February 2010
1 post
Happy birthday, David Foster Wallace.
He would have been 48 today.
“In his moving eulogy to Wallace published in the 21 September 2008 edition of The New York Times Book Review, A. O. Scott eloquently describes Wallace’s distinctive literary voice as “the voice in your own head.” Scott is absolutely correct, of course, but in a very technical sense that bears exploring. As Infinite Jest reaches its...
August 2009
28 posts
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Listening to this really great David Foster... →
wellithoughtitwasfunny:
He’s so well-spoken. It takes a few minutes in the beginning for he and the interviewer to get accostomed to each other, but after that it’s solid gold.
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“An ad that pretends to be art is — at absolute best — like somebody who smiles...”
– A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (via writtenininvisibleink)
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Some wisdom before school starts
nickzed:
Q:
“How do you remember Amherst? What are the experiences—in and out of the classroom—that shape those memories? Similarly, what aspects of your Amherst education served you best? And what are the things about Amherst that, in hindsight, disappoint you?”
A:
“I don’t know that many would remember me at all… I was cripplingly shy at Amherst. I wasn’t in a fraternity and didn’t go to...
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“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t...”
– David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) (via astronauts)
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This audio file is an interview with David Foster...
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A correspondence between David Foster Wallace and...
David Foster Wallace: “Because I tend both to think I’m uniquely afflicted and to idealize people I admire, I tend to imagine you never having had to struggle with any of this narcissism or indulgence stuff. [...] Maybe I want a pep-talk, because I have to tell you I don’t enjoy this war one bit.
Don DeLillo: “I was a semiconscious writer in the beginning. Just sat and wrote something, or read the newspaper, or went to the movies. Over time I began to understand, one, that I was lucky to be doing this work, and, two, that the only way I’d get better at it was to be more serious, to understand the rigors of novel-writing and to make it central to my life, not a variation on some related career choice, like sportswriting or playwriting. The novel is different. [...] We die indoors, and alone, and I don’t mean to sound overdramatic but you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, all of this happened over time, until eventually discipline no longer seemed something outside me that urged the reluctant body into the room. At this point discipline is inseparable from what I do. It’s not even definable as discipline. It has no name. I never think about it. But there’s no trick of meditation or self-mastery that brought it about. I got older, that’s all. I was not a born novelist (if anyone is). I had to grow into novelhood.”
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David Foster Wallace did not foresee Twitter, but... →
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“As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and...”
– David Foster Wallace.
I was feeling exactly like this the entire afternoon.
(via teslerr)
Oh gosh. Am I ever on the same page.
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“Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find them sort of wickedly fun...”
– David Foster Wallace via Jotter Notes, link thanks to Matthew Clayfield
(via somethingchanged)
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DFW on essays as a way of living
kellyfoster:
“Part of our emergency is that it’s so tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, pre-formed positions, rigid filters, the ‘moral clarity’ of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new areas of personal ignorance and delusion. In sum, to really...
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“It has been often said that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. I...”
– -John Ziegler, via Dave Weigel in his broader critique of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (and his long-form fiction in general). Is it possible that Wallace didn’t have that much to say? (via conservativeradical)
I don’t feel particularly compelled to argue against this point. Everyone...
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“If I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because...”
– David Foster Wallace (via reintegrating)
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“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over...”
– David Foster Wallace (via nevercapitalize)
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“Think for a second – what if all the infinitely dense and shifting worlds of...”
– David Foster Wallace, in “Good Old Neon”.
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“Your family likes you. You are bright and quiet, respectful to elders- though...”
– Forever Overhead, by David Foster Wallace (via magnakarma)
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What If You Pull a Literary Hoax and Nobody... →
A really interesting article that describes a fake essay (reviewing David Foster Wallace) that was published in a reputable literary studies journal - that nobody noticed, except Mark Sample of George Mason University. I wonder what DFW would have thought of this?
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The Wall Street Journal: I have an advance copy of "Infinite Jest" that your publishing house sent me in 1996. It's signed—apparently—by you and there's a little smiley face under your name. I've always wondered—did you actually draw that smiley face?
Mr. [David Foster] Wallace: One prong of the Buzz plan [for "Infinite Jest"] involved sending out a great many signed first editions—or maybe reader copies—to people who might generate Buzz. What they did was mail me a huge box of trade-paperback-size sheets of paper, which I was to sign; they would then somehow stitch them in to these "special" books. I basically spent an entire weekend signing these pages. You've probably had the weird epileptoid experience of saying a word over and over until it ceases to denote and becomes very strange and arbitrary and odd-feeling—imagine that happening with your own name. That's what happened. Plus it was boring. So boring, that I started doing all kinds of weird little graphic things to try to stay alert and engaged. What you call the "smiley face" is a vestige of an amateur cartoon character I used to amuse myself with in grade school. It's physically fun to draw—very sharp and swooping, and the eyebrows are just crackling with affect. I've seen a few of these "special books" at signings before, and it always makes me smile to see that face.
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“American economic and cultural systems that work very well, um, in terms of, in...”
– The Howling Fantods! David Foster Wallace News, Info and Links. - ZDF Interview Translation and Transcription
From the German ZDF interview.
(via shorterexcerpts)
July 2009
29 posts
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“I wanted the book to sound intimate and conversational, as if somebody was...”
– David Foster Wallace, on Infinite Jest.
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“You know, in a weird way, there’s really only one basic problem in all...”
– David Foster Wallace, on Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity.
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BOSTON GLOBE: Your book convinced me that irrational numbers [such as ?] can't possibly exist. I don't know what I was thinking, accepting them as real.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: You mean, mathematically real or physically real?
BG: Physically real.
DFW: But are numbers physically real?
BG: I had thought they were, in some way.
DFW: So you're a bit of a Platonist then.
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Some of the insects flying had multiple pairs of...
quietbees:
and were biolouminescent. They seemed very intent, flying past the outcropping and darting jaggedly off on a course, on their way to something urgent. The sound of them, the insects, made Marathe think of playing cards in the bicycle spokes of the bicycle of a boy with legs. Both men were silent. This is the time of false dawns. Venus moved east away from them. The softest light...
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“What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and interconnected for words to do...”
– David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon”, Oblivion (via talix18)
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David Foster Wallace on Life and Work →
darrenrobinson:
My friend, Julia, showed me this a while back. I just re-read it and felt like sharing. I may have posted this once before, but it’s worth reading again. It’s pretty spot on if you ask me. And even when one is aware of what he is talking about - choosing how to feel in any given situation and staying positive - it is very hard to do all the time. For me at least.
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David Foster Wallace, on success
Bookselling This Week: What has been the most satisfying part about all your success?
David Foster Wallace: What do you mean by success?
BTW: Being accepted by a major publisher, all the acclaim.
DFW: Well there's no better feeling than working hard at something and having it come out good, even before you put the stamp on it. But with all the public stuff... it's sort of how you like people to be nice to your child. There's so much bullshit to trying to get accepted -- reading a mean letter from someone you don't even know, getting rejected. I think you need to invest way more into how it feels when you are in a room writing by yourself.
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“David Foster Wallace is an excellent reporter. He’s a bit more uneven as a...”
– The Importance of Reporting « A Supposedly Fun Blog (via peterwknox)
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“You think it’s a coincidence that it’s in college that most Americans do their...”
– David Foster Wallace, Laughing with Kafka, Harper’s Magazine, July 1998 (via realreason)
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“It seems to me that the intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and...”
– David Foster Wallace, 2009.
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DFW Wisdom.
tremendousamountsofwheat:
“Movies are an authoritarian medium. They vulnerabilize you and then dominate you. Part of the magic of going to a movie is surrendering to it, letting it dominate you. The sitting in the dark, the looking up, the tranced distance from the screen, the being able to see the people on the screen without being seen by the people on the screen, the people on the screen...
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“But Wallace is a different sort of madman, one in full control of his tools, one...”
– http://www.laweekly.com/content/printVersion/50552 (via arwensabendstern)
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