"Also it contains a really great FUN FACT about a detail in "The Depressed Person" and the well-known author whose life it was borrowed from."
spoil this for me, please. (no idea when i'd be able to get around to reading the essay.)
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Sunday, 3 January 2010 22:00 (fourteen years ago) link
im like 500 emails behind on wallace-l so thx 4 the above~
ha, right now I have 9463 unread messages in my wallace-l folder (stopped keeping up in '05 tbh)
― Dinosauciers (los blue jeans), Sunday, 3 January 2010 23:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Used my amazing powers of library catalog-using to get a copy of the Zadie Smith book in question on the way home New Year's Eve, but haven't really spent much quality time with it yet. The Barthes/Nabokov essay looks pretty good.
― nico anemic cinema icon (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 4 January 2010 01:53 (fourteen years ago) link
i stopped following wallace-l around the same time (just got new e-mail account and never bothered to re-subscribe) -- it was always kind of overwhelming to keep up with, and i'm kinda glad i wasn't there for his passing, i don't know if i would've been able to handle how that community reacted, however they reacted.
― some dude, Monday, 4 January 2010 03:58 (fourteen years ago) link
I get wallace-l in digest form. I don't read it all closely and I almost never post, but I try to keep up. It's how I learned of Wallace's death. The reaction was altogether a bit more muted than you might've expected, but initially people were very upset indeed.
Yes, please spoil. Elizabeth Wurtzel? What was the detail?
― ctrl-s, Monday, 4 January 2010 05:24 (fourteen years ago) link
I don't know if this is taken from elsewhere, but I found this nice touching little bit from George Saunders on the Guardian's website:
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) by George SaundersA few years back I was flying out to California, reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. Suddenly, up there over the midwest, I felt agitated and flinchy, on the brink of tears. If the reader was a guy standing outdoors, Dave's prose had the effect of stripping his clothes away and leaving him naked, with super-sensitised skin, newly susceptible to the weather, whatever that weather might be. If it was a sunny day, he was going to feel the sun more. If it was a blizzard, it was going to really sting. Something about the prose was inducing a special variety of openness, that I might call terrified tenderness: a sudden new awareness of what a fix we're in on this earth, stuck in these bodies, with these minds.This alteration seemed more spiritual than aesthetic. I wasn't just "reading a great story" – what was happening was more primal and important: my mind was being altered in the direction of compassion, by a shock methodology that was, in its subject matter, actually very dark. I was undergoing a kind of ritual stripping away of the habitual. The person who had induced this complicated feeling was one of the sweetest, most generous people I've ever known.I first met Dave at the home of a mutual friend in Syracuse. I'd just read Girl with Curious Hair and was terrified that this breakfast might veer off into, say, a discussion of Foucault or something, and I'd be humiliated in front of my wife and kids. But no: I seem to remember he was wearing a Mighty Mouse T-shirt. Like Chekhov in those famous anecdotes, who put his nervous provincial visitors at ease by asking them about pie-baking and the local school system, he defused the tension by turning the conversation to us. Our kids' interests, what life was like in Syracuse, our experience of family life. He was about as open and curious and accepting a person as I'd ever met, and I left feeling I'd made a great new friend. And I had. We were together only occasionally, corresponded occasionally but every meeting felt super-charged, almost – if this isn't too corny – sacramental.I don't know much about Dave's spiritual life but I see him as a great American Buddhist writer, in the lineage of Whitman and Ginsberg. He was a wake-up artist. That was his work, as I see it, both on the page and off it: he went around waking people up. He was, if this is even a word, a celebrationist, who gave us new respect for the world through his reverence for it, a reverence that manifested as attention, an attention that produced that electrifying, all-chips-in, aware-in-all-directions prose of his.
A few years back I was flying out to California, reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. Suddenly, up there over the midwest, I felt agitated and flinchy, on the brink of tears. If the reader was a guy standing outdoors, Dave's prose had the effect of stripping his clothes away and leaving him naked, with super-sensitised skin, newly susceptible to the weather, whatever that weather might be. If it was a sunny day, he was going to feel the sun more. If it was a blizzard, it was going to really sting. Something about the prose was inducing a special variety of openness, that I might call terrified tenderness: a sudden new awareness of what a fix we're in on this earth, stuck in these bodies, with these minds.
This alteration seemed more spiritual than aesthetic. I wasn't just "reading a great story" – what was happening was more primal and important: my mind was being altered in the direction of compassion, by a shock methodology that was, in its subject matter, actually very dark. I was undergoing a kind of ritual stripping away of the habitual. The person who had induced this complicated feeling was one of the sweetest, most generous people I've ever known.
I first met Dave at the home of a mutual friend in Syracuse. I'd just read Girl with Curious Hair and was terrified that this breakfast might veer off into, say, a discussion of Foucault or something, and I'd be humiliated in front of my wife and kids. But no: I seem to remember he was wearing a Mighty Mouse T-shirt. Like Chekhov in those famous anecdotes, who put his nervous provincial visitors at ease by asking them about pie-baking and the local school system, he defused the tension by turning the conversation to us. Our kids' interests, what life was like in Syracuse, our experience of family life. He was about as open and curious and accepting a person as I'd ever met, and I left feeling I'd made a great new friend. And I had. We were together only occasionally, corresponded occasionally but every meeting felt super-charged, almost – if this isn't too corny – sacramental.
I don't know much about Dave's spiritual life but I see him as a great American Buddhist writer, in the lineage of Whitman and Ginsberg. He was a wake-up artist. That was his work, as I see it, both on the page and off it: he went around waking people up. He was, if this is even a word, a celebrationist, who gave us new respect for the world through his reverence for it, a reverence that manifested as attention, an attention that produced that electrifying, all-chips-in, aware-in-all-directions prose of his.
― FC Tom Tomsk Club (Merdeyeux), Monday, 4 January 2010 15:26 (fourteen years ago) link
that is great
― dome plow (gbx), Monday, 4 January 2010 15:44 (fourteen years ago) link
I see him as a great American Buddhist writer
i've always thought this myself!
also looking forward to this:
http://www.fivedials.com/fivedials
As we like to overload our friends with gifts for New Year’s, you will also be receiving an email in the next few days to let you know where you can download our special issue on David Foster Wallace, featuring writing by Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and others. Don’t worry, you won’t have to sign in, or give us your mobile number, or type in a code word. If you know any David Foster Wallace fans who would like to receive a link to the issue please tell them to subscribe to the magazine. It’s free.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Monday, 4 January 2010 19:45 (fourteen years ago) link
yea i guess the bit in the depressed person story about the character's parents arguing abt which would pay for the depressed person as a child's orthodontics was lifted from Wurtzel's Prozac Nation
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 9 January 2010 13:35 (fourteen years ago) link
Ah. I'd vaguely heard that "The Depressed Person" referred to her in some way. I've never read anything of hers.
Some more apparently-Pale-King-excerpted stuff that has been around for a while but is slightly less well known: "The Compliance Branch" (pdf); three pieces from a reading in 2000 (unpublished transcript; pdf).
― ctrl-s, Saturday, 9 January 2010 20:38 (fourteen years ago) link
Also: A Failed Entertainment: Selections from the Filmography of James O. Incandenza. Wonder if anyone made Blood Sister: One Tough Nun.
― ctrl-s, Saturday, 9 January 2010 20:40 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah it's weird, im pretty sure ive read prozac nation but i dont remember that bit at all. tbf i was prob skimming it
it's fun to think abt how the overacheiver kid & bendy boy pieces fit into the Pale King
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 9 January 2010 20:44 (fourteen years ago) link
I really like Saunders' line about him being a "wake-up artist" - I had a few experiences over break with art and literature and film (though not DFW's in this case) that reminded me that art can actually do that, and I remember DFW having that kind of impact on me in college.
― pithfork (Hurting 2), Saturday, 9 January 2010 21:35 (fourteen years ago) link
the Five Dials thing is out today, and it's worth looking at
― that sex version of "blue thunder." (Mr. Que), Friday, 22 January 2010 20:50 (fourteen years ago) link
So looking forward to this:
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/news/dfw-biography/david-lipskys-dfw-bio.html
― kshighway (ksh), Wednesday, 17 February 2010 22:51 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/dfw/
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:14 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/dfw/books/
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:15 (fourteen years ago) link
lol at fangs drawn on on cormac mccarthy
puttermesser papers is one of my favorites <3
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:18 (fourteen years ago) link
~sigh~
― nitzer ebbebe (gbx), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:18 (fourteen years ago) link
it's good i'll never be famous because some of my books have really embarrassing things written in them
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:19 (fourteen years ago) link
"brobdingnagian penises"
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:20 (fourteen years ago) link
the man who loved children is a really great book
― Lamp, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:21 (fourteen years ago) link
It is! I didn't know DFW had read it.
Thanks, Que. I've fallen behind on wallace-l and this is the first I've heard of the archive acquisition.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:24 (fourteen years ago) link
yah, i read it first on HTML Giant, but it looks like wallace-l people are aware of it
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:25 (fourteen years ago) link
btw: you can see, and potentially buy, Karen Green's art here:http://www.beautifulcrap.com/
I just bought a drawing off her, which felt a bit weird, but I would've liked her work a lot had she had no connection to Wallace.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:32 (fourteen years ago) link
I phrased that poorly. You see what I meant, I hope.
waiting for the new edition of the man who loved children to come next month - it's insane that it's been oop for years.
― jed_, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:34 (fourteen years ago) link
is it really oop? i bought an everyman's library ed of it mb like 5 years ago
s did u buy one of the ink drawings? i know someone who has one (braggin?) & its really beautiful.
― Lamp, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:38 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes, an ink drawing. It was very hard to choose one; I wanted four or five of her pieces.
I also bought her book.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 02:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Wow. The Victorian Mourning/Morning Jewelry photos kind of got me right here.
― she is writing about love (Jenny), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 13:50 (fourteen years ago) link
lol @ the drawing on cormac's author photo in suttree
― rinse the lemonade (Jordan), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:40 (fourteen years ago) link
waiting for the new edition of the man who loved children to come next month - it's insane that it's been oop for years.Wut? I bought this one from amazon two years ago: http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Loved-Children-Novel/dp/0312280440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268176320&sr=8-1
Heavily annotated copies of that + Puttermesser Papers = <3
― Øystein, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 23:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Seriously scheming on a trip to Austin to check out the archive.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Wednesday, 10 March 2010 15:53 (fourteen years ago) link
In Fall 2010 when it all becomes publicly available, that is.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Wednesday, 10 March 2010 15:54 (fourteen years ago) link
dfw's listening habits, via an interview with his sister:
"he really loved pearl jam." O_o
but also:
"there was a cover of 'our lips are sealed' by fun boy three which he played over and over and OVER again one summer. and he really loved the band madness." :D
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Thursday, 11 March 2010 00:58 (fourteen years ago) link
pearl jam rocks
― max, Thursday, 11 March 2010 00:59 (fourteen years ago) link
the 0_o was less a comment on pearl jam's quality than in trying to imagine dfw rocking out to "daughter" given various (negative) comments in his interview about rock music.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Thursday, 11 March 2010 01:01 (fourteen years ago) link
his interview about rock music
Which one? Where?
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Thursday, 11 March 2010 01:24 (fourteen years ago) link
counterpoint: totally looks like a pearl jam fan
― rinse the lemonade (Jordan), Thursday, 11 March 2010 01:28 (fourteen years ago) link
actually upon re-reading "negative" is probably a little strong (and he does caveat his opinion):
"DFW: About the only way music informs my work is in terms of rhythm; sometimes I associate certain narrators' and characters' voices with certain pieces of music. Rock music itself bores me, usually. The phenomenon of rock interests me, though, because its birth was part of the rise of popular media, which completely changed the ways the U.S. was unified and split."
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Thursday, 11 March 2010 01:48 (fourteen years ago) link
from another posthumous tribute i learned he was big into section 25 and solo eno in college, which seems about right, really.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Thursday, 11 March 2010 01:49 (fourteen years ago) link
hmmm. i wanna say i read something somewhere where he said he was into the flaming lips
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 11 March 2010 02:01 (fourteen years ago) link
yah i guess it was in the sonora review
http://www.magicmonads.com/2009/09/sonora-reviews-david-foster-wallace.html
― Mr. Que, Thursday, 11 March 2010 02:02 (fourteen years ago) link
What's the UT connection?
― etaeoe, Thursday, 11 March 2010 02:43 (fourteen years ago) link
dont believe there is one, i think they have similar other writers archived there tho, at least delillo
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 11 March 2010 02:45 (fourteen years ago) link
and Stormin' Norman Mailer
― FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT! (milo z), Thursday, 11 March 2010 02:51 (fourteen years ago) link
He also wrote in a review about Lost Highway how "You Can Be My Head" would have been an appropriate theme song.
― she is writing about love (Jenny), Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:52 (fourteen years ago) link
oh god this makes me sadder than anything else
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28153758/SuttreeDFWpaper
DFW's comments are KILLING me. Page 19 (of this 24-page paper that DFW eventually graded A+ [actually A+++, but downgraded for "syntax and grandiloquence"]: the student uses the word "concern" twice in a sentence; DFW's marginal note: "Die!"
He was so good.
― a passing basscadet (ctrl-s), Thursday, 11 March 2010 18:37 (fourteen years ago) link
omg the Style Fairy
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Thursday, 11 March 2010 19:15 (fourteen years ago) link