Don’t Get Me Down: Reading and Writing Depression
In September 2008, David Foster Wallace stepped out onto his patio and did what most of us occasionally imagine doing, but hopefully never go through with.
Posts Tagged: David Foster Wallace
Who Do You Write Like?
You read last week in The Rumpus about the new “statistical analysis tool” that tells you who you write like. Coding Robots, a group of software developers, seemingly created I Write Like just for fun; the page analyzes your word choice and writing style and spits back a writer it compares you to (out of a list of 50 writers, according to Dmitry Chestnykh in his interview with The Awl).
...moreModern Reader #4: Without Style
I often wonder if reviews can be great. Can a book (or an essay) that is essentially “about” another book compare to an original work?
...moreThe Rumpus Books Sunday Supplement
It was yet another awesome week for Rumpus Books. Click through for links to reviews, rants, interviews, and more.
The Living Dead
David Foster Wallace speaks to us from beyond the grave in David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself—but should we be listening?
A FAN’S NOTES, The Rumpus Sports Column #25: The Angelic Name
In 1994, David Foster Wallace published an essay about the difficult-to-pin-down pleasure of watching great athletes during their most intense moments of competition. The essay, “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” looks simple on the surface: it is “unaccompanied,” by which I mean there are no numbered footnotes, no preambles, no subtitles and no flow charts framing or attached to the text.
We’re All Poets Now?
“I think avant-garde fiction has already gone the way of poetry. And it’s become involuted and forgotten the reader. Put it this way, there are a few really good poets who suffered because of the desiccation and involution of poetry, but for the most part I think American poetry has gotten what it’s deserved.
...moreHave I Earned These Clichés?
When life is not the slightest bit luminescent, I read Lorrie Moore. She honors a commitment to the search for truth and morality through emotional and reachable means.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
Jonathan Lethem has been hired for David Foster Wallace’s old teaching post at Pomona. (via @maudnewton)
“Lots of people in Indiana Jones hats today. I approve.” From @WriterDaniel at this Twitter roundup from the LA Times Festival of Books.
...moreThe Sunday Rumpus Book Blog Roundup
My relationship with the book blogs has hit a snag. Today, we got in a throw-down fight, and I came pretty close to breaking some china.
It’s just that the blogs whine and worry and complain a lot, and they always seem to want to cheat on me with famous writers, like Martin Amis or David Foster Wallace or Marquis de Sade, and then it rubs off on me, and I end up whining and worrying and complaining more than they do, and then I stop liking myself.
...moreDavid Foster Wallace’s Incandenza Comes to Life
The filmography of the fictional Wild Turkey drinking filmmaker and visionary tennis instructor at Enfield Academy, James Incandenza, the central character of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, will make an appearance of sorts at the Gallery at The Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies.
...moreThe Sunday Book Blog Roundup
With so many shopping days left until whenever, there is no end to the amount of printed matter out there that is riveting, ravishing and ultimately rewarding.
The book blogs are overwhelming to someone like me who wants to read everything.
...moreMorning Coffee
“Nothing can’t be made with wood.” Street legal wooden car!
I don’t know about you, but I could use some good news this Monday morning. Cell phones might not cause brain tumors after all!
Evidently the US Defense Department is way more whimsical than we’d thought.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Review Supplement
It’s fall! The air is crisp, the leaves are falling, and I can’t seem to leave my house.
The Rumpus Review of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
My boyfriend insisted I read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men when we started dating. “It will help you understand the way men think!” he exclaimed. Secrets of those bearing a Y chromosome would be revealed, he promised; David Foster Wallace had explored the shadows of the psyche of his generation and had rendered them on the page in all of their dark, desperate beauty.
The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
After reviewing the book blogs this week, I’ve decided that if I see the words “Dan Brown” ever again I’m going to punch myself in the eyes with a Da Vinci Code decoder ring.
To save you some time, here’s what they have to say about him: He makes a lot of money.
...moreDon’t Miss the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival: Sunday September 13
Reasons to attend the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival: 1) it’s one of the most hip, smart and diverse American literary events, 2) because Ben Marcus, Sarah Manguso, Thurston Moore, Heidi Julavits and Tao Lin are just some of the stars and emerging writers who will be talking/reading, 3) panels will talk about DFW , rappers and upward mobility, among a lot of other great things read and discussed, and 4) because it’s free (though for some events you need to secure tickets in advance).
...moreWhere Celebrities Go to Die
Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler takes a crack at the underworld in a hit-and-miss new novel.
...moreDetails on DFW’s Pale King
As you probably already know, David Foster Wallace left an unfinished novel called The Pale King upon his death. Today Tim Martin of the Telegraph UK wrote a remembrance of DFW that, among many other things, includes details of the novel, a version of which will be published in the spring.
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Infinite Summer Roundup
I’ve been collecting articles and links connected to the Infinite Summer challenge, and Infinite Jest itself, and three weeks in seems like a good time to share them: if you’d like to participate and somehow haven’t heard of it yet, there’s still enough time to catch up with the other participants!
...moreTye Pemberton: The Last Book I loved, Remainder
Tom McCarthy’s Remainder was a bit of a darkhorse darling when it first arrived on the scene, enjoying attention from everyone and their mother, the latter of whom rightly celebrated it and nearly exhausted it, marking it as possibly “one of the great English novels of the past ten years.” I can do nothing much here in the way of aesthetic appreciation but agree, reiterate and repeat, and thus much of the customary cuddling I might do with what the book is I’ll leave to my precursors in the interests of an appreciation of what the book represents—which is, to say the least, promising.
Infinite Summer
Infinite Summer is a Web site presenting the world with the following challenge/life-better-maker:
“Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week.” Plus endnotes.
The site features notable participants and four guides/writers, “who have never before read Infinite Jest [and] will do so for the duration of Infinite Summer.
...moreMorning Coffee
Morning Coffee, now two hours earlier for our friends on the east coast. Count on it every weekday at 7, Atlantic!
Our Rozalia reviews Throw Down Your Heart, the documentary of Bela Fleck’s travels in Africa.
Heavypetting. A blog about amateur porn gone wrong.
...moreGlenn Kenny on Editing David Foster Wallace
Film writer and former Premiere editor and critic Glenn Kenny talks about his experience editing David Foster Wallace for that magazine in the mid-to-late 90s and his friendship with the author in this wonderful interview at The House Next Door.
...moreNotes and Errata*: A Companion Guide to “The Unfinished”
*The Rumpus presents endnotes (and some additions and/or digressions) w/r/t “The Unfinished” by D. T. Max (The New Yorker, Mar. 9, 2009),
A Reading List as Suggested Posthumously by David Foster Wallace
Compiled from “The Unfinished” by D. T. Max.
...moreMorning Coffee
Where the Wild Things Are, posters, previews, and a review of the film site unseen.
Inhabitat, human hamster cage or Ikea tower?
Poe regrets drunkenness.
On Burke’s David Foster Wallace portrait.
Twenty-one years after a crippling accident, a paraplegic man is cured by a spider bite, then promptly gets arrested.
David Foster Wallace Mega-site
The Howling Fantods is an incredibly useful and informative David Foster Wallace fan site full of frequently updated links to discussions of DFW. Some recent nuggets: D.T. Max discussing Unfinished on NPR, Michael Pietcsch telling Entertainment Weekly that Little Brown intends to make large chunks of The Pale King manuscripts available online so readers can see DFW’s writing process, and the full press release for The Pale King.
...moreTHE EDITOR’S DESK: Unfinished Notes On David Foster Wallace
I just finished “The Unfinished,” D.T. Max’ fantastic posthumous profile of David Foster Wallace. The article was so sad, but also profound. “His goal,” Max writes, “had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled and meaningful life.” It was also Wallace’s goal to lead that kind of life.
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