david foster wallace - is he a cunt?

An interesting guy, basically. Smart as hell.

The more I think about DFW, the less I like him. It seems to me that most of his appeal is superficial, and has maybe too much to do with his audience. i do love his linguistic energy, inventiveness, but the thing that does bug me a lot is his post-grad-MTV-Keanu Reeves(sp?) put on where he interjects a lot of pat, blank, empty teen talk and I can't help but think that he's one of those very irritating post adolescent male cunts who, still in their 30s, seem to be coming to terms with the idea that they were, in their early teens, thought highly precocious, and that, their being aware of this label became for them a kind of badge, which they always draw attention to, ie., cling to, by trying to sound extremely brainy one moment and then offering some kind of anaesthetised teen response which is a kind of ingratiating "apology", for being so smart.

So, in conclusion, false modesty does pretty much qualify you for a cunt. But then again, Martin Amis seems like the biggest cunt around, as far as authors go, and no-one could accuse him of false modesty.

As you might be able to guess I like the guy's work. If only because one of my friends, after borrowing IJ from me, said it read like it was written by an idealised version of me.

New collection of essays coming out sometime relatively soon, too.

Oh, and not a cunt.

There are a couple fan-friendly pictures - the beefy pic with the short hair, where he kind of looks like he's lost (from Broom or Girl, I think) and the one w/ the dogs.

I'm actually kind of interested in the contractual ins/outs of cover art and the dust-jacket photos. Anyone here published and have to go through w/ all of this?

there's a fiction anthology edited by zadie smith a couple years ago ('the burned children of america') (oyy) which has an introduction all about finding some manic-with-their-foster-wallace-fannishness-foster-wallace-fans in spain or something and one of them produces something from a pocket and OMG ITS THE BANDANNA

in my case cover was designed in house by the publisher w/ my input and approval and owned by them. author photos were provided (and paid for) by me. this is fairly typical in the US. at the urging of my agent, I was pretty demanding about the cover: rejecting two versions, settling on a third, then getting a fourth that was absolutely perfect. much to my chagrin, six months after publication I was informed the two biggest bookstore chains had basically passed on the book because they didn't like the cover! so I ceded control on the paperback cover and ended up liking that one too.

Like this ...

http://www.ncf.ca/~ek867/david_foster_wallace.jpg

http://www.twbookmark.com/images/46/25786.jpg

"I am a part-time yoga instructor, but I'm going to massage school."

http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/Pictures/coleman_profile.jpg

I read broom of the system for the first time last week and loved it. I have no idea why I wrote this.

Please let me know when they make a miniature version I can keep on my dresser.

All of this, when I saw him like 7 years ago, seemed really contrived, an image he was marketing, and something that would help him land the ladies.

so, uh: is there a meaningful and/or exploitable connection between the two, or am i reading too much into this?

(this is possibly destined to be one of those thread revivals that sits there until the next revival - like the last one. but i can't elaborate, i gotta go cook.)

I don't love his fiction and have never been able to finish Infinite Jest, but I do adore the first story in Girl With Curious Hair, I think it's called "Little Expressionless Animals." I don't think any other fiction of his I've read touches it, though. this may be just a tin ear that I have toward his type of thing; he definitely has something, whereas Eggers just has a gimmick.

I'm not sure I entirely understand the Orwell question?

I don’t think Hungerford is suggesting, here, that literature courses should never confront misogyny — or other iterations of hatred — but that seeing as teachers hold the readerly consent of their students in hand, they should choose their texts and authors carefully. To me, Hungerford’s affective-interpretive “worth” system reads as fair: if a reader must pay the cost of imbibing hatred, the author must offer the payback of equivalently potent critical “insight.” Any less is hatred for hatred’s sake. And hatred is worthless

This is such a transactional take on reader response theory. I don't think much good can come from analyzing literary texts as a balance sheet with "value" in one ledger and "cost" in the other. Isn't art supposed to be a repository for kinds of knowledge -- emotional, experiential -- that can't easily be translated into concepts (much less quantified)?

What do u think of that article j.?

making literature now...with McSweeney’s and Everything Is Illuminated and DFW? yuck. thanks, trump!

she must have been sitting on that book for a good ten years waiting for the right time to strike.

i re-read his tracy austin piece -- i think hes otm abt her just lacking introspection/depth; ive come to really like her as a commentator, shes astute but every bit of analysis is p surface level idk not knocking her

j. never explained what he thought about the tendentious la review of books piece he linked to.

Recently read Adrienne Miller's In the Land of Men and I am voting cunt

You push a woman out of a moving car, you’re an undeniable cunt

was she wheel shaped though?