there’s an ocean at all. It’s almost impossible to.” We are all quaking aspens, we are all devastatingly connected, we are all self-aware yet simultaneously clueless. You can choose love over fear. We can all love, or at least have a preference. Just don’t think about it too much.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excruciatingly long but also quite good

[ernest (Ellen) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fact that everyone is a fraud — inexplicably, unchangeably so — is both comforting and terrifying. So really, everyone is a fraud and no one is a fraud, because we're all equally fraudulent in that we are never truly ourselves around others. Yet it's these people who are less divergent from their true selves that experience the most confidence, the most happiness, the most transformative abilities to change the world uniquely. (title "Good Old Neon" seems to imply that we show the purest, brightest of colors to the outside world while hiding the blatant plainness of our identities)

> This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person’s life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn’t even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-anotherword English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split second’s flash of thoughts and connections, etc. — and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we’re thinking and to find out what they’re thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it’s a charade and they’re just going through the motions.
>

It's like playing a game of charades and always trying to get the closest approximation to reality — when in fact you can never get the exact picture of what someone is trying to say, the way the neurons in their brain fired and connected when they make a realization vs try to communicate to you. It is a Riemann sum of an integral; never quite as continuous or whole.

> Dr. G. would later say that the whole my whole life flashed before me phenomenon at the end is more like being a whitecap on the surface of the ocean, meaning that it’s only at the moment you subside and start sliding back in that you’re really even aware there’s an ocean at all. When you’re up and out there as a whitecap you might talk and act as if you know you’re just a whitecap on the ocean, but deep down you don’t think there’s really an ocean at all. It’s almost impossible to. Or like a leaf that doesn’t believe in the tree it’s part of, etc
>

Only after death do you realize that life is an ocean and you were floating on a bed of time. Only once you lose that time do you see that it was all that was keeping you afloat.

> That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole.
>

We have the natural impulses to suppress and optimize the part of us everyone can see, like the front side of a painting hiding rustic backboard behind it. But when we tear down the facade, break down these walls, we experience what it may be like for just an instant, if we could wholly share ourselves with someone else, with the world.

> The reality is that dying isn’t bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time at all.
>

[mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow. just. wow.

[John Caulfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've often said that DFW has an unrivaled ability to flesh out and articulate the undeveloped thoughts that float around my psyche with unflinching clarity.

That's probably giving myself way too much credit, given his genius. But, when I read stories like this one (it rang of a modern-day Ecclesiastes), I am spooked by his ability to expose me and leave me feeling butt naked. I want to hand out a copy to everyone I know and say "Here, I'm nuts, let's skip the charade and just read this if you wanna get to know me." I think DFW would also say this is a part of the problem for the self-centered - the desire to be understood (and the subtle belief that if people really "got you", they'd like you). All vanity.

I can't overemphasize how refreshing it is to know that you're not the only one who flew over the cuckoo's nest. I say "refreshing", whereas DFW would say "demoralizing", bc while he hopelessly (and he knew it was hopeless) wanted others to validate him, I've already found validation in, and from, the God who sees the imposter for what he is, and sets His affections upon phonies who can't stomach themselves but believe on His Son.

The heartbreaking nature of this story is that DFW continues to see through everything, only to find nothing worth seeing. The same CS Lewis quote comes to mind every time I read DFW:

"You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see."

I really pray that I am pleasantly surprised in heaven, and that DFW really did "see" after all.

[Vlad Mărghitaș · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a very rare thing to find a piece of literature that shakes you to the core, that gives you goosebumps and makes you struggle to contain your tears when you're in a public place while reading or listening to its audio version. For me, it was the latter. And I was lucky enough to find a version narrated by someone whose voice seems to strike an eerie but comforting resemblance to the great DFW himself.
I have a lot to say about Good Old Neon. So much so that I really don't see the point of expanding on them more than necessary: it depicts the most common human suffering of them all - not being oneself, not being free. The suffering of being so painfully tied up to your persona that life itself starts to become unbearable, slowly but surely. It's the same old story of the modern man: that of someone who is deeply terrified by their own reflection in other people's eyes. Terrified and obsessed at the same time. Like an ill kind of love.
And like in every case of ill love, the infatuation starts to turn against you. It questions your very essence as a person, it tells you that you commit a sinister sin against yourself and the ones close to you, it poisons every interaction that you have, any thought or feeling that you might otherwise deem either good or bad for you. Not anymore. Because in the age of the modern man, all that matters is how good or bad these experiences are in relation to how other people perceive you. And as the narrator points out, this soon turns into the Fraudulent Paradox: the more you try to appear a certain way in front of other people, the weaker and more disgusting you start to become in your own eyes. And the deeper layer of this paradox is truly the most terrifying - once you're in this spiral, you can't get out. No matter which level of self awareness and insight you're reaching in regard to your deeply fraudulent nature, you seem to be ultimately helpless in the face of your self destructive journey, waiting for your eventual demise.
Is this supposed to be so gloomy and hopeless as I made it to appear? Does DFW provide us, even implicitly or metaphorically, with a potential solution to the problem? This is up to you to determine, after being confronted with the part of yourself that will almost invariably relate to the protagonist's personal hell, illustrated so gracefully in his inner dialogue that it's painful. But also beautiful. So humanely and excruciatingly beautiful.

[Srijan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heavy and concerning ideas written about in a deceptively simple and conversational style, which I appreciate. Bit of an anti-plot, a sort of recounting of an episode in an individual's life who experimented with some psychoanalysis before committing to their plan of committing suicide. I don't know much about David Foster Wallace, but writing stuff so ripe with suicide ideation has to be a no no if you're not in the healthiest of mental states right? I guess that facing these thoughts head on requires a special sort of bravery and conviction that I've personally avoided dabbling in, but I respect the ones who do. Godspeed.

Suggested by Vidit.

[Sean Hartnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked it up and from the very first few sentences I felt the story was going to get at something deep; among other things, the ugly interiority which we seldom actively acknowledge and deal with. Needless to say I think this is great. It's a short story which so elegantly weaves, logic, and themes of loneliness, love and solipsism together, that you feel your own humanity perhaps ever a bit more piercingly afterwards.

[Zoé Komkommer · Rating 4 out of 5]

« The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. »

[Skipper Yon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I'm thinking he's me

[Bo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn he just like me fr fr

[Kaneeka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit lol

[elise 🍵 · Rating 5 out of 5]

genuinely the most depressing thing I have ever read

[Averil *rat emoji* · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's terrifying to come face to face with something that could have been lifted from your own skin. The long winded explanations, the "or whatever" at the end of a perfectly summarised thought. The agony of existing to please. And yet, please read.

[leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I love the accessibility of this story (and that of most stream-of-consciousness narratives) and its fairly raw discussion of fraudulence -- I can't help but think at times the narrative is a little melodramatic. I sincerely hope none of my journal entries sound like this.

[Tara Seymour · Rating 5 out of 5]

great short story. dont read if u dont want to fall into a brief existential spiral