ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY BY RITA BOOKE* Message boards and email lists devoted to David Foster Wallace, who became a literary it-boy with the publication of “Infinite Jest” in 1996, fell silent with his suicide in 2008 after an paralyzing bout of depression. Recent news has brought a bright spot to fans of the postmodern master: the University of Texas at Austin has acquired the entire DFW archive. Handwritten drafts of IJ, childhood poems, his personal book collection, it’s all there for us to (soon) see. For DFW’s devoted, the archive promises a thrilling look inside our hero’s beautiful mind, […]
Search Results for: "david foster wallace"
INFINITE JEST: David Foster Wallace Kills Self
NEW YORK TIMES: David Foster Wallace, whose darkly ironic novels, essays and short stories garnered him a large following and made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, was found dead in his California home on Friday, after apparently committing suicide, the authorities said. Mr. Wallace, 46, best known for his sprawling 1,079-page novel “Infinite Jest,” was discovered by his wife, Karen Green, who returned home to find that he had hanged himself, a spokesman for the Claremont, Calif., police said Saturday evening. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer […]
FUNNY GIRL: Matador Recording Artist Lucy Dacus
Photo by DUSTIN CONDREN BY DYLAN LONG You probably haven’t heard of indie rocker Lucy Dacus just yet, but that will soon change. With the release New Burden, her Matador debut LP, she is well on her way to becoming one of the most talked about singer-songwriters of 2016. The girl knows what she’s doing, plain and simple. Her entire debut album was recorded in under 48 hours, her voice kicks major ass, and her lyricism is nothing short of truthful and direct. She’s already notched a #4 spot on Time Magazine’s “Best New Albums of 2016 So Far” list […]
CINEMA: Make Captain America Great Again
BY JAMES M. DAVIS “Enhanced Individuals,” we hear in a newscast at the beginning of Captain America: Civil War, need to be brought into check. At first glance this phrase does what is intended, it deprives superheroes of being both “super” and “heroes.” This is a world where masked super-people have (accidentally) killed innocent people in operations unapproved by any governmental body. Through this phrase we are brought into a world where the Avengers are being asked to sign an accord with the UN which would essentially turn them into a peacekeeping force at the beck and call of […]
MILESTONE: Last Great American Novel Turns 20
HARRY RANSOM CENTER: Twenty years ago, in February of 1996, Little, Brown and Company published David Foster Wallace’s (1962–2008) novel Infinite Jest. It was a bold undertaking for the firm to publish a complex, challenging novel that spans over 1,000 pages and contains hundreds of endnotes, many quite lengthy and all printed in very small type. The sheer size of the book required that it be sold for $30, an unorthodox price for any novel, let alone a second novel by a young, up-and-coming author. Wallace began seriously writing Infinite Jest in 1991. The publication of the book took […]
CINEMA: Irrational Exuberance
IRRATIONAL MAN (2015, directed by Woody Allen, 96 minutes, U.S.< ) EXHUMED FILMS @ THE MAHONING DRIVE-IN THEATER BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A full 45 features into his directing career, Woody Allen returns with a solid entry in his late-career revival. Irrational Man certainly hits on many of the themes and totems we’ve seen explored in previous Allen films (existential ennui, May-September romance, murder plots et al) yet the film has enough fresh elements and performances to warrant turning yourself over to another of the Wood Man’s late-period dramas. Allen has told crime stories before, this is the first […]
Win Tix To See The End Of The Tour @ The Prince
Time is short, so I will cut to the chase: we have a handful of tix to see a special VIP screening of THE END OF THE TOUR, starring Jason Segel as novelist David Foster Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as the magazine writer guy that followed him around on the book tour for Infinite Jest for an article that never published and then turned it into a book/movie after the author’s suicide in 2008 and thereby incurred the wrath of DFW disciples from here to Pluto. The screening is at 7:30 Wednesday night at The Prince Theater. To qualify […]
TONIGHT: The Black Swan
Michael Gira is rock n’ roll’s last great tyrant, and his band Swans is the last outpost of rock n’ roll Stalinism. Many former members have been exiled to the vast Arctic wastes of the Gulags for the sins of disobedience, insubordination or just missing one of the many, many cues he dispenses onstage with a wink of the eye, a nod of the head or a shrug of the shoulders (take it to the bridge, repeat this chorus, go left at the next light, etc.). In fairness, some great literature came out of those Siberian banishments. Little known […]
BOOKS: Infinite Guest
Artwork by TOMMASO PINCIO If David Foster Wallace were alive today, would the famously introverted author be flattered to see himself on the big screen, or horrified at the commodification of his very identity? James Ponsoldt’s new film The End of the Tour recreates five days that the late author David Foster Wallace spent traveling around the Midwest with Rolling Stone Magazine writer David Lipsky around 1996, shortly after Wallace’s critically acclaimed novel Infinite Jest was published. In the film, the two men have a number of philosophical conversations about writing, life, sex, and fame — kind of like if […]
BEING THERE: Swans @ Union Transfer
Photo by PETE TROSHAK Michael Gira is rock n’ roll’s last great tyrant, and his band Swans is the last outpost of rock n’ roll Stalinism. Many former members have been exiled to the vast Arctic wastes of the Gulags for the sins of disobedience, insubordination or just missing one of the many, many cues he dispenses onstage with a wink of the eye, a nod of the head or a shrug of the shoulders (take it to the bridge, repeat this chorus, go left at the next light, etc.). In fairness, some great literature came out of those Siberian […]
CINEMA: Lost In The Canyons
NEW YORK TIMES: Brett Easton Ellis is noticeably absent, holed up less than a mile away waging one of his frequent Twitter wars. (He has mounted social-media jihads against David Foster Wallace, J. D. Salinger and Kathryn Bigelow.) He thinks Lohan is wrong for the part, especially if she’s cast opposite the porn star he courted online. But he spent all his capital getting his man cast. Also, his condo is under water. Ellis will give in. Schrader, Pope and Lohan talk details. The film, “The Canyons,” has a microbudget, maybe $250,000. Ellis, Pope and Schrader are putting up […]
THE DECEMBERISTS: The Calamity Song
NEW YORK TIMES: The video, which made its online debut on Monday, depicts the playing of Eschaton, a game invented by Wallace that he describes about 325 pages into “Infinite Jest.” Adolescents from a New England tennis academy are seen ritualistically serving balls on a court onto which a map of the world has been superimposed. The balls, which represent five-megaton nuclear warheads, are aimed at objects labeled as military targets — power plants, missile installations — while a lone child oversees the game from a nearby computer terminal. All in all, it ain’t exactly Battleship. Wallace himself wrote that […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR JOHN POWERS: Writers love to grumble about the popularity of self-help books, yet they, like everyone else, are always looking for someone who will teach them how to live. Just think of all those guys who learned their masculinity from Hemingway or those classy-sounding books with titles like How Proust Can Change Your Life or How To Live: A Life of Montaigne. One who seemed to know life’s secret was David Foster Wallace, whose suicide, oddly enough, only enhanced his stature as a sage. Whether or not he was the most important American writer of his era, he’s […]