david foster wallace: classic or dud

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

though i'd read the shit out of a gaddis bio

is there a vollman bio? i would read that.

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

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 1:33 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the fuck does this even mean?

the book did not get low six figs because the publisher felt that, as the last great american writer, david foster wallace warranted a well-remunerated biographer.

This is the thing about the freshness of it, though, obviously: if DFW had continued on unto the age of 85 writing whatever it is he would have written, there is every chance that he'd have expired well-known or out-of-fashion or any of a million things that would make a biography not seem all that important to anyone. There's a pretty ideal arrangement of factors here to make a biography valuable (not least the posthumous flow of obits and articles and so on that first started converting him in people's heads to someone with a complete life that you might really start thinking of as A Life).

xpost - haha I think Que was pretty clear there, though obviously it depends on what Eggers does between here and when he dies

(P.S. if we are going to play a "what the fuck does this even mean" game, I think seemingly non-sequitur posting of the name "Eggers" in the middle of the conversation probably merits it -- I don't follow your point, could you explain more?)

the book did not get low six figs because the publisher felt that, as the last great american writer, david foster wallace warranted a well-remunerated biographer.

the book probably got the low six figures because the guy wrote a great, interesting article for the new yorker and probably followed up on it with a great proposal

It seems like all the juicy Eggers bio stuff is already plainly embedded in '...heartbreaking' while DFW was pretty cagey about putting anything personal not involving tennis or math or grammar out there, so a bio that connects the dots seems less redundant in DFW's case at the very least.

I'm not sure why Eggers' name is here at all ... if he died tomorrow much of his life would be covered in the memoir, and if he went on doing Eggersy things for 40 years I don't think he'd merit a significant biography -- maybe a book tracing out some larger McSweeney's-associated aesthetic, if that still seems somehow significant, or maybe long after that one of those books that takes up a more "minor" figure to make some larger cultural point.

Wish I could unpack the "Major American Writer" thing; maybe a good way to think about it in this context is people whose biographies wouldn't look too out of place on an imagined shelf alongside books about Oates, Mailer, Didion, Vidal, Morrison, Salinger,* etc. Canonical writers; writers people in an English department might casually refer to by last name only without feeling like that meant anything.

* haha at some point that one would either get really boring or really interesting

in 40 years we will all be living in roboeurope under a muslim pope

reading robert jordan biographies

the book probably got the low six figures because the guy wrote a great, interesting article for the new yorker and probably followed up on it with a great proposal

yeah, no doubt. and my surprise at it, like i said, mostly no doubt reveals how little i know about publishing. i have no idea how many books you even have to sell to recoup a $100,000-plus advance. or how well literary biographies sell as a rule. or, you know, anything about it at all.

as for the major writer thing, i don't know. had wallace reached the level of someone like delillo, in terms of scholarly interest or ubiquity in the curriculum? (honest question -- i was never a lit major in the first place, much less within the last 10 years.) i think he's important because he's important to me, but i don't have a very clear sense of how widespread that impression is. i guess i've thought of him as a little bit more of a cult figure. which doesn't rule out his being a major writer, i just have no idea what his standing is with the literary/critical establishment.

no doubt.

The question isn't whether DFW reached the level of ubiquity on curricula as Delillo has (he hasn't yet), it's whether he's reached a threshold of 'major-ness' in those worlds...is there a big enough silent majority of people (in the 'scholarly community,' say) who recognize him as major writer for people to talk about him across their own particular specialisms without explaining why he's worthy of being talked/written about? I think the answer to that is definitely yes. (The answer is not yes, btw, in English department-world, for Chabon, whom I heard someone give a paper on in December. The speaker felt the need to introduce him in a way that made clear he felt he could not assume everyone would know who he was.)

the other book's getting published - http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/another-david-foster-wallace-biography-is-planned/