A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

by David Foster Wallace

Pigs are in fact fat, and a lot of these swine are frankly huge—say ⅓ the size of a Volkswagen. Every once in a while you hear about farmers getting mauled or killed by swine. No teeth in view here, though the swine’s hoofs look maul-capable—they’re cloven and pink and kind of obscene. I’m not sure whether they’re called hoofs or feet on swine. Rural Midwesterners learn by like second grade that there’s no such word as “hooves.” Some of the swine have large standing fans going in front of their pens, and twelve big ceiling-fans roar, but it’s still stifling in here. The smell is both vomity and excremental, like some hideous digestive disorder on a grand scale. Maybe a cholera ward would come close. The owners and swineherds all have on rubber boots nothing like L. L. Bean East-Coast boots. Some of the standing swine commune through the bars of their pens, snouts almost touching. The sleeping swine thrash in dreams, their hind legs working. Unless