David Foster Wallace
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Prof. David Foster Wallace
We can approach the books from a variety of different critical, theoretical, and ideological perspectives, too, depending on students’ backgrounds and interests. In essence, we can talk about whatever you wish to — provided that we do it cogently and…
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Gotta Serve Somebody
In an excerpt from his recently released book Rocket and Lightship: Essays on Literature and Ideas, Adam Kirsch positions David Foster Wallace as a quintessentially American writer: self-conscious and ironic, but at the same time frenzied, earnest, and above all…
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Infinite Brickjest
Fascinated by The Brick Bible, Professor Kevin Griffith of Ohio’s Capital University has had his 11-years-old son Sebastian recreating in LEGO bricks 100 scenes from David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest. Griffith explained to The Guardian: “I would describe a scene to him…
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DFW and his Big Alanis Morissette Poster. (Also, Robots.)
We recently linked to a till-then undiscovered interview with David Foster Wallace. See here for something on the music he loved.
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Excavated Heartbreaking Interview with David Foster Wallace
I didn’t really understand emotionally that there are people around who didn’t have enough to eat, who weren’t warm enough, who didn’t have a place to live, whose parents beat the hell out of them regularly. The sadness isn’t in…
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Yuppies Read
Now’s your chance to get your very own piece of David Foster Wallace. Today in New York, Sotheby’s art auction house is offering a small collection of letters the post-post-/meta-modern literary great once sent to his old friend JT Jackson,…
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Word of the Day: Recrudescence
(n.) breaking out afresh or into renewed activity; from the Latin recrudescere (“to become raw again”) The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk…
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Public (Image) Domain
What happens when the reproduction rights of literary works and an author’s public image are taken out of their owner’s control, but without any law infringement? Over at the Paris Review, Evan Kindley tries to find out. He compares the case…
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The Evils of Irony
At one time, irony served to reveal hypocrisies, but now it simply acknowledges one’s cultural compliance and familiarity with pop trends. The art of irony has lost its vision and its edge. The rebellious posture of the past has been…
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A Book About The Internet
Americanah is a Book About The Internet, and Ifemelu is living the dream of basically every blogger I know: she gets big enough to make her living through writing stuff and posting it online.
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Words as Art: The 2014 Whitney Biennial
The 2014 Whitney Biennial opened last week, and runs through May 25th. Word-lovers who find themselves in NYC while the exhibit is running will want to pay a visit. From the New York Times: Paper is a star of this Biennial, with…
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The Cliché of Leadership
Think about it. A real leader is somebody who, because of his own particular power and charisma and example, is able to inspire people, with ‘inspire’ being used here in a serious and non-cliché way. A real leader can somehow…