A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Wallace recounts going on a Caribbean luxury cruise. He begins the essay with an overview of the many strange and wonderful things he saw on his trip aboard the Zenith (which he rechristens the Nadir). The cruise is run by one of seven identical mega-lines, all of which have the same business model. They all strive to “pamper” guests and promise the ultimate luxury experience. Wallace comments that something about these mass-market cruises is “unbearably sad.” He has little experience with the ocean beyond a childhood fascination with sharks; he did not see a single hint of a shark throughout his trip, though he constantly scanned the water for signs of shark fins.

Wallace notes that most guests aboard the ship were older people. It had various classes of employees; people from the cruise line’s country of origin (Greece, in this case) filled the upper management roles, while the custodial staff were from all over the world. Wallace recalls flicking through the brochure as he waited to board the ship and reading an article (essentially a paid advertisement) by author Frank Conroy, whose work Wallace admired. Wallace analyzed the literary style of the brochure’s prose, which seemed to suggest to the audience that they would “have no choice but to have a good time” (267). The boarding process for the cruise ship was long and sweaty. Wallace studied his fellow passengers as they were “herded via megaphone” (271) and overheard the passengers explaining to each other their motivations for the vacation, noticing a tendency in each explanation to justify the expense as necessary.

As the ship left the port, some passengers experienced seasickness. On the first two days of the cruise, the ship encountered bad weather, which Wallace chose not to hold against the company. Wallace was assigned to Table 64, where he had the same company at each meal. The other diners at his table had far more experience on cruises, including one spoiled young teenager named Mona, whom Wallace disliked intensely. Mona’s grandparents, who spoiled and indulged her, took her on an annual cruise. She habitually lied to the staff, telling them that her birthday was on the final night of the cruise so that they would shower her with attention. On this particular cruise, the other young girl at Table 64, Alice (who spoke incessantly about her college boyfriend) actually had her birthday, but Mona refused to alter her scheme. Service at Table 64 was overseen by a Hungarian named Tibor, whom Wallace liked very much. As the passengers dealt with the movement of the ship on the ocean, Wallace returned to the Conroy article in the brochure. He reveals that after closely examining the prose, he reached out to Conroy, who admitted that he had “prostituted” himself. In reading the piece, essentially advertising disguised as an article, Wallace felt “despair.”

Next, Wallace describes the depths of the pampering aboard the Nadir. The crew all seemed to possess “a steely determination to indulge the passenger” (292) at all times. They constantly replaced towels and meticulously cleaned Wallace’s room every day. Wallace became obsessed with the room cleaning and frantically tried to discern how the cleaning staff determined the perfect moments when he was away from his room long enough for such a deep cleaning. The ship offered many restaurants and bars, as well as room service. When not at Table 64, Wallace ordered room service. At first, he felt ashamed and arranged his work materials in a way that might convince the staff who brought his food that he must be too busy to go to dinner (rather than being reclusive or lazy). By the end of the cruise, however, he abandoned this elaborate pretense. Since he had some degree of agoraphobia, Wallace often stayed in in his cabin. He describes the cabin in detail, including the powerful vacuum toilet.

During the cruise, the ship stopped in various ports around the Caribbean. On these days, most passengers disembarked and visited the local tourist hot spots. Wallace stayed aboard, alongside a collection of increasingly familiar passengers. These included “Captain Video,” who videotaped everything. Wallace explored the ship, and the “sheer and surreal scale of everything” (310) astonished him. He was less impressed by the “inescapably bovine” nature of American tourists. During one stop, he spotted a ship from a rival cruise line and was overcome with immense envy. He imagined the different kinds of luxury it offered, which prompted him to find fault in the Nadir’s services. Each of these minor issues now felt like “a personal affront” (318). Wallace’s essay goes on a tangent as he explains the many ways the cruise line monetized the passengers.

Wallace decided to spend a day partaking in the various amenities and activities offered aboard the Nadir. He ate breakfast at Table 64, attended the small church (where no one took up the priest on the offer to renew their vows), lost a game of chess to a precocious nine-year-old girl in the library, won a ping-pong match against the resident ping-pong coach (also the ship’s DJ), and then attended a navigation lecture by one of the ship’s officers. Wallace learned many technical details about the running of the ship but was unable to make notes. During the day, he drank many cups of coffee. He loved the coffee aboard the ship and thus exceeded his normal quota. This extra caffeine added a “kaleidoscopic and unfocused” (336) quality to the afternoon’s activities. He hit golf balls, attended an art auction, lost the “Men’s Best Legs Contest” (337) in bitter fashion, and then attended a meeting with a crew member named Scott Peterson, a “deeply tan 39-year-old male with tall rigid hair” (339) whose demeanor grated on Wallace’s caffeinated patience. Peterson ended his vapid discussion with an extended joke about his wife using the ship’s powerful vacuum toilet. Wallace was too morbidly fascinated to leave as Peterson’s wife sunk into deep embarrassment. Next, he watched four elderly men rehearse comedy routines for a ship talent show and then performed poorly in the skeet-shooting contest, nearly killing several people.

That evening, Wallace was profoundly embarrassed when he attended the formal dinner. The only passenger not wearing formal attire, he watched as Mona pretended to celebrate her birthday while Alice (whose birthday was actually on this day) quietly seethed. Afterward, he attended a show featuring a British hypnotist named Nigel Ellery. Believing himself “excessively suggestible” to hypnotism, Wallace was careful not to participate or follow the show too closely. At the end of his day of “Managed Fun” (352), he was completely exhausted. He returned to his cabin and spent the final day and night of the cruise in a glassy-eyed trance. He returned to the “landlocked real-world” (353), which was not nearly as bad as the copy in the cruise brochure led him to believe.