David Foster Wallace

[ursus arctos]

The best American prose stylist of his generation has died at the age of 46, an apparent suicide.

I cannot think of a more tragic literary loss during my lifetime. All of us who treasure the English language are poorer for his passing.

RIP, DFW.

The NYT obit.

[kugelrund]

David Foster Wallace

Fuck. I thought this was going to be about a new book. Shocking, sad news.

I've not read his fiction, but his nonfiction collections are on my favourites shelf.

Here, for those who haven't read it, is Roger Federer as Religious Experience.

[Gyuri]

David Foster Wallace

I couldn't agree more, UA. It's terrifically sad.

[ursus arctos]

David Foster Wallace

Sorry to have missed your thread, Gyuri.

I can only plead being overcome with emotion in mitigation.

The Federer piece would be my nomination for the best sports essay of the decade.

[Gyuri]

David Foster Wallace

No need to apologize for that (if anyone should be apologizing, it's me for the bad pun in the subject line).

The Federer piece was fantastic, though I could have happily read a DFW essay about almost anything.

[mafu]

David Foster Wallace

very sad news. I shall read something or other by him later on tonight.

did anyone here ever dare tackle his book on infinity?

[Incandenza]

David Foster Wallace

I read it. It's fantastic.

I'm still stunned by this. I was lucky enough to meet him at a booksigning and talked to him a bit. Really nice guy.

[Gyuri]

David Foster Wallace

Inca,

I think I may have asked you this before, but is there any chance your name here is based on Infinite Jest?

[Incandenza]

David Foster Wallace

Gyuri,

No, you never asked me before, but yes, it is a nod to IJ. I was originally Incadenza--a typo that I liked more, but I think it's time to go to Incandenza in honor of DFW.

[Gyuri]

David Foster Wallace

That's a good idea. My cornerback in GLB will be wearing black this season to honor his namesake.

[Incandenza]

David Foster Wallace

The excellent Michael Silverblatt is going to be doing a special program on Wallace and his influence today on KCRW. Link to the show--there will be a podcast up tomorrow, I imagine.

Here are archived interviews Silverblatt did with Wallace.

[mafu]

David Foster Wallace

Harpers magazine have put up pdfs to some of the things he wrote for them - including his piece on holiday cruises published in/as A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (on this page as 'Shipping Out')

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

worth a read if you dont have the book, though i suspect i might be preaching to the converted on this thread anyway

[Incandenza]

David Foster Wallace

If you've read the Federer piece, but not his autobiographical one about tennis and trigonometry, that's well worth a read, as is the usage wars one there.

[Reed John]

David Foster Wallace

I've never read anything by him other than an essay or two I forget and maybe something in the New Yorker or Atlantic, but I've always wanted to. It's on my very long reading to-do list that I never get to because I find reading very difficult these days and have for some time.

Very sad and yet, among writers, all too common.

[TMA]

David Foster Wallace

I must admit, I'd never heard of David Foster Wallace, let alone read any of his work.

But that Federer article, with all its footnotes, was a fantastic read. I'm going to print off a few of those PDFs and take them on my commute, tomorrow.

[Sam]

David Foster Wallace

I'd heard of him thanks to a workmate who's read (or tried to read) Infinite Jest a number of times, but that Federer article is the first thing of his I've read myself (I'm partway through it at the moment). This paragraph:

There are three kinds of valid explanation for Federer’s ascendancy. One kind involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.

Is enough to convince me I need to check out more of his stuff, though.

[ursus arctos]

David Foster Wallace

In my view, it's not a good idea to start with Infinite Jest.

He was (it still hurts a lot to use the past tense) a writer with which one has to have a certain affinity and whose style takes some getting used to, and one can determine if that if those conditions are satisfied more easily with the essays than with trying to plunge into the novel.

[Incandenza]

David Foster Wallace

Yeah. A Supposedly Fun Thing or Consider the Lobster are probably the best places to start. Consider the Lobster has the piece on McCain that's fantastic.

It's funny--I started with Infinite Jest, fell in love, and then read his first two books before A Supposedly Fun Thing came out, and I was kind of skeptical about essays. Since then, I've found his essays much better than his fiction after Infinite Jest. I didn't finish his last book of short stories, Oblivion.

Apparently every bookstore in LA is sold out of his books, and they're all near the top of the Amazon lists now. I only took one book with me when I went to a book signing--Brief Interviews With Hideous Men--and a signed first edition hardcover (which I have) is going for over $300 on Abebooks. Nothing like death to make people that never cared about an author to suddenly rush out and buy their books.

[delicatemoth]

David Foster Wallace

Nothing like death to make people that never cared about an author to suddenly rush out and buy their books.

Or maybe it reminds people, "Oh yeah, I always meant to give him a go", as it has me.

[wingco]

David Foster Wallace

This article gives some sense of why he did the deed. Clinical depression, basically.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/09/26/david_foster_wallace/

[ursus arctos]

David Foster Wallace

It makes us realise how lucky we are to have what he left us.

It's just so fucking sad.

[Bruno]

David Foster Wallace

Well, someone didn't seem to care for him.

[Wyatt Earp]

David Foster Wallace

Are any American right-wingers not utter twats? From the word "elite" at the top of the piece you know exactly what sort of beast it's going to be.

I loved this parenthetical aside:

... (after all, everyone in the elite literary world knows that conservatives are not smart enough to be worthy of their ranks and would certainly never attain the lofty level of "genius").

You don't think the "elite"'s failure to recognise you as a "genius" has anything to do with the fact that you use clunking phrases like "worthy of their ranks" and "attain the lofty level", you fucking subliterate blowhard tosser?

Sheee-it. It does annoy me. And I'd never heard of David Foster Wallace till just now.

[Brandenburger Toro]

David Foster Wallace

... (after all, everyone in the elite literary world knows that conservatives are not smart enough to be worthy of their ranks and would certainly never attain the lofty level of "genius").

Discuss with reference to Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats.

[Lucia Lanigan]

David Foster Wallace

I wonder, would the likes of your men there ever admit admiration for an "elite" which would have them as a member? They seem to reserve the term for people who dislike or plain don't acknowledge them.

I love his scare quotes around new fangled words such as "Google" and "who".