david foster wallace: classic or dud

Edna Wellthorpe was Stevie Tr0uss3, I believe

Correct.

Well, thank god it wasn't me.

some very good and some not so good (but all heartfelt) personal tributes to DFW on the front page of mcwseeneys:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

Can't believe this!

The last thing I read by him was his intro to "The Best American Essays 2007" and it was just cracking good, for an editor intro.

and I feel incredibly sorry for the book designer who had to lay it out:

From what I'm told we tried and tried to get different color options to price out, but there was no practically satisfactory way. The whole book didn't need to be (and couldn't be) printed in color, only that section -- the color part could have been printed separately and inserted into the back of the book, but then it wouldn't be alongside the text. Etc. I guess there was a flurry of pros and cons and when it died down, what was left was the boxes-and-arrows method.

What if it had been in the middle of the book, like you see sometimes with a set of photo plates? Too expensive?

i don't suppose the michael joyce essay is online somewhere? i haven't found it yet and i want to send it to a friend.

Every time I translated one of his works, I sent him questions. He was reluctant to answer, he struggled with the answers, he kept saying that that particular story was impossible to translate in a decent and faithful way—this occasionally made me shed tears—and then he would write whole pages to explain a single word or phrase, and end up declaring his complete trust in my skills as a translator

i'd love to read some of those notes

Such terrible, sad sad news. I'm really shocked and upset to hear this. So very unexpected and a dreadful shame that he's died so young and in such a horrible way.

the uncollected dfw: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/uncollected-dfw.html

John Ziegler, subject of of "Host," remembers: http://johnziegler.com/editorials_details.asp?editorial=165

If I ever meet him I swear to God I'll spit in his eye.

Fucking disgusting.

Without trying to sound flippant, did you expect him to raise three cheers?

Isn't that exactly what he's doing?

Poorly phrased, admittedly. Even so -- gotta say, his reaction doesn't surprise me at all.

Frankly I'm just shocked to see him speak quite that viciously of the recently deceased, his opinion of DFW notwithstanding. Then again, he notes with some glee on his front page that the editorial "is sure to be among the most controversial opinions on Wallace that you'll read" or somesuch similar garbage.

Not to mention, if you imagine the kindest possible treatment of Ziegler you'd get something very much like "Host" and he wants BEEF?

"He fooled the knobhead literary elites but he didn't fool ME" is obtuse and classless (which is to say: Ziegler). "He offed himself in a calculated move to ensure his literary reputation" is grounds for tar and feathers.

Frankly, if I don't get ripped by a right-wing talk radio personality days after my untimely death, I'm going to have to admit I didn't live up to my potential.

Ziegler's little spitty obit there has already gotten him more attention than he deserves, so let's be bigger and just stop discussing it.

i wonder if celebrity cruises inc. will issue a statement. or the illinois state fair.

Frankly, if I don't get ripped by a right-wing talk radio personality days after my untimely death, I'm going to have to admit I didn't live up to my potential.

lol. thank you for that.

"That last one’s of especial value, I think. As
exquisite verbal art, yes, but also as a model
for what free, informed adulthood might look
like in the context of Total Noise: not just
the intelligence to discern one’s own error or
stupidity, but the humility to address it, absorb
it, and move on and out there from,
bravely, toward the next revealed error. This is
probably the sincerest, most biased account of
‘Best’ your Decider can give: these pieces are
models—not templates, but models—of ways
I wish I could think and live in what seems to
me this world."

i would read all this david foster wallace, why because he look interstin

weird - I have just learned that my DFW was in my dad's AA group

you had your own dfw?

unreleased, uncollected essay from the 1996 US Open

http://www.tennis.com/features/general/features.aspx?id=145230

you had your own dfw?

I kept him in the garage next to my PKD replica

some interviews: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/david-foster-wallace

from the "supposedly fun thing" era interview: "i am in cold turkey from footnotes. i am not doing them anymore."

"people who think they're very bright are a--...buttholes."

The Wall Street Journal is running an adapted version of the Kenyon commencement speech under the title "David Foster Wallace on Life and Work":

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html

From the 1996 KCRW interview:

"When I was in my 20s - deep down underneath all the bullshit - what I really believed was that the point of all fiction was to show that the writer was really smart."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nascar_cancels_remainder_of_season

Apparently, his first fiction piece for a major magazine was for Playboy in 1988, republished here.

I'd like to think DFW would have enjoyed that Onion piece.

Here's another one that I don't remember seeing at the time. Pretty funny:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27769

the first joke that came to mind when i heard about this was basically that onion article, but about his suicide note (that was probably the first joke that came to everyones mind, huh)

I wonder if he left a footnote. And but so what do you think it said?

this is terribly sad, his death and learning how ill he had been beforehand. his writing was so full of personality that i'm not sure how much feeling the loss of the authorial persona is linked to feeling the loss of the person, but it is hard not to link them.

wow

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/graphics/092108_infinite_jest/

has anyone read the math book? i was thinking of getting it (i did math at university but that was over 5 yrs ago and i cant remember any of it)buttut that review that caek linked to up above made it sound pretty bad (i didnt get the general idea that the review was favourable at all)

it's certainly the weakest of his books that i've read (still haven't read signifying rappers). it's still his prose, though, so it's still good in that sense - but on the other hand if you don't understand the math it'd be heavy going, and if you do the fact that a lot of it is if not wrong then at least has the wrong emphasis is annoying.

ok thanks, i do like his prose so maybe i'll pick it up and see. can you recommend any other math books? that are relatively easy to read but arent totally rubbish?

It's been a long time since I've read any "popular" math books. I used to love Martin Gardner's books as a kid, but they're essays rather than a whole book. "A Mathematician's Apology" is great, I think, though again I haven't looked at it for a while. This might be helpful:

http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/reader-survey-what-makes-a-good-popular-math-book-good/

Best popular math book I read recently was Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, but you can never go wrong with Martin Gardner.

i know it's chickenshit 2 crap on a dude who just merc'd himself, but i cant really get mad @ ziegler for that piece. if u take it @ face value (i never read DFW's essay on him), he seems 2 b comin from a place of real vulnerability and frustration there, so i cant blame him 4 wantin 2 take a few potshots imo~~~

cheers caek + toby, i'll have a look at those

sad stuff

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

good interview on the math stuff: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200311/?read=interview_wallace

(i never read DFW's essay on him), he seems 2 b comin from a place of real vulnerability and frustration there

Actually, I think the phrase "seems 2 b comin from a place of real vulnerability and frustration" is a pretty good summary of what DFW wrote about him. Which is why his commentary wasn't unexpected: it pretty much confirms the portrait of him in the piece. The guy's own recap of his career paints him as someone who can't stay in the same place for more than two years without being acrimoniously fired; he's the kind of guy who will then rant about how every one of the people in each of those situations was a vicious snake or P.C. cop; he sounds like the type who actually feels vulnerable and persecuted and continually frustrated: the Angry White Male.