No self-respecting writer would invite unfavorable comparisons with David Foster Wallace by writing on ocean cruises.1 And no sane tennis writer would invite further comparisons by writing about tennis2 and cruising IN THE SAME PIECE.
However that’s exactly what’s happening here. The Seabourn Venture—a 564-foot, 132-suite ship—was going to Monaco for the Monte Carlo Masters, and I was on it. This is not literary criticism of Wallace and Gary Shteyngart,3 because even I am not that audacious, but it is criticism of them both: Those two knuckleheads spent a lot of money and their precious time on deeply misguided voyages to unhappiness. They knew what they were doing; they chose the kinds of trips and vessels that would bring the worst out in people—including themselves.
Wallace was at least somewhat thrifty; in 1997, he took a $3,000,4 seven-night Caribbean cruise on Celebrity’s MV Zenith for Harper’s. Secretly renaming it the MV Nadir—which I would have done too, to be fair—he proceeded to wallow in an existential crisis brought on, in some part, by stubbornly remaining on the 1,800-passenger boat for the entire week.