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Critical Analysis
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Sunday, 11 September 2011 |
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Someone mentioned this to me ages ago, and I forgot about it until I saw it again on twitter a few weeks ago. Call for essays: Studies in the Novel, a quarterly journal published by the University of North Texas's Department of English since 1969, is calling for polished, professional, and ground-breaking essays focusing on the novels, as well as on the novelistic career, of David Foster Wallace. These essays will be published as part of a special issue of the journal. More specifically, we are looking for essays that address one of Wallace’s three novels, The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King, as well as papers that illuminate some aspect of Wallace’s achievement in the genre of the novel writ large. In light of the venue, we will not consider essays that focus on Wallace’s short fiction or non-fiction, though the essays may touch upon those texts as part of their primary focus. We are also keenly interested in essays that move beyond the well-trodden themes of irony, postmodernism, solipsism, and addiction. Completed essays are due by January 15, 2012 and should adhere to oursubmission guidelines.
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The Pale King
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Sunday, 11 September 2011 |
Trying to catch up on reviews and articles about The Pale King since the site went off line: Reviews: Non-Review Updates:
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General Updates
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Saturday, 10 September 2011 |
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There's no easy way to write about this and I don't feel capable. The news media here in Australia is already wall to wall September 11th coverage, but very little of it seems particularly thoughtful or reflective. As well as his essay, Just Asking, from The Atlantic in November 2007.
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DFW Archive
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Tuesday, 30 August 2011 |
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"The restricted items contain annotations with sensitive, private information about members of the family, and the materials will remain restricted during the lifetimes of the specific individuals affected," Ransom Center public affairs director Jen Tisdale said."
I'm not at all surprised by this, and like some other people out there I'm actually surprised it didn't happen earlier. From one of the comments in the article above: Those self-help books had intimate commentary on living persons. They should not have been publicly released until those persons were no longer living. I believe this was an oversight and they made the right call here. I don't fault Maria for writing the piece, but I think this outcome was predictable after its publication. (Although I'm surprised it took this long.) And this is really the crux of the matter, the privacy of people mentioned in Wallace's annotations. If it has to be a choice between an archive of Wallace's annotated personal library with some texts excluded, or no personal library at all, I know which option I prefer.
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Critical Analysis
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Friday, 02 September 2011 |
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Prevailing critical discussion of the works of the writer David Foster Wallace—particularly his most celebrated novel Infinite Jest—has focused around the manner in which Wallace uses the ironic dimension of postmodern literature against itself in order to attempt a ‘post-postmodern’ form of American fiction. In this article, however, I will address the as-yet critically neglected technique in Infinite Jest by which Wallace articulates and attempts to counter the problems of literary and cultural Postmodernism through geographical, spatial and temporal narrative strategies.
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General Updates
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Thursday, 01 September 2011 |
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Have fun working your way through them.
- Jason Kottke, Blame it on David Foster Wallace. (21/8/11)
- Koreanish, On Maud Newton on David Foster Wallace. (22/8/11)
- CulturePulp's, Let's blame David Foster Wallace for all sorts of jackassery. (22/8/11)
- JoeTalk, The Humility of David Foster Wallace - In response to Maud Newton. (23/8/11)
- Glenn Kenny's blog Some Came Running, Squarer for Maud. (23/8/11)
- Edward Champion over at Reluctant Habits, When the Flock Changed: David Foster Wallace & Maud Newton. (23/8/11)
- 100 palabras por minuto, On the sloppiness of sort of pinning things on people. (24/8/11)
- Matt Kiebus for death + taxes, David Foster Wallace Is the Reason I Write Like Shit: Or more than likely he’s the very reason I enjoy writing in the first place. (24/8/11)
- The Contextual Life, On the Shelf: David Foster Wallace’s Wishy-Washy Legacy and Noir Galore. (25/8/11)
- Jon Baskin for The Point, 8.
- Nieman Journalism Lab by Maria Bustillos and David Roth, Psychotic jest and infinite reactions: How David Foster Wallace didn’t invent the Internet’s voice. (31/8/11)
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General Updates
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Thursday, 01 September 2011 |
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David Foster Wallace has been the recipient of so much praise since his death in 2008 that perhaps it's best to contribute a gripe. Wallace is a disquieting read. Not just because of the acid insights or creeping melancholy, but because his mastery of language and powers of observation so dwarf our own. This 1997 collection of essays features some of the writer's best, including a dispatch from the set of a David Lynch movie (where Wallace never gets closer to Lynch than a glimpse of his subject peeing), a piece from the Illinois State Fair ("the air like wet wool"), the title meditation on the existential sadness of luxury cruises (maid service complete with "a creeping guilt, a deep accretive uneasiness, a discomfort that presents ... a weird kind of pampering-paranoia") and a profile of middling tennis pro Michael Joyce that eclipses his better-known essay on tour ace Roger Federer. This is Wallace at the top of his game.
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Infinite Jest
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Monday, 22 August 2011 |
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Updates below:
Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy explains: I wrote "Calamity Song" shortly after I'd finished reading David Foster Wallace's epic Infinite Jest. The book didn't so much inspire the song itself, but Wallace's irreverent and brilliant humor definitely wound its way into the thing. And I had this funny idea that a good video for the song would be a re-creation of the Enfield Tennis Academy's round of Eschaton — basically, a global thermonuclear crisis re-created on a tennis court — that's played about a third of the way into the book. Thankfully, after having a good many people balk at the idea, I found a kindred spirit in Michael Schur, a man with an even greater enthusiasm for Wallace's work than my own. With much adoration and respect to this seminal, genius book, this is what we've come up with. I can only hope DFW would be proud. Updates:
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General Updates
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Monday, 29 August 2011 |
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My hosts swapped servers and forgot about me... The old server got switched off AND there were no backups after the move to the new one. But as you can see, we worked something out.
I'm still having issues getting a full backup done, so expect things to be up and down over the next week or so. Most of all, thanks for all of your support! The best way to keep track of any updates if access disappears again is by checking my twitter feed, just head to @nick_maniatis. Nick P.S. Thanks to everyone who has offered donations... I'm not going to set up anything formal. If you'd like to (and you don't NEED to - this site has always, and will always, be free) consider buying a book or two from Amazon by following the links. I get a small percentage from every sale which I put to gift credits on Amazon. Maybe grab that Wallace book you haven't read yet? Then at least some of the money is going to David Foster Wallace's estate too. His work is the reason this site exists.
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General Updates
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Sunday, 21 August 2011 |
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Hi everyone, Please be patient with me over the next three weeks or so, I'm moving to a new house, which means proper updates will happen when I have the energy... i.e. not as often as I'd like. Take this example: I retweeted a link to this hugely popular article by Maud Netwon, Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace (19/8/11), nearly 48 hours ago but it's only just now making it here to the site. The article, by the way, has sent many people into a tailspin over the 'voice' of bloggers. Lots of over-simplification in many of the retweets I've read (no surprises there). I enjoyed reading it and I expect you will too. I'm still updating my twitter feed regularly (it's hard for me to ignore my phone) and it's 95% David Foster Wallace related, so until I'm properly settled you might like to keep an eye on that too. If you're not a twitter user you don't have to be, just head to @nick_maniatis. Thanks to those of you sending me news via the ' Contact us' page (and keep doing so if you think I've missed something big). |
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