RIP - DFW

David Foster Wallace

[1962 - 2008]

Dead at forty-six.

I don't know how many of you read David Foster Wallace.

His coined phrases such as "Hyperrealistic quotidian detail" the kind of descriptions that tickled your brain and triggered new thought. You could feel it like wood burning or that itchy-twitch of his butterfly wings distantly presaging your mental hurricane.  Concepts such as the perpetual irony of the media mocking itself in increasing rapid cycles of increasing only in its void of real content...

He was in the steady diet of books i read in at a time when I was making the transition from young adult to actual adult. He wrote about living a life free of of irony, an unselfconscious "thing in itself" sort of life. Where we are are not making spending existence in reference to the existence of other things, but in reference to our own experiences as plain folk - who are the only 'real' thing there is to reference at all - really.

Alot of folks didn't dig his work because they thought it was pretentious art-house muck. I heartily disagree - both because I  disdain elitism, and because the folks who  thought that really didn't get it. Find Him. Read him. Don't be intimidated by the big words, thats part of the joke - I promise your in on the infinite jest.

I never knew him. 
I loved him.

I wonder what JD would've said about him.

•  
• 1987
  • Book: "The Broom of the System".
  • "Lyndon." Arrival [Berkeley, CA] vol. 1, no. 2, April 1987.
  • "Other Math." Western Humanities Review [Salt Lake City], Summer 1987
  • "Here and There." Fiction [NY] vol. 8, no. 1-2, Fall 1987
  • "Solomon Silverfish." Sonora Review [Tucson, AZ] no. 16, Fall 1987
  • "Say Never." Florida Review [Gainesville, FL], vol. 15, no. 2, Fall/Winter 1987
• 1988
  • "John Billy" (Possibly with another title). Conjunctions #12. 1988
  • "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young". [Literary Essay] The Review of Contemporary Fiction VIII:3, 1988.
  • "Late Night". Playboy, June 1988.
  • "Little Expressionless Animals". Paris Review, Summer 1988
  • "Here and There". Rpt. in Prize Stories 1989: The O. Henry Awards (Doubleday, Oct. 1988)
  • "Everything Is Green". Puerto del Sol, Vol. 24, No. 1, Fall 1988 (Published under D.F. Wallace slightly different to the GWCH version)
• 1989
  • Book: "Girl with Curious Hair". Stories
  • "Crash of ’69". Between C & D [NY], Winter 1989
  • "Everything is Green". Harper's Magazine. September, 1989. (GWCH).
• 1990
  • Book: "Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race In the Urban Present".
  • "Signifying Rappers". (with Mark Costello). Missouri Review, vol. 13, no. 2, Summer 1990
  • "The Horror of Pretentiousness". (Book Review of The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker). Final Edition. Feb 19.
  • "The Empty Plenum: David Markson's 'Wittgenstein's Mistress'". Review of Contemporary Fiction. Summer, 1990.
  • "Church Not Made With Hands." Rampike [Toronto] Winter/Spring 1991
  • Michael Martone’s Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List. ERATO/Harvard Book Review, Spring 1990. [Book Review]
• 1991
  • "Forever Overhead". Fictional International [San Diego] vol. 19, no. 2, Spring 1991
  • "Exploring Inner Space". (Review of War Fever by J.G. Ballard)Washington Post Apr 28, 1991.
  • "Presley As Paradigm". (Review of Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of Cultural Obsession by Greil Marcus) Los Angeles Times Nov 24, 1991.
  • "Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes". Harper's Magazine. December 1991. titled "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" in ASFT.
  • "Order and Flux in Northampton". Conjunctions:17. Fall 1991.
  • H. L. Hix’s Morte d’Author: An Autopsy. ERATO/Harvard Book Review, Spring 1991
  • F. J. Fiederspiel’s Laura’s Skin. New York Times Book Review, April 1991
  • Reinaldo Arenas’s The Doorman. Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review, June 1991
• 1992
  • "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley"> rpt. in Townships: Essays in Search of the Midwest, ed. Michael Martone. Univ. of Iowa Press, spring 1992
  • DFW's review of The Blindfold (by Siri Hustvedt, Poseidon Press, 1992).Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 76 (1992). AND The Philadelphia Inquirer (May 24 1992, p. M2).
  • "Three Protrusions". Grand Street 42. Spring 1992. (excerpt from IJ).
  • "Rabbit Resurrected". Harper's Magazine. August 1992.
  • "Forever Overhead". Best American Short Stories 1992. (originally in Fiction International 1992. Printed here with introductory note. Heavily revised when included in Brief Interviews).
  • "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko". Grand Street 46. Summer, 1993.
  • Kathy Acker’s Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels. Harvard Review, premier issue, Spring 1992
  • Tracy Austin’s Beyond Center Court: My Story. Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review, August 1992
• 1993
  • "From Quite a Bit Longer Thing In Progress". Conjunctions #20, "Unfinished Business". 1993 -- (about 4 pg intro to an IJ excerpt, talks about reasons for writing, etc. --Aqwavitae)
  • "From 'Infinite Jest'". Review of Contemporary Fiction. Summer, 1993. (excerpt from IJ).
  • "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction". Review of Contemporary Fiction. Summer, 1993. (ASFT).
  • "The Awakening of My Interests in Annular Systems". Harper's Magazine. September 1993. (excerpt from IJ).
• 1994
  • "Several Birds". The New Yorker. June 27/July 4, 1994.
  • "Ticket to the Fair". Harper's Magazine. July 1994. titled "Getting Away from Pretty Much Being Away from it All" in ASFT.
  • "It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father without Knowing Him (II)." The Iowa Review. Volume Twenty-Four, Number Two, Fall 1994. (excerpt from IJ)
  • "It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father without Knowing Him (I)." The Iowa Review. Volume Twenty-Four, Number Three, Fall 1994. (excerpt from IJ)
• 1995
  • "An Interval". The New Yorker. January 30, 1995. (excerpt from IJ).
• 1996
  • Book: "Infinite Jest".
  • "High Regret Ink". In 'Puncture,' #35, Spring 1996, pp. 17-20. {Excerpt from IJ}
  • "Hail The Returning Dragon, Clothed In New Fire" in the book "Shiny Adidas Tracksuits". (A collection of essays from the now defunct Might magazine-- Ryan Walsh). 1996.
  • "David Lynch Keeps His Head". Premiere. 1996.
  • "Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise". Harper's Magazine. January 1996. titled "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" in ASFT.
  • "The String Theory". Esquire. July, 1996. titled "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professsional Artistry as A Paradigm..." in ASFT.
  • "Democracy and commerce at the U.S. Open". Tennis. September, 1996.
  • "Love is all You'll Need: Two Views of Romance in the Next Century" (From Leckie & Webster's Connotationally Gender-Specific Lexicon of Contemporary Usage(Male/His). New York Times Magazine. Sept 29, 1996.
  • "Chivalry". Grand Street 55. Winter, 1996.
• 1997
  • Book: "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again".
  • "Death is Not the End". Grand Street 60. Spring, 1997.
  • "Yet Another Instance of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XXI)". Conjunctions:28. Spring 1997.
  • "Think". Conjunctions:28. Spring 1997.
  • "John Updike, Champion Literary Phallcrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?". The New York Observer. October 13, 1997.
  • "from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men". The Paris Review. Fall, 1997 #144.
  • "Nothing Happened". Open City. Number 5, 1997.
  • "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" (Essay removed from ASFT).
• 1998
  • "The Nature of the Fun" rpt. in 'Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction,' ed. Will Blythe (Little, Brown, 1998), essay taken from magazine.
  • "Self-Harm as a Sort of Offering". Mid-American Review. Volume XVIII, Number 2 Spring 1998.
  • "The flexicon". (writers writing on language, DFW's section included) Parnassus: poetry in review 23:1/2, 1998.
  • "The Depressed Person". Harper's Magazine. January 1998.
  • "Pop Quiz". Spelunker. Volume 1. Number 4. April(?) 1998.
  • "A FUN THING THEY'LL NEVER DO AGAIN Gus Van Sant meets David Foster Wallace". Dazed & Confused. May 1998.
  • "A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life". Ploughshares. Spring 1998
  • "F/X Porn". Waterstone's Magazine. Winter/Spring 1998.
  • "Adult World I-II". Esquire (US edition only). July 1998.
  • "Laughing with Kafka". Harper's Magazine. July 1998.
  • "Neither Adult Nor Entertainment". Premiere. September 1998. (Under the pseudonyms Willem R. deGroot and Matt Rundlet)
  • "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men -- What They Talk About When They Talk About Themselves". Harper's. October 1998.
  • "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VIII)". McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. October 1998.
  • "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XII)". Esquire (US). November 1998.
• 1999
  • Book: "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men". Stories.
  • "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, The Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon". Tin House 1:1, 1999.
  • "Another Example of the Porousness of Various Borders (VI): Projected But Not Improbable Transcript of Author's Parents' Marriage's End, 1971." (On the spine of!) McSweeney's Late Summer, Early Fall 1999.
  • 100-word statement by DFW in #830/831 (30 Dec. 1999-6 January 2000), p. 125
• 2000
  • E-Book: "Up, Simba!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate" (Retitled longer version of April Rolling Stone Article). September.
  • "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub". Rolling Stone Issue 838. April 13, 2000
  • "Mr. Squishy." McSweeney's Issue 5. 2000. (Under the pseudonym Elizabeth Klemm)
  • "Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama,". Science. 22 December 2000
• 2001
  • The Best of the Prose Poem, ed. Peter Johnson. In 'Rain Taxi,' vol. 6, #1 (Spring 2001): 22-24. [Book Review]
  • "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub" reprinted in 'The Best American Magazine Writing 2001,' ed. Harold M. Evans (NY: PublicAffairs/Perseus Books, 2001).
  • "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage". Harper's Magazine. April 2002
  • "Incarnations of Burned Children". Esquire. (Date unknown)
  • "The View from Mrs. Thompson's." Essay. Rolling Stone. October 25 Issue
  • "Good Old Neon". Conjunctions, 37; 20th anniversary ed. Nov 2001
  • "Another Pioneer". Summer 2001 issue of The Colorado Review, "Special Issue: Trying Fiction". Dec 2001
• 2002
  • "Peoria {4}". TriQuarterly #112. June 2002
  • "Peoria {9} 'Whispering Pines'". TriQuarterly #112. June 2002
• 2003
  • Book Non-Fiction: Everything and More. October 2003 "The Soul Is Not a Smithy" AGNI 57.
  • "Year of Glad" (opening pages of IJ p3-17)in a new anthology called "Love Stories: A Literary Companion to Tennis", edited by Adam Sexton (NY: Citadel Press, 2003), pp. 24-38.
  • "On His Deathbed..." to be rpt. in 'Bestial Noise: The "Tin House" Fiction Reader,' no ed. listed, Bloomsbury/Tin House, April 2003.
  • Wallace's Dostoevsky essay was rpt. in 'War of the Words', ed. Joy Press (Three Rivers Press, 2001), an anthology of Village Voice essays.
  • "Incarnations of Burned Children" collected in "The burned children of America" May, 2003
• 2004
  • Book: Oblivion: Stories. June 2004
  • New Entry "Consider the Lobster." Essay. Gourmet Magazine August 2004. (Clicking on the link will allow you to view it in pdf format)
  • New Entry Reference "The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus". Contibutor. Oxford University Press. October, 2004.
  • New Entry 'Borges': Writer on the Couch review. New York Times Sunday book review. November 7 2004.
• 2005
  • "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (viii)" reprinted in The Best of McSweeney's Volume One.Hamish Hamilton 2005 (or 2004?)
  • Essays: "Consider the Lobster and Other Essays". Little Brown. Dec 2005.
• •