essays

Harper's Magazine has made available PDFs of every David Foster Wallace piece they've published, including the essay often cited as his best nonfiction work, Shipping Out (AKA, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). (thx, bill s.) (7) #
9/15/2008

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

Tom Wolfe on the latest Masters of the Universe phase: the hedge fund manager. (0) #
4/18/2007

Neal Stephenson on 300, classical science fiction, politics, the rise of geek culture, and whatever else he wants to write about.
The few conservatives still able to hold up one end of a Socratic dialogue are those in the ostracized libertarian wing — interestingly enough, a group with a disproportionately high representation among fans of speculative fiction.
(5) #
3/20/2007

Consider the Lobster, a new book of essays by David Foster Wallace, is coming out December 13. This isn't breaking news, but I thought some of you might want to know about it, especially those of you who prefer DFW's nonfiction to his fiction. (0) #
10/10/2005

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