The READIN Family Album
Me and Gary, brooding (September 2004)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Personal density is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.

Kurt Mondaugen


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page
Most recent posts about David Foster Wallace
More posts about Readings

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

The temptation to regard Mr. Wallace's suicide last weekend as anything other than a private tragedy must be resisted.
A.O.Scott writes an eloquent essay on Wallace's legacy in today's N.Y. Times, with reference to Wallace's 2004 review of a Borges biography.
He was smarter than anyone else, but also poignantly aware that being smart didn't necessarily get you very far, and that the most visible manifestations of smartness -- wide erudition, mastery of trivia, rhetorical facility, love of argument for its own sake -- could leave you feeling empty, baffled and dumb.

posted morning of September 21st, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges

Monday, September 15th, 2008

🦋 Connective Tissue

In the video that A White Bear linked yesterday, Mark Leyner is asked his thoughts about the audience he's writing for; he responds to the effect that he does not think about audience at all -- writing for him is an obsessive activity like chess for Bobby Fischer, with no object other than the text. David Foster Wallace takes exception to this:

Sometimes it's an act of communication. What makes the analogy ok but also makes it break down, is that part of the Fischer-like obsession Mark's talking about consists in a kind of mental and emotional dance with a constructed reader that you figure has a life more or less like yours, and whom in a weird way you're talking to. Again, I'm like totally with you about 50% of it; the thing about it is that the light and fun and all that stuff is definitely, that's part of what makes art magical for me; but there's another part. There's the part -- and I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a puritan or a critic -- but there's this part that makes you feel full. This part that is redemptive and instructive, where when you read something, it's not just about -- you go "My God, that's me!" you know, "I've lived like that, I've felt like that, I'm not alone in the world..."

I felt excited listening to Wallace saying this because it matches up with some things I have been thinking about since last year, specifically to describe my experience of reading Pamuk and more broadly as a way of talking about art in general -- I wrote a brief note about this last November.

A White Bear says,

Wallace is grasping to understand the possibilities of art as transformational, connective tissue between all these lonely people. For most 20th-c writers, that possibility is a sentimentality that died out around the time that Romanticism did.
I want to find out more about this idea in a Romantic context. Were Romantic authors making this argument explicitly or is it something critics read into their work -- or is it an argument made by Romantic critics? And which ones? It's an argument I've been grasping around at for a while and it would be really useful to hear it from someone else's mouth.

Update: and I guess obviously, duh, this is a strong sign that I should read Wallace's essays and criticism. Will get right on that.

posted morning of September 15th, 2008: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

🦋 Sad News Today

David Foster Wallace hanged himself on Friday. I am sorry to hear that. Infinite Jest was sort of a late formative experience for me -- I mean I must have been 26 or 27 when I read it, and already pretty well acquainted with reading novels; but it seems like it opened some new windows for me into what writing can do. I have always meant to read more of his work but never gotten to it; now when I do, I will be reading the work of a dead man, work which is part of the history of literature.

SEK has more at The Edge of the American West. In comments, politicalfootball links to this Charlie Rose interview.

Ellen sends along a link to Wallace's commencement speech to the 2005 class at Kenyon.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

A White Bear is not yet ready to grieve.

Mark Sussman has lost his favorite living author, and writes very convincingly about why he likes Wallace's work so much.

Scott Esposito recommends we "Forget the obituaries and read the man's writing."

At The Great Whatsit, Dorothy Gale writes about imagining what Wallace's last Friday might have been like.

Andy Whitman feels like he's lost a friend.

At This Recording, Meredith Gage considers Wallace in the context of marketing and advertising, and links to many more remembrances.

posted morning of September 14th, 2008: Respond

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange
readincategory