The Howling Fantods

Not only has episode 20 of The Great Concavity been released, but now you can help Matt and Dave cover the podcast hosting costs by picking up some neat vinyl stickers!

Episode 20's guest on The Great Concavity is John Mango.

(Follow the show on twitter @ConcavityShow and subscribe to the podcast here)

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The podcast is hosted by Dave Laird (@DaveLaird2) and Matt Bucher (@mattbucher,wallace-l, MattBucher.com, Simple Ranger, Side Show Media Group) two Wallace enthusiasts with a wealth of Wallace knowledge to share.

It is my honour to be able to announce that David Hering (University of Liverpool, UK - @hering_david) will be keynote speaker at the Australian David Foster Wallace conference, OzWallace (1-3 September 2017), in Melbourne!

This excites me beyond belief! I am currently making my way through David's latest publication, David Foster Wallace: Fiction + Form, and have found myself captivated and continually amazed at the new insights into Wallace's work. I have dedicated a couple of previous posts to this publication that are worth looking at if you're interested, David Hering's Fiction and Form and Amazing Fiction and Form Excerpt.

David Hering isn't just one of the leading Wallace scholars internationally right now, he is an inspiring and captivating speaker. I had the pleasure of meeting David at the CUNY DFW Footnotes conference back in November 2009 where I saw him present his paper, “Dreams Within Dreams: Wallace, Lynch, Oblivion”. My pre-twitter quick response on this site was:

"Lynchian geek out. David presented the parallels in Wallace's and Lynch's narrative stategies through Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire. Spectacular!"

It's also super important to mention that David Hering organised the very first international David Foster Wallace conference, Consider David Foster Wallace, which was held way back in July 2009 at the University of Liverpool (Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays collected 17 essays that stemmed from this conference.)

So... come and join us in Australia in September next year! Conference organiser, RMIT's Dr. Tony McMahon (also an occasional correspondent for this site), and his team are working to put together a fantastic event in my favourite Australian city, Melbourne.

I understand the call for papers is due very soon.

For more information about OzWallace 2017 follow Dr. Tony McMahon on twitter (@tony_mcmahon2) and hit up the OzWallace 2017 Facebook page.

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David Hering is a Lecturer at the University Of Liverpool, UK where he teaches and researches contemporary literature, and co-directs the Centre for New and International Writing. He has published and written extensively on the work of David Foster Wallace: he is the editor of Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays (2010) and the author of David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form (2016), for which publication he received a Harry Ransom Centre/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for the purposes of researching Wallace's archive. His essays on Wallace have also appeared in David Foster Wallace: Critical Insights (2015) and The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace (forthcoming). His writing has also appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Review of Books, Orbit and Critical Engagements.

P.S. For a super special discount on David Hering's, David Foster Wallace: Fiction + Form, order the book via www.bloomsbury.com/au and enter the code DFW2016 for an 40% discount (Note: this may only work for Australian purchases - big shout out to Rachael at Bloomsbury for this!)

The call for papers and submission forms for the 2017 Annual David Foster Wallace Conference at Illinois State University (June 8-10, 2017) are now live.

Deadline is December 10, 2016.

Website: David Foster Wallace Conference

Facebook: David Foster Wallace #DFW17

Twitter: @DFWConference

There were a couple of Wallace related posts back on World Mental Health Day (Oct 10):

• Sammy Nickalls for Esquire, David Foster Wallace Empowered a Generation to Talk About Mental Health. (10/10/16)
• Lizwride's post about David Foster Wallace. (10/10/16)

Yet another Wallace publication from Wallace studies powerhouse, Bloomsbury. Yet another one to look forward to!

Due on the 1st of December is Lucas Thompson's, Global Wallace: David Foster Wallace and World Literature (also via Amazon).

From the Bloomsbury site (where you can view the TOC too):

Some more pics via @HouseofNaqvi over on Twitter.

Two more fantastic episodes have dropped since my last update:

Episode 18's guest on The Great Concavity is Sean Pratt (@SPPresents) the narrator of the 56-hour-long audiobook of Infinite Jest. It's an absolutely engrossing conversation about the recording of the audiobook and many other things. And yes, I did say I couldn't recommend the audiobook without endnotes. And yep, I understand there were technological issues at the time. And, yes, I think Sean makes a good case for why the end notes were not originally recorded and a .pdf was included (but as a podcast and audiobook listener while cycling or driving the reading pdf option seemed flawed), and, like mentioned in the podcast, I still wonder why each end note isn't a skippable track so the listener can decide to skip them if they wish...

But you know what? In all my negativity I never actually acknowledged how much hard work went in to making it, and I NEVER gave Sean credit for the incredible job he did narrating the novel.

Thank you, Sean.

(I think a little more credit than is due was sent my way too... but that's another story.)

Episode 19 has two guests, Rachel Laird & Amy Pelletier, who speak with Dave about reading Infinite Jest for the first time. I know I'm not the only one who pulled one of my copies of Infinite Jest back off the shelf after listening to this episode...

(Follow the show on twitter @ConcavityShow and subscribe to the podcast here)

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The podcast is hosted by Dave Laird (@DaveLaird2) and Matt Bucher (@mattbucher,wallace-l, MattBucher.com, Simple Ranger, Side Show Media Group) two Wallace enthusiasts with a wealth of Wallace knowledge to share.