RIP David Foster Wallace

His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" is a lot about Wallace's disenchantment with irony. Here are a couple of good quotes from it:

 

Don't know if this has been posted yet. Just a crushing piece about the private side of DFW that never could have seen print while he was alive, since Wallace wouldn't have wanted anyone to reveal so much about him.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace/print

Makes me feel like crying all over again.

 

And here it is:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23055650/the_view_from_mrs_thompsons

 

When I recently moved, most of my possessions went into storage: my CDs, my books, the accumulated clutter of a packrat's life. But I kept out of storage my Steinbecks -- and my David Foster Wallace books.

 

There happens to be a flag factory in the town next to ours, across the street from the Italian food factory where I once got a souvenir metal ruler as a reward for surviving a grade-school tour, and down the block from the Lexus dealer, which was built on the site of a diner that had a Japanese garden complete with carp pond, gate and footbridge. You know, the kind of wooden bridge you can buy, unfinished, at one of those craft store chains and plunk it down in your yard.*


*Next to the flagpole.

 

"[Wallace] published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California's Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month, hanged himself at age 46."

THAT is a great sentence.

 

I read that RS article. Having never read DFW, it was very enlightening, interesting, but sad and tough to get through. I definitely want to read some of his work. Any suggestions on what to start with? Please dont say Jest.

 

Start with his magazine articles linked here. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is a good book to start with, but be aware that many of the stories are long.

 

Roger Federer as religious experience.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

String Theory (tennis player Michael Joyce)

http://www.esquire.com/features/sports/the-string-theory-0796

The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub. (John McCain)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub

Or, you could just buy one of his collections of journalism, as joe mentioned "Supposedly Fun" or you could pick up "Consider the Lobster."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/books/review/12mishra.html

 

Don't start with Infinite Jest. It's like trying to summit Mt. Everest before climbing a 10,000-foot peak. But once you've read the essay collections (including the more pointy-headed pieces and not just the funny, easy, enthralling sports and pop culture ones), gotten used to the digressions and footnotes, and find yourself ready for more (and you might not), then take on IJ.

 

I've made the decision (mistake?) to start with IJ, and I'm about 100 pages in so far. Needing a dictionary and two bookmarks is a bit of a pain when sometimes I just want to pick up a book and read, not have it feel like work, but so far i'm enjoying it.

Perhaps I would've been better served to start with one of the essay collections, but it's certainly doable to start with IJ.