I read Ed Finn's essay, Becoming Yourself: The Afterlife of Reception, last week after it was posted to wallace-l. It's a look at the networks between books and authors that can be mapped based on Amazon recommendations or popular reviews. It is quite an arresting read, especially the research methodology.

 

Patricia Cohen wrote about Finn's essay yesterday on the NYT blog, Arts Beat, Thinking Cap: From David Foster Wallace to Bret Easton Ellis by Way of Faulkner, but I think her piece misses something I found particularly interesting about Wallace's readers. In his essay, Finn writes:

 

 

So how unusual is it? Finn compares this to some of Wallace's contemporaries:

 

 

I'm not surprised that Wallace's readers are just as interested in guides, wider criticism and other books about him (I'm one of those readers myself), but I'm a little more surprised this kind of thing isn't more widespread... Maybe a look at a similar networks related to Pynchon or DeLillo might be enlightening here? 

There is some new David Foster Wallace material over at the Harry Ransom Center's Archive.

 

 

This collection consists of small amounts of David Foster Wallace-related materials acquired by the Ransom Center from various sources. Included are photocopies of Wallace's completed "usage ballots" for the American Heritage Dictionary; items related to "Democracy and Commerce at the U. S. Open," an article Wallace wrote for Tennis magazine in 1995, including correspondence with Jay Jennings, senior editor at Tennis; a photocopy of a typed letter (1993) from Wallace to Brandon Hobson in which he gives writing advice to the 22-year-old Hobson, comparing and contrasting his own experiences at that age; nine annotated copies of the essay "Host" for the Atlantic Monthly, from a heavily marked early draft to a "final final" draft; a photocopied letter from Wallace to Martha Spaulding of the Atlantic and a brief note from Spaulding explaining the editorial process, along with a "Semi mini style sheet for DFW"; a faxed typescript draft of Infinite Jest; and a first edition, first printing of Review of Contemporary Fiction: Younger Writers Issue, Summer 1993, signed by Wallace and William T. Vollman. The materials are arranged in alphabetical order and date from 1993 to 2006.

 

Further acquisitions of Wallace related materials are expected.

 

 

Spanning nearly thirty years, the Bonnie Nadell Collection of David Foster Wallace documents Nadell's literary representation of Wallace, primarily with personal and professional correspondence between Nadell, Wallace, and publishing insiders. The collection is organized in two series: Series I. Correspondence, and Series II. Agent files. Series I. contains over forty letters (1985-2008) from Wallace to Nadell and about twenty-four email printouts between the two discussing personal and publishing issues. In a 1989 letter, Wallace voices his anticipation of a Nadell visit: ". . . Boston is fun; we'll have laughs, listen to rap and James Brown. . ." In the most recent email (2008), Wallace discusses plans to begin an article for GQ on the just-nominated Barack Obama, stressing his need for "close, candid access to a couple of Obama's junior speech guys" before they become too involved in the campaign. Additional correspondence in Series I. is between Wallace or Nadell and various translators and publishing world colleagues and acquaintances. The content of this correspondence is almost entirely professionally-oriented. In the earliest letter (1985) of the collection, a twenty-three year old Wallace introduces himself and a "representative" chapter of The Broom of the System to Frederick Hill.

 

Series II. contains files relating to Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, The Broom of the System, Consider the Lobster, Everything and More, Girl With Curious Hair, Infinite Jest, Signifying Rappers, and 'periodical publications.' The files mostly contain correspondence between Nadell and editors and publishers, with some Wallace correspondence as well. Interspersed are unmarked, and often undated, typescript copies of various short Wallace pieces that most likely were meant for submission to editors. These typescripts remain in their original locations within the respective folders in which they arrived, perhaps indicating the approximate date Nadell was sending them out. Also present is an essay, "Ralph and the Legal Milestone" (1980), which Wallace wrote for a creative writing class, receiving an A+.

 

The collection remains predominately organized as it arrived at the Ransom Center in 2011, with some minor corrections to the rough chronological order of the correspondence in each folder.