|
DFW Remembrance
|
|
Thursday, 29 April 2010 |
|
Iannis Goerlandt got in touch to let me know about Flemish poet Geert Buelens' poem in commemoration of David Foster Wallace. He introduces it much better than I do:
In December 2008, the Flemish literary journal "yang" (now "nY") published a substantial David Foster Wallace tribute. It consisted of a long introductory Wallace "lexicon" (Daniël Rovers/Iannis Goerlandt), a Dutch translation of the Federer essay (Goerlandt) and a commemorative poem by the Flemish poet Geert Buelens.
Thanks, Iannis.
| | No comments for this item |
|
Critical Analysis
|
|
Thursday, 29 April 2010 |
|
I’m a regular reader of the Best American series, but I generally skip reading the guest editors’ introductory essays, doing my best to avoid the word “Montaigne” and explanations of how the essay defies a crisp definition. But this time in Doha I went directly to Wallace’s introduction to see what I had missed, and there he mentioned Montaigne (Chesterton, too) and he remarked that “essay” is not his word of choice for what is really “literary non-fiction.” Still, Wallace’s piece turned out to be especially meaningful because he confronted some “bad news” about our times and supported it in his introduction with very clever meta-interpretation of the editor’s role, and he supported it more implicitly with his choice of essays. | | No comments for this item |
|
DFW Biography
|
|
Sunday, 25 April 2010 |
|
What Lipsky notices for us, and then what is impossible to ignore afterward, is that Wallace is very interested in solitude and what that meant to him and his relationships with other people. ("`Alone' is a word that meant a great, complicated amount to him," Lipsky writes.) He saw books and writing as a bulwark against loneliness, but his devotion to being alone caused his romantic and personal relationships to suffer; he cannot quite find the right balance between the advantages and disadvantages of spending so much time by himself. | | No comments for this item |
|
|
DFW Biography
|
|
Friday, 23 April 2010 |
|
Some personalities lend themselves well to biographies and profiles. These lives can be neatly packaged, edited, and bound. They can be organized into chapters, narratives, lists, and an index. And though these biographies might not make great literature, they can be thrilling to read (cf: Richard Burton). But some lives can't be defined by the adventures therein; some possess an intellect so vast and frenetic that, consequently, it's mostly inaccessible to the profiler and, in turn, the reader. See: Wallace, David Foster. The focus of Lipsky’s questioning is multifold. Lipsky is a fan of DFW’s work, and since he himself is a young writer, he seems to have a personal interest in writerly ambition, fame, the effects of fame, and the effects of fame on the writing process. Also, his angle for the piece is clearly “what’s it like to be DFW, savior of literature?”
And the answer is interesting because of the type of person DFW is: he’s very smart, but he’s also very uncomfortable with showing off his smartness (Lipsky describes him as being very Midwestern in this regard). He’s a gentle generous person who is very protective of himself and his family. And so, rather than just being a profile of a hip young author, the focus turns into what happens to a shy, unassuming hip young author when the spotlight shines on him. The book contains what would have to be a significant amount of everything that Wallace said during their conversation over these five days or so, and it is clearly an important primary source for scholars interested in him. It also seems clear to me (and to Lipsky, both at the time and certainly in retrospect) that Wallace was exceptionally wary of him and was concealing himself or acting a part in much of their conversation. Lipsky seems to identify this fairly quickly, and a good part of what’s in the book is Wallace’s typically self-reflexive discussion of the various ethical and epistemological issues caused by this preparation of a face to meet the faces you meet, etc. I was somewhat annoyed by how Lipsky wanted to capture the code-switching in Wallace’s speech by phonetic spellings and such. I’m sure that just a mention of a different accent or voice pattern in the bracketed sections would work better than the inconsistent “dudn’t” and “in’”s that distract the reader. | | No comments for this item |
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
