david foster wallace

  • A WSJ interview with David Foster Wallace on the occasion of the publication of McCain's Promise, a repackaged version of an excellent article he wrote in 2000 about following McCain's campaign for two weeks. He gets into the current election a little as well:
    The truth—as I see it—is that the previous seven years and four months of the Bush Administration have been such an unmitigated horror show of rapacity, hubris, incompetence, mendacity, corruption, cynicism and contempt for the electorate that it's very difficult to imagine how a self-identified Republican could try to position himself as a populist.
    (thx, bill s.) (8) #
    5/31/2008
  • An interview with John Krasinski of NBC's The Office on the release of Leatherheads. But more interestingly, the interview touches upon his first directorial effort: making David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men:
    [A]ll of a sudden I got “The Office,” and right after we shot the pilot, I took pretty much all the money that I had made on that and bought the rights for a film. His agent said no at first, so I flew out to L.A. and sat with her, and said: “I know that I’m young, and I haven’t really done anything, but your client, he wrote an incredible book. I just wanted more people to know about David Foster Wallace.”
    (thx, bill) (3) #
    4/4/2008
  • A new Neal Stephenson interview has been published, conducted in 2006 but still the most recent one out there. Unfortunately, it's part of Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization, an academic book going for $80 on Amazon. Dr. Jonathan Lewis, the author and an English professor at UNCP, also studies the works of David Foster Wallace:
    “I am looking at Wallace and Stephenson and how their storytelling techniques have been influenced by the Web,” Dr. Lewis said. “It is a style with multi-threaded stories that may be moving at different speeds in a way that is similar to the way people use the Web.”
    Sounds interesting, but I always thought Infinite Jest's multi-threaded narrative was more influenced by Tom Clancy (and fractals) than the Web.

    Update: I was able to read the interview thanks to a library and a friend. Nothing revelatory, but we're currently in a Stephenson void so it was good to read something. The best line, in reference to why his old pen name books have been republished with his real name:
    [The] perception of secrecy or furtiveness tends to make people behave irrationally.
    (4) #
    12/20/2007
  • Just published (and purchased by me): Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest by Greg Carlisle. From the book description:
    Elegant Complexity is the first critical work to provide detailed and thorough commentary on each of the 192 sections of David Foster Wallace's masterful Infinite Jest... Carlisle explains the novel's complex plot threads (and discrepancies) with expert insight and clear commentary. The book is 99% spoiler-free for first-time readers of Infinite Jest.
    I've seen some sections of this, and I get the feeling that this will become the authoritative critical book on Infinite Jest. Disclosure: I am online acquaintances with both the author and editor of this book. (15) #
    12/4/2007
  • David Foster Wallace's introduction to The Best American Essays 2007, as its editor. In typical Wallacean fashion, he spends most of the time unpacking the meaning of the collection's title, and expounding on his selection methodology as "the Decider."
    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 try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.
    (thx, kyosti) (0) #
    8/22/2007
  • Five video clips of David Foster Wallace talking about various things at Le Conversazioni 2006, an annual gathering of elite writers held in Italy. "Various things" include: the Italian language, kissing (with reaction shots from his attractive wife), soccer, and how he wants to be labeled as a writer. (thx, tim) (6) #
    5/30/2007

"Good People"

David Foster Wallace has a new short piece of fiction at the New Yorker titled "Good People" about a religious, unmarried young couple dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. This story has ignited some debate on the wallace-l mailing list:

  • Did DFW write this with the expectation that the subject matter (sincere but doubtful religious feelings) would challenge typical New Yorker readers?
  • Does the story represent a Classical Prisoner's Dilemma?
  • Would it be out of place in a traditional religious magazine?
  • Is it a commentary on "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor?
  • Are the two main characters "good people?" Or is just one of them "good people," as in, "She's good people" in the common vernacular?

Maybe this sounds like an English assignment to you, but I'm always interested in what Wallace is trying to do with his writing (see his Dostoevsky essay in Consider the Lobster), and hey, it's only for extra credit.

Wed, 01/31/2007 - 1:57pm
  • New David Foster Wallace interview, translated from German.
    [T]he first part of [Oblivion], the roughly eighty pages of Mister Squishy, took me about four months. I write a lot by hand, draft by draft, and only later do I start to type it all. And after the like tenth draft I'm only thinking about the single lines and how they sound.
    No wonder he hasn't followed up Infinite Jest with a third novel. (thx, nm) (1) #
    1/26/2007
  • I have been hearing some details through various sources about an upcoming film adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Sam Jones, known for his documentary on the band Wilco, is attached to direct a script written by Keith Bunin. Jon Brion has evidently been tapped to do the score. I have my doubts that a feature-length film could capture what's great about the book, but we shall see. --SBC (10) #
    11/27/2006
  • Dave Eggers's foreword for the tenth anniversary edition of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. His words ring true, but I wonder if the foreword should have targeted an older audience rather than already converted twentysomethings. (4) #
    11/15/2006

Infinite Jest band names

A few months ago, in response to a mailing list request, I came up with a list of band names inspired by David Foster Wallace, especially his novel Infinite Jest. I found the book to be rather resourceful in this regard. I'm not sure if the requester ever ended up picking a name, but I thought that those of you familiar with DFW might enjoy these:

  • Pemulis
  • Sacpop
  • Incandenza
  • System of the Broom
  • Snoot
  • The Feral Infants
  • Andbutso
  • Wheelchair Assassins
  • Host
  • The Great Concavity
  • Year of Glad
  • Footnote 24
  • Subjects of O
  • Foster Wallace
  • Helen and the Steeplies
  • I Am in Here
  • Found Drama
  • For All the Apparatus of the Game
  • Mario's Tripod

Feel free to use one if you like. Any more suggestions?

Fri, 05/12/2006 - 12:12pm
  • For Infinite Jest fans: Parts one and two of George Carr's interesting take on the scene late in the book where the wraith interfaces with the hospitalized Don Gately. There are some crucial insights here, but it doesn't get into the wraith's possible other doings in other parts of the novel. (10) #
    5/2/2006

solution: that that that that that

David Foster Wallace

Here are David Foster Wallace's solutions to the "that that that that that" puzzle. If you want to play along, you might want to click the preceding link and read the puzzle before viewing the solutions below.

Now:

Five
"He said that that that that that writer used should really have been a which."

Six (using what DFW calls the "medial-question-mark-in-sentence trick")
"He said that? that that that that that writer used should have been a which?"

But I prefer Nacho's solution:

Eight
"Do you know that that “that” that that “that” that that Nacho bolded precedes is italicized?"

If you're having trouble parsing that, check out his explanation.

Sun, 10/23/2005 - 9:46am

that that that that that

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace says in The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus:

It so happens that you can occupy a bright child for most of a very quiet morning by challenging her to use that five times in a row in a single coherent sentence...

(Bold emphasis mine.) I consider a "bright child" in DFW's world to be an adult with above-average intelligence in my world, so why don't you all give it a shot? You may want to think of your answer before looking at any comments.

I'll update with the answer in a day or two.

Update: Here's the solution.

Thu, 10/20/2005 - 7:05pm
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