david foster wallace: classic or dud

I tend not to have massive patience with long novels.

Is IJ anything like that excerpt from the book that's going to be published posthumously?

no, not really

weird:

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/dgoobl/05tiwlarge.jpg

i fall asleep whenever i try to read the gay chapter about television

ha ha--people always talk about how that's the essay that really lays out the DFW aesthetic and it puts me to sleep too

oh no is that what the commencement speech book is going to look like? yikes.

Yeah, apparently it's shipping. Approx. one (1) sentence per page.

was wondering how they were going to stretch it over 144 pages

: (

i was hoping it was so many pages because he had some really really longer form version of it.

yeah i was hoping it was just big type and big margins

13 months later, Infinte Jest has been put down. By the end it truly feels like it stopped a thousand pages short itself.

it does. i was surprised and at a loss when it stopped.

I felt that way the first time.

The second time, I cried.

Usually it goes the other way around, I realize.

i felt that way the first time i finished it and i have to admit i teared up a little. then he killed himself while i was reading it the second time and i just had to put it down. since then i've read everything else by him but still haven't gone back to infinite jest again.

he has three names = his books are poo

lol

Karl, I know what you mean. I've been carrying around one of his essay collections to reread for a long time because I really loved it, but I somehow never get past cracking it open and putting it back on the shelf.

i enjoyed <a href="http://www.coh.arizona.edu/Sonora/";>sonora review</a>'s special issue w/ dfw tribute. he was fiction editor during his time at UA and published one of his first stories in it. it's reprinted and there's an interview with his editor michael pietsch, a thoughtful piece by marshall boswell, and some other good stuff.

dammit

i've been trying to get a copy of that without ordering one online--did you send away for it?

i believe i mailed a check per the directions on their site. dunno where you could even order sonora review online?

not trying to sound snotty, just surprised

oops, no i meant ordering it from them online. i think it's the only way to get this.

I used to be the Poetry editor of Sonora Review. After DFW's time tho.

how much after?

About 6 years I think.

friend of friend who showed me around austin lived with him in college and had just got back from giving a eulogy at his funeral when i was in town.

http://www.observer.com/2009/media/dueling-foster-wallace-two-bios-hit-market-one-sold

the lipsky book sounds way more interesting

yeah maybe. I think I'd read both--I'd love a proper bio of the dude.

for those who want to read infinite jest bookclub style:

http://infinitesummer.org/

my copy is currently on another coast, back at my parents' place. my options are (a) asking my folks to rummage through my stuff and ship it to me, or (b) seeing how cheaply i can find it used. option (b) sounds far less invasive.

it'll be interesting to read IJ again. my understanding of the world and my thinking skills have grown exponentially since i last read it, over a decade ago.

I think I'd read both

me too. max's new yorker article was good, and lipsky's thing -- if it's really essentially just a series of conversations -- could be really interesting in its own way. if it gets published ... (also, i guess i just don't know anything about publishing and the marketplace, but i'm a little surprised anyone got a six-figure advance for a DFW biography. i'm imagining it's a very niche sort of book.)

thanks

xp

niche perhaps, but interest in foster wallace as a writer is only going to increase in the years that follow, among a readership sure to explore a definitive biography on the author in addition to his texts. i could easily see DFW as a set text on future literature and writing courses, and a biography would be a major secondary source for students, guaranteeing long term steady sales.

maybe they meant six figures, including decimal places

max's new yorker article

damn son

ha.

i wonder what the d.t. in d.t. max stands for.

david tosser

"downtown"

Low six figures makes total sense to me for the first biography of the guy who presently stands as the last Major American Writer to be really broadly accepted as such and to feel somehow relevant to the culture as a whole -- especially given that he died young enough (and suddenly enough) to have his readership still fresh and curious and caring about him. (I think Stevie's right about academic adoption, too, which is part of what I mean about being the last "Major American Writer.")

i'd tend to agree except that when he died, i did a quick survey of my office (of journalists, mind you, ranging in age from 20s to 60s), and nobody had ever read anything by him and only a few had even vaguely heard of him. i mean, i totally think he's a major dude and all, and i have plenty of friends who are dfw devotees. but his presence in the culture was always pretty tenuous. i bet i know more people who have read michael chabon or jonathan franzen than have read dfw. actually i'm sure of it.

but hey, i hope the bio's a hit. i'm all for more dfw.

(btw, since discovering that appalling lapse in my office, i have successfully pressed a supposedly fun thing on three people, all of whom liked it.)

i don't doubt that chabon/franzen are more widely known, but nabisco is right, DFW is a Major American Writer and this

i could easily see DFW as a set text on future literature and writing courses, and a biography would be a major secondary source for students, guaranteeing long term steady sales.

is otm, and probably what merits the big ticket price.

No doubt that certain others might be more widely read. I'm trying without success to think of more ways to unpack what I mean with the construct "Major American Writer" -- possibly one aspect of it is that it's a lot easier to imagine DFW devotees reading a biography of him than it is to imagine many people ever for any reason being even slightly interested in reading a biography of Michael Chabon.

yah or Franzen (or even Eugenides)

eggers

(obviously that's not remotely meant as a knock on those dudes, just one gauge of whatever sort of Major Writer significance happens to attach to people, versus just having your books enjoyed and everyone assuming you're just a person)

i never did make it through the corrections

sorry i doubt anyone would read an eggers bio in the way they'd read a Wallace bio