David Foster Wallace

Working my way through a series of books by David Foster Wallace, (1) a writer so talented that he makes me want to give up writing fiction. Let me rephrase that. He makes me want to give up writing altogether. He makes most writers look weak, even though he did not publish many books during his lifetime. The books he did publish stand on a much higher plane than the books of most other writers.

Currently reading "Host" from Consider the Lobster which is a typographically intriguing work, featuring many blocks of text connected by arrows, constantly interrupting each other (2). It's one of the reasons I loved David Foster Wallace.

It is interesting to see how he was one of the very few literary authors I can think of to have a truly dedicated fan base, almost making him into a rock star. Indeed, in the photo below, you can almost picture him as "the brooding one" from any band(3):

JPC

***

Footnotes:

(1) Beginning with Consider the Lobster, moving to Oblivion, The Broom of the System, The Girl with Curious Hair and Infinite Jest over the summer.

(2) It pulls the reader aside in the middle of a conversation, causing the said reader to go in circles, almost, trying to figure out what is what before jumping back to the conversation.

(3) Of course, to say that unintentionally adds an insulting tone. I realized almost as soon as I wrote it that it would need to be clarified. Therefore: Wallace was a brooding writer, in the sense that he was asking what "tasted right" (to use his words from a Bookworm interview w/ Michael Silverblatt). Unlike the "brooding one" in the band, he actually had a reason to brood and produced something from that brooding.