27:24 as someone born in the year 2000, this is something I find myself discussing with many of the people closest to me. Most people just brush it off as pretentious cynicism, but this right here is everything I feel in my heart. If you’re out there David, just know that this is the reason you became a writer, to give people like me a language to communicate my psychosis with, and someday maybe as a species we can create or conceive a new and broader understanding of reality. Thank you
I have profound love for this man. This life couldn't be confined to the brief moment one occupies in history. I hope this as much for men like him as I do for myself and my loved ones.
I'm in the amazingly blissful state of discovery of David Foster Wallace as well as noticing his subtle interaction from the standpoint that's between author and reader, how he takes me "fully" into the microcosm of the worlds David creates. I love the intricate details that are never omitted, the picturesque landscapes, the barely seen physical characteristics that become unconscious in obsessive mannerisms, they are such a delight to read about. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of readings available for me to learn from. Thank you Mr Wallace for your dedication and love of writing. Powerfully influential so say the very, very least!
In Minnesota, tornado sirens were always going off at like 2pm. I can’t recall ever hearing one go off in the middle of the night. I seem to remember it was always mid to late afternoon. And the skies turn almost a deep eerie green. Very dark ominous green way in the distance and the clouds looming and obviously everything getting very dark for that hour in the summer as it comes through. We always had really bad ass thunderstorms in the summer in Minnesota. I can’t recall anything that truly compares here in VA or DC.
As a creative type struggling with 10+ years of depression it is unimaginable to me the effort DFW had to muster to find windows to write. There are weeks on end when just rising from bed is attuned to summiting Everest. I do find brief windows to create. That said, it would have taken me 30 years to write Infinite Jest. Pushing past the crippling disease to be brilliant in spite of it will be his greatest achievement.
I've had it for about 25 years, it never goes away. I work with the geriatric population and they confirmed my biggest fears, depression is lifelong. I have spoken to adult children who are their parents legal guardians or power of attorney, they tell me how their mom or dad was always depressed or struggling with mental health issues. For some people, it is something that you will take to your grave. Imagine, living 70+ years battling depression and constant mood swings.
I write for me, or some obscure publishers who find my crate well after I've become cat food. Sorry. I do paint and can send you images if you like. Send me your email.
His life reminds me of Nietzsche. A talented, hardworking hyper-sensitive, hyper-intellectual ,overwhelmed by the chaos of our times and who never found inner peace.
Thank you so much for posting this. This is the best piece about DFW I've heard or read since his death. Ward provided much insight. The narrated selections from Dave's writing were perfect. The contributions from his sister Amy and friend Mark Costello were touching and illuminating. DFW was so much more than his depression. A great place to learn more about the kind of person DFW was is McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Memories of David Foster Wallace.
"....A person who is clinically depressed or in chronic pain cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell...everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a Hell for one." Well, there it is. I've never heard it said better.
everything is part of being. There is no solution. clinical depressed people maybe stay short before "enlightment" - ironically seriosly and de-solate.
often we lie to ourselves, we fool ourselves into believing one thing will make us happy once we get there, out of anxiety, due to fear of realizing that we dont know what ACTUALLY makes us happy. or that what we're doing and how we're doing it, isn't going to make us happy. but of course we're insistent on reaching the "goal", without truly knowing why, yet somehow very deep down, we know we aren't being totally honest with ourselves, but again, we proceed out of anxiety.
Too bad this is only on radio. I lived in Urbana when I attended the University of Illinois. Would be nice to see the places they describe here. Wow, David Foster Wallace. What can you say? So sensitive, aware, real. Had integrity about his writing. Was not going to dumb it down for the masses. He expects you to do your homework. Terrible thing he was tormented enough to make that decision.
Much agreed. I like the interviews with his sister. She gets me as close to those places as I can get without actually going to Urbana (nothing against Urbana; I'd actually like to visit).
Someone needs to do a serious computer analysis of the patterns (think loom weaving) especially of "Infinite Jest." I met Davey in Montessori. He was two years behind me. At four he mastered the program in a couple of months and went away to read encyclopedias. At fourteen you could open a volume of the Brittanica and start reading anywhere and he could pick it up from across the room and orally finish the section exactly word for word memorized. He was THE smartest person I have known in my life. I had advanced algebra class with him as I was a senior. I have met others with higher I.Q.s, but they were nonfunctionally social at thier level. I kept weirdly bumping onto Davey at intervals over the next 30 years. I know secrets. Do not local idolize Urbana. Champaign-Urbana has darkness. The house he grew up in was outside of town down Philo Rd. God bless the English teachers at Urbana High and UJHS. (Bonnie Blair's Mom was a great one, and yes, I had to sing the Blunder Dog song in Mrs. Wallace's class.) --Grateful Grammer Noodnik
@James Wagner I grew up 3 blocks east of U of I. Yes I miss the good things, but it is a strange small world. I dare not name the coach who tormented us beginning in 4th grade, a WW2 vet, my swimming coach, Davey's for tennis, but the hellish things he said are word perfect repeated in Infinite Jest.
Fascinating person. I believe he was quite brilliant and sensitive but also quite insecure. Sorry that he could not be saved from his own depression. I’ve enjoyed learning about his life. Thank you David.
This is an extremely well-written comment that I have no choice but to disagree with in the strongest terms possible, either because it professes an idea that I fundamentally reject, or because I can't embrace the levels of irony. But it is beautiful, whether intended to be or not.
Picked up a copy of The Pale King at Powell's today, surprised to see it out so soon. I thought it was being released on tax day. Can't wait to dive in. Too bad it's his last work.
How does one escape irony in a civilization inundated by irony? I felt he employed irony to draw our attention to authenticity.... Which I suppose is ironic, and why he's a genius
Imagine is DFW lived to see today's social media and array of entertainment available from all these apps to be viewed on your "portable phone" as mentioned in Infinite Jest and you don't even need to rent "cartridges".
DFW's comments about our mediated culture, and how it would be a good thing for us to remember the entire reason we are immersed in this "thrice removed" version of reality (all for the sole purpose to be sold material "things"), were thoughts and words he had in the mid-90's. Now, 20 years later, we have the host of a reality TV show as our president. Television, and now, social media, has eviscerated our humanity, and no amount of "clicktavism" will save us..
William L. I am actually currently reading his essay E Unibus Pluram from early 90s. It is about the exact thing you mention. And it’s so unnervingly accurate and insightful. Us watching them knowing they know we know we Are watching. Following suit.
how he describe TV influence is I think very accurate. The Avant Garde decided long ago that art's objective is to offend the middle class. But they keep on beating a dead horse , as the middle class stopped paying attention to art when they have trash TV like Maury Povich show.
I wonder what David would say these days. So much earnestness and urgency in what he said then about a then that led to now and he saw it coming to be. What would he tell us now?
I am a die-hard fan, but I actually laughed out loud at this. By the way, if anybody has yet to hear, Michael Pietsch put together a new essay collection of DFW's work called Both Flesh and Not.
David Foster Wallace definitely sounds like someone I want to read...although I knew nothing of him until I heard of his suicide...such a shame to see a lifes work through that prism...got find Infinite jest and give a good read through
it's the same with me, i discovered wallace after his death, i think people here are making too much of a "looking for clues" with his suicide, it's where he came from and it's impossible not to notice. 25:10. wallace takes you on these cascading descriptions of tedium, the mundane, and everyday life that leave you with a foreboding you weren't aware of, you can feel his despair, it's very real. enjoy, the man was a literary genius.
I have just got a copy of Infinite Jest and am reading through it! Very interesting and I can see why he is compared a lot to Pynchon, although his descriptions of intellectual adults kind of remind me of the J.D Salinger Glass family novels. Still...only on page 40 out of nearly a 1000...so better reserve total judgement :)
I was inreoduced to David Foster Wallace's world by reading Quack This Way for my preperation to write my many masters degree papers. I feel like i missed out on so much, and I hope to read everything he wrote.
Wallace asks the question: "Who would want to live, when you can watch?", in reference to TV's ability to suck you in and perhaps disable your interest in living in the real world. Of course, those people in the world who "live" (i.e. live as well as watch, or instead of watching) know that the experience of doing is far deeper than simply the experience of watching someone else doing, for the majority of people, for the reason that more senses are involved in real experience, and we are, after all, in the world in a very real physical sense (despite any philosophical claim that experience is only perception.) In addition, each new generation encounters technology that potentially threatens to upend the world as they know it when growing up. DeLillo says it in this documentary: Wallace’s voice is always a young voice. Perhaps he is being kind, as that might also be rephrased as: Wallace’s voice is often an immature voice. Information technology - admittedly a broad classification - despite its association with our brains more than with our bodies is, nonetheless, just another set of tools. We have the choice to cherrypick what we want from that tech; we have the choice to turn off or get rid of the TV, as Wallace did at times during his life. Yet he was still addicted to the medium, and this personal addiction was magnified by him into an almost conspiratorial assault on the culture by the threat of mindless entertainment. This is nothing new. Edward R Murrow, the great investigative journalist from the 1950s, warned us about corporations and the dumbing-down of TV by the power of advertising and dollar wielding corporations. This is very much echoed in Infinite Jest as if it were something new: it is not new, though it has certainly spread since the 1950s. Wallace was also preoccupied by cleverness, self-worth, and the precedents of prior generations of writers. Clinical depression is an awful thing: it is the great deadener, and those who have experienced it understand what it can do to a person over time. When in a state of deep depression, the only option a person appears to have is to “watch, and not to live”, to turn the first statement above on its head. Wallace only began to write after his first major bout with depression, and so it is not unexpected that he wrote of a world in which he was - to quote Wallace - “stripped of agency”. But that does not mean, a priori, that the modern world, filled with technology and distractions as it is, is becoming a place where agency is absent for everyone. Wallace clearly felt it was this way for him, at times, but his addictions and in particular his addiction to self-reference, to solipsism as he called it, was a very personal thing, and perhaps not a universal malady of our times. Which brings me, naturally, to the statement that perhaps an inordinate percentage of Wallace’s American generation, and the generations that followed it are self-centered, solipsistic, selfish, shallow, trivial, and completely self-absorbed. Coupled with this, however, is a growing awareness among members of the youngest generations that are currently alive in the US, is that the patriarchal values of prior generations are not sustainable, either for society or for the physical world itself. It appears that young people at present are more accepting of difference in the world, and are more aware that experience in one locale does not necessarily equip one to understand experience in another locale, and hence the need for interaction and actually experiencing the world elsewhere before we legislate or arbitrate on behalf of populations we do not know. This we certainly cannot do by simply “watching”, as Wallace would have it. My personal concern with Wallace and his generation of writers is that - distilled over a little more time - they might not amount to more than a slightly better educated Beat Generation. The Beats and the Hippies went out into the world to experience it, that is, they pushed back against the claustrophobia and conformity of the late 1940s and 1950s, but in the process they often abandoned solid learning, and the shallowness of their knowledge was glaring once the bright novelty of their rebellion was dimmed by its ubiquity. In contrast to, but in many ways in concert with, the Beats and Hippies, the overly self-aware and technique-proficient artists of Wallace’s generation have walked away from experience and into their studies with their world-processors and TVs, and they have confused diffuse knowledge and information with the deeper understanding that comes from non-indulgent self-reflection. The world is not their interest: they themselves are their interest, and they confuse personal pathologies with pathologies that might or might not exist in the real world. And by “exist” I mean exist without a sufficient quantity of counter-pathologies that might very well help to restore the balance of a socially and economically sustainable culture. In short, I still find that Camus, Mann, Woolf, Conrad, Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, et al. present and synthesize the world of experience, without resort to cheap irony or solipsism, in a deeper way than does the generation of Wallace (or Pynchon or Barth, for that matter.) Uncertainty is an integral part of experience and the world - one might say that it is the central understanding of people in the real world. Mature adults, paradoxically, do not keep referring to the underlying uncertainty of all action, the uncertainty of value of each action, the uncertainty of the purpose of self, in spite of the manifest uncertainty that is all around us. Being in the modern world, with all our experiences and understandings is about how to manage these paradoxes through meaningful compromises. There isn’t a solution to the conundrum of being sentiently human; there is only the understanding that we approximate understanding as best we can, without constant reference to those approximations. Beckett says it well, and with a poetry I find absent in most modern writers: “For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”
This is a great comment. I like that it's been edited. I gotta offer a little criticism to be fair, so I will say that to group DFW's generation of writers as "slightly better educated" beats misses the whole point of this particular existential crisis. I believe the juxtaposition in time validates this generation's respect for the beats, but I think this will last on its own. Also, I must say that, in possibly the worst forum for comment which I visit regularly, you have done a lot of heavy lifting to give me faith to carry on. Cheers.
Thank you for elevating UA-cam’s comments. This is at least 6 standard deviations above the mean in clarity * complexity. Thanks again. Makes me think that this type of thing is more common in our culture than I had estimated.
And somehow you missed the incredible generosity of spirit contained in his best writing, the desire to connect, communicate genuinely with another human being. Perhaps because you approached this with a preformed concept of who he was and his work. Or you failed to penetrate the work. Which makes your entire comment masturbation, performative, and self-congratulatory. Obtuse. You missed the point entirely.
Again, IJ is a post postmodern novel and hyper-realistic. I believe Wikipedia classifies IJ as "hysterical realism and post postmodern" when listing its genre, if memory serves.
28:00 he is right, we used to wonder what other places were like, now I know without even having to go there at all.. therefore I don't want to do anything
Very interesting that the publisher Michael Pitsch(?) talks very much like David Foster Wallace. probably picked up his mannerism and tone from studying him and his work.
+oblong, about 22 minutes into this interview with Christopher Lydon - he describes himself as "fortunate" after having seen the people around him in the halfway house (ua-cam.com/video/qm_u3YoL8s8/v-deo.html). As far as his depression goes, the "Trillaphon" essay from 1984 (in the new Reader of his work) does a lot to illuminate his problems and viewpoint..and with a very clever Joycean ear. Thank you.
unbelievable how DFW cult has made so much of Wallace's failures...it's almost as they need his intellectual-jock-sensitive anti-hero to be more than he is...or could be....cultists desperately assure us DFW is great and 'see" greatness in his work, like spiritualists reading tea leaves, that simply does NOT exist and is impossible to substantiate. his work doesn't support it. DFW would be the first to acknowledge his failure to achieve anything ever resembling great! No wonder he committed suicide. To fail to live up to 'boy genius' laurels, forever, each day, hour, and minute contributing it's mite to the solid accretions of failure is insupportable. He had intellect, but lacked the transformative imagination necessary for greatness. Like his tennis career, halfway great signified nothing in literature. A teacher, critic and essayist would have been a better metier...however, there is no glory in criticism...very sad. Zadie Smith's essay on DFW & Infinite Jest was the best...An A for participation.
The end notes being on just one stereo channel is extremely annoying if you're listening through headphones. Whoever is responsible for that should feel really bad.
DFW would def have an invite to my tea party; he would be the first to stir the cream inside my teacup amongst the many others in line worthy of the spoon. 🃏👑 keep writing and keep kuming smiling 😊
Did you watch the whole video and then come on here to make a silly ironic tribute to him? You could very well consider him talentless, but I think this video shows at the very least he was pretty brilliant, and thoughtful about what he did. Where did you discover he was so bad to the people around him?
As a creative person, the cliche of depression giving the artist material to work with is just that, a cliche. Seems odd that someone obviously as smart and spiritually in-tune would believe this cliche.
I'm not sure it is. Depression often makes people stay isolated on their own, for months at a time with nothing but their thoughts. A lot of time to think about life, happiness, loneliness etc... depression isn't required for these things obviously but it can force you to confront things you might not have done.
ya I think what people don't realize is it's the artist not the depression making the art and that its a common side effect to humans, not exculsively artists. It actual seems to get in the way a great deal more than inspire, I would imagine
"in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance. or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning" maybe some things can both be cliche and have validity..?
I think if you consider a mathematics class teachers typically insist students show their work how they arrive at their conclusions whereas in an English class they usually just want the finished product an edited essay. Wallace with his footnotes seems to combine both expectations it's more thorough if a reader wants details and sources cited they are provided in the endnotes. He seemed very meticulous I am sure he would despise modern communications of just abbreviations and emojis that is just cave drawings a regression to someone of his intellect likely.
Why would it seem logical that Easterners would opt for a house without a basement? And why in Illinois, where the winters are harsh, would any structure have a shallow foundation?
What an unnecessary jab at Sylvia Plath at the end. We see here an attitude that is sadly redolent with so many others; that a man writing about the minutiae, repetitiveness and tedium of everyday depression makes him a brave genius of scope (just like Joyce!), but a woman of equal talent who does so is fobbed off as 'merely' obsessing over 'a small melancholy.' Plath's work is painted here as somehow myopic in the eyes of Costello, the apparently proud, self-affirmed bigot. He needs to give Brief Interviews With Hideous Men a closer reading as he obviously missed the many vital lessons Wallace laid so artfully there for him to find.
Women can never feel as deeply as a man, nor be as rational. Yes I am being sarcastic. No need to make a comparison like that with Plath. Both were clearly deeply depressed people. Being a man doesn't make one some how magically more poetic due to depression nor women less. Hemingway might be a better comparison. Plath was writing more or less up to her death. Hemingway, like Foster Wallace, killed himself when he found he couldn't write any more. You don't have to tear down a woman to build up a man.
Ad Hoc. exactly... DFW was his generation's Holden Caulfield...the average bro marijuana culture mashup...long hair & top knot prob has its own wiki references & fan club...(laughing at how many fans & 'dudes' say he was ahead of his time for his hairstyle!)...with average bro sport culture, overlaid with the struggling intellectual weighed down by his mighty, troubled yet hidden visionary 'genius' (of course)...he hits all the 'cool' archetypes wo ever producing anything to live up to the boy genius or even, as he matured, any genius...yes, he was earnest and based on a few measly tidbits, his generation decided to adore him and award him their coolest bro writer participation trophy... once DFW realized he had hadn't anything to sustain the hero-worship or deserve hailing as a visionary, and would only fail and fail and fail, year after year to live up to the hype...I'm sure he saw an excruciating future for someone who had collected too easily & too early notice of future expectation & greatness he couldn't live up to...
I assume he spent time doing public service in some way---helping others on the ground level, or doing animal rescue, etc, those types of actions that get you out of catering to ones own mirrors. Being depressed is a modern luxury,. How well we get out of it is an indicator of how powerful are our imaginations.
What a juxtaposition of such a depressed mind, set in neural pathways of deep intellect. ItsMost interesting how he says the depression is sometimes the catalyst for the deeper understanding. The bible says that pain makes you grow. Too bad his pain consumed him.I think hearing his story can help other depressed people. When you think of astronomy and dark matter, we are made if dark matter and light. The dark matter holds the light together, so although we want to be light mostly- the dark matter is still required outwisenthe light has no ability to stay grouped.His dark matter Consumed his light.
Ironically -- Sorry David -- I'm learning more about this genius through this documentary (and/or interviews) on UA-cam. I don't watch too much TV; I do watch too many "pop-culture" movies. But isn't it interesting, especially apropos of his explanation of documentaries presenting life-near-the-sea versus actually visiting the sea, I'm learning about his man through a collage of 2min. to 1.5hr. documentaries/interviews never having read a piece of his work. Regardless, I'm appreciating his story, and at least (possibly more) aware of my consumeristic/comoditized life. Look forward to reading -- at least -- some of his short stories.
There may not be something wrong with 6-8 hours of TV, but it is nice to remember that someone is trying to sell and offer seduction to you for 6-8 hours a day. In a time in our country when it is hard to find and commit to things that are important and good. Our experience is weird now, thrice removed from the real world. What at stake is, human agency, of how we experience the world. Would I go to the ocean or watch an amazing documentary about it? Who would want to live, when you can watch?
I love Wallace but there's something of the puritan in him. I feel that Wallace lumps irony in with snark, which was also ubiquitous but is not quite synonymous. Irony is really a loving strip tease for someone you have the hots for, as is the case with Dickens who rarely ironies-down, whereas snark is the social imposture he derides as a solipsistic carapace.
If being able to play tennis very well, and to be good at maths, to have the opportunity to study philosophy, to get good, prestigious jobs, to come from an intellectually-stimulating family background with some degree of pedigree, if being a celebrated writer aware of ones own powers....if all this is not enough to create any happiness, ---and if given such a brilliant mind ---if all this is not enough to bring peace of mind, then maybe he was lucky to be able to commit suicide. I would hope that now, on the other hand, with some renewed discussions that entertain the idea that consciousness survives death....he may be the most unfortunate of all. Is this the real truth behind "cosmic horror"?
This idea that I am alone with my thoughts and no one understands me is b.s ---l.Wittgenstein showed us we have no thoughts that are not put into words, and we all can learn the words, so we all can/do have your thoughts. why is it DFW gets more play than LW ? because LW was onto something, and DFW goes down a dead end trail....They don't want you learning anything.
Not at all the case, Wallace is a post modern writer which takes directly after many of the traditions birthed from modernism one being the the limitation of language by Wittigestien , so to say Wallace is not aware of this is just flat out false. I'm not going to waste my time explaining the differences between modernism and post modernism, it essentially can be summed up as the modernist tended to be more optimistic about the human condition while the post modernist tend to be pessimistic, these core feelings are than expressed through the many different intellectuals tools we have to explain reality and in this specific case literary tools ect....
@Sterlin Walter - lol. I'll give you a couple of blaringly obvious reasons that have nothing to do with your conspiracy theory. Wittgenstein is a philosopher...he wrote one book while he was alive...in the 1900's... Wallace is a contemporary fiction writer who wrote in English. That's enough. I don't know why I bother answering things like this. Sigh.
You are mistaken about Wittgenstein. Yes, he once believed that we have no thoughts that are not put into words but that was before someone flipped him off and in his anger, suddenly realized he was wrong--we have a shared experience that often needs no words to convey. From that point on his ideas took a 180. As for DFW, he nails this early LW idea with Hal in IJ and the later LW with Don Gately. And what a beautiful trail DFW takes us down in IJ.
27:24 as someone born in the year 2000, this is something I find myself discussing with many of the people closest to me. Most people just brush it off as pretentious cynicism, but this right here is everything I feel in my heart. If you’re out there David, just know that this is the reason you became a writer, to give people like me a language to communicate my psychosis with, and someday maybe as a species we can create or conceive a new and broader understanding of reality. Thank you
What a loss we have all suffered. Goodbye, David- you are missed by many people.
What a gain we have enjoyed. Hello David-you remain present and alive to so many people.
I have profound love for this man. This life couldn't be confined to the brief moment one occupies in history. I hope this as much for men like him as I do for myself and my loved ones.
This is how I feel exactly.
you love a dude playing a role - read a good DFW bio
Makes zero sense.
It means he was living in a persona, a role more than his authentic self@@CraigStCyrPlus
Great comment good friend, keep your thoughts clear and your heart open.
♥️💙
Finished reading 'The Pale King"...BRILLIANT!!...DFW has me looking at everyday life differently.Boredom is good.
I am just about to read it
Not if you're clinically depressed it's not. Boredom can lead to bad things happening to good, even genius-level, people.
@@cjbrown1979 well said. “Be unborable.”
This book is breaking my heart. I read it at work on my breaks. It is literally my boredom survival training.
I'm in the amazingly blissful state of discovery of David Foster Wallace as well as noticing his subtle interaction from the standpoint that's between author and reader, how he takes me "fully" into the microcosm of the worlds David creates. I love the intricate details that are never omitted, the picturesque landscapes, the barely seen physical characteristics that become unconscious in obsessive mannerisms, they are such a delight to read about. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of readings available for me to learn from. Thank you Mr Wallace for your dedication and love of writing. Powerfully influential so say the very, very least!
R.I.P. David Foster Wallace a true legend. I truly hope you find peace brother.
I really love Wallace's conversational voice... It would've been lovely to have audiobooks done by him.
Matt is
AaMarcoux eew
He did make audiobooks
There is a highly recommended reading by D.F.W of his essay 'Consider The Lobster.'
Search UA-cam for the words "David Foster Wallace reads". There are many. ❤
In Minnesota, tornado sirens were always going off at like 2pm. I can’t recall ever hearing one go off in the middle of the night. I seem to remember it was always mid to late afternoon. And the skies turn almost a deep eerie green. Very dark ominous green way in the distance and the clouds looming and obviously everything getting very dark for that hour in the summer as it comes through. We always had really bad ass thunderstorms in the summer in Minnesota. I can’t recall anything that truly compares here in VA or DC.
As a creative type struggling with 10+ years of depression it is unimaginable to me the effort DFW had to muster to find windows to write. There are weeks on end when just rising from bed is attuned to summiting Everest. I do find brief windows to create. That said, it would have taken me 30 years to write Infinite Jest. Pushing past the crippling disease to be brilliant in spite of it will be his greatest achievement.
I've had it for about 25 years, it never goes away. I work with the geriatric population and they confirmed my biggest fears, depression is lifelong. I have spoken to adult children who are their parents legal guardians or power of attorney, they tell me how their mom or dad was always depressed or struggling with mental health issues. For some people, it is something that you will take to your grave. Imagine, living 70+ years battling depression and constant mood swings.
Do you have anything published Dean? I would love to read some of your writings.
I write for me, or some obscure publishers who find my crate well after I've become cat food. Sorry. I do paint and can send you images if you like. Send me your email.
Yes, it's a bastard. 🕳️
Writing Infinite Jest would have taken me infinity to write.
His life reminds me of Nietzsche.
A talented, hardworking hyper-sensitive, hyper-intellectual ,overwhelmed by the chaos of our times and who never found inner peace.
and hated jews.
widgertrevor
I don't know about Wallace, but Nietzsche did not support hatred of Jews.
nietzsche hated the jews. he's a racist hack.
+widgertrevor NOT TRUE.
NO I think he was uglier than Nietzsche
A so sweet,brilliant and lovely person. What a huge lost for the world literature...we'll never forget him
We are pawns in the chess of life and he is the grandmaster that sees all moves.
This is a magnificent comment.
Thank you so much for posting this. This is the best piece about DFW I've heard or read since his death. Ward provided much insight. The narrated selections from Dave's writing were perfect. The contributions from his sister Amy and friend Mark Costello were touching and illuminating. DFW was so much more than his depression. A great place to learn more about the kind of person DFW was is McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Memories of David Foster Wallace.
"....A person who is clinically depressed or in chronic pain cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell...everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a Hell for one." Well, there it is. I've never heard it said better.
everything is part of being. There is no solution. clinical depressed people maybe stay short before "enlightment" - ironically seriosly and de-solate.
Yes I call it a black hole of despair.
It is a Hell for one. Best thing ever written about depression. Ironic that reading DFW's work made me less depressed...
He was unique too sensitive to overcome his malady. Analyzed things too deeply
'In it's sheer scope, Infinite Jest is almost equal to anything I've attempted.'
Martin Amis.
😂
Amis being a bit of a twat. 😂
Man, i almost cried while hearing this 16:46, and i never cry.
Just finished Infinite Jest. Gave me a major case of the Howling Fantods.
That book changed my life
He was truly brilliant, his perception and articulation of irony and it's limits is incredible, he saw what others simply could not see.
So moving to hear the great Don Delillo's voice speaking on Wallace. I love both writers, but am more familiar with Delillo.
thx so much for the upload. this was very enjoyable, one of the best explorations of this great writer i've heard....
He's very good at deconstructing a much more complex culture than a writer of the past had to deal with.
There is nothing complex about the late 20th, early 21st century. Well, maybe the Windows APIs, but he wasn't writing about those.
often we lie to ourselves, we fool ourselves into believing one thing will make us happy once we get there, out of anxiety, due to fear of realizing that we dont know what ACTUALLY makes us happy. or that what we're doing and how we're doing it, isn't going to make us happy. but of course we're insistent on reaching the "goal", without truly knowing why, yet somehow very deep down, we know we aren't being totally honest with ourselves, but again, we proceed out of anxiety.
it's the actual pursuit that is rewarding, not achieving.
Too bad this is only on radio. I lived in Urbana when I attended the University of Illinois. Would be nice to see the places they describe here. Wow, David Foster Wallace. What can you say? So sensitive, aware, real. Had integrity about his writing. Was not going to dumb it down for the masses. He expects you to do your homework. Terrible thing he was tormented enough to make that decision.
Much agreed. I like the interviews with his sister. She gets me as close to those places as I can get without actually going to Urbana (nothing against Urbana; I'd actually like to visit).
Someone needs to do a serious computer analysis of the patterns (think loom weaving) especially of "Infinite Jest."
I met Davey in Montessori. He was two years behind me. At four he mastered the program in a couple of months and went away to read encyclopedias. At fourteen you could open a volume of the Brittanica and start reading anywhere and he could pick it up from across the room and orally finish the section exactly word for word memorized. He was THE smartest person I have known in my life. I had advanced algebra class with him as I was a senior. I have met others with higher I.Q.s, but they were nonfunctionally social at thier level.
I kept weirdly bumping onto Davey at intervals over the next 30 years. I know secrets. Do not local idolize Urbana. Champaign-Urbana has darkness. The house he grew up in was outside of town down Philo Rd. God bless the English teachers at Urbana High and UJHS. (Bonnie Blair's Mom was a great one, and yes, I had to sing the Blunder Dog song in Mrs. Wallace's class.)
--Grateful Grammer Noodnik
@@rossjohnson1872 I lived on East Michigan in Urbana when I was at the U of I.
@James Wagner I grew up 3 blocks east of U of I. Yes I miss the good things, but it is a strange small world. I dare not name the coach who tormented us beginning in 4th grade, a WW2 vet, my swimming coach, Davey's for tennis, but the hellish things he said are word perfect repeated in Infinite Jest.
@@rossjohnson1872 Could you share any more stories about him?
Recognise the narrator from a certain Skyarts show. Great voice. Wallace, your value is immeasurable. Rest in super creative peace.
Wonderful. Thank you
His take on irony around the 19,20 mark is absolutly spot on!
19:20
@ thanks mate
Thank you very much! 👏
Fascinating person. I believe he was quite brilliant and sensitive but also quite insecure. Sorry that he could not be saved from his own depression. I’ve enjoyed learning about his life. Thank you David.
I think he was a gritty genius valuing humility, privacy, and authenticity while loathing pretention - which some mistake as insecurity.
He continually talked about how post modern deconstruction and relativism led only into despair and then to have these people here doing exactly that.
This is an extremely well-written comment that I have no choice but to disagree with in the strongest terms possible, either because it professes an idea that I fundamentally reject, or because I can't embrace the levels of irony.
But it is beautiful, whether intended to be or not.
Man i wish i had a birdseye view timelapse of dfw just writing.
thank you so much for posting this
19:00 so applicable to 'modern' music composition.
thanks for uploading this
Picked up a copy of The Pale King at Powell's today, surprised to see it out so soon. I thought it was being released on tax day. Can't wait to dive in. Too bad it's his last work.
Look to William Styron. His voice on depression is appreciated by many.
How does one escape irony in a civilization inundated by irony? I felt he employed irony to draw our attention to authenticity.... Which I suppose is ironic, and why he's a genius
Imagine is DFW lived to see today's social media and array of entertainment available from all these apps to be viewed on your "portable phone" as mentioned in Infinite Jest and you don't even need to rent "cartridges".
DFW's comments about our mediated culture, and how it would be a good thing for us to remember the entire reason we are immersed in this "thrice removed" version of reality (all for the sole purpose to be sold material "things"), were thoughts and words he had in the mid-90's. Now, 20 years later, we have the host of a reality TV show as our president. Television, and now, social media, has eviscerated our humanity, and no amount of "clicktavism" will save us..
Echoed by George Carlin's proclamation years ago that this country is done.
William L. I am actually currently reading his essay E Unibus Pluram from early 90s. It is about the exact thing you mention. And it’s so unnervingly accurate and insightful. Us watching them knowing they know we know we Are watching. Following suit.
without a doubt
how he describe TV influence is I think very accurate.
The Avant Garde decided long ago that art's objective is to offend the middle class. But they keep on beating a dead horse , as the middle class stopped paying attention to art when they have trash TV like Maury Povich show.
Even worse is when the middle class starts to watch class-bashing ironic TV like "Always Sunny."
I wonder what David would say these days. So much earnestness and urgency in what he said then about a then that led to now and he saw it coming to be. What would he tell us now?
The same bullshit that he told you back then, presumably.
I loved his works. I really had difficulty to understand his works while doing research.
Read The Pale King very carefully. It contains every trope of David's work.
I am a die-hard fan, but I actually laughed out loud at this.
By the way, if anybody has yet to hear, Michael Pietsch put together a new essay collection of DFW's work called Both Flesh and Not.
Does anyone else enjoy listening to DFW talk in interviews, but not enjoy his writing? I don't know why I feel that way.
Agreed, I can't read his work.
David Foster Wallace definitely sounds like someone I want to read...although I knew nothing of him until I heard of his suicide...such a shame to see a lifes work through that prism...got find Infinite jest and give a good read through
read infinite jest, you will never be the same.
it's the same with me, i discovered wallace after his death, i think people here are making too much of a "looking for clues" with his suicide, it's where he came from and it's impossible not to notice. 25:10. wallace takes you on these cascading descriptions of tedium, the mundane, and everyday life that leave you with a foreboding you weren't aware of, you can feel his despair, it's very real. enjoy, the man was a literary genius.
I have just got a copy of Infinite Jest and am reading through it! Very interesting and I can see why he is compared a lot to Pynchon, although his descriptions of intellectual adults kind of remind me of the J.D Salinger Glass family novels. Still...only on page 40 out of nearly a 1000...so better reserve total judgement :)
BelatedCommiseration happy reading.
"It has to be the truth...and, it has to be the truth." :)
does anyone know any video documentary on DFW?
I was inreoduced to David Foster Wallace's world by reading Quack This Way for my preperation to write my many masters degree papers. I feel like i missed out on so much, and I hope to read everything he wrote.
“He’d have a breakdown, then he’d have an explosive growth forward.”
Yeah. That’s what it’s like.
Really interesting
servono a tutti i costi i sottotitoli in italiano!
Wallace asks the question: "Who would want to live, when you can watch?", in reference to TV's ability to suck you in and perhaps disable your interest in living in the real world.
Of course, those people in the world who "live" (i.e. live as well as watch, or instead of watching) know that the experience of doing is far deeper than simply the experience of watching someone else doing, for the majority of people, for the reason that more senses are involved in real experience, and we are, after all, in the world in a very real physical sense (despite any philosophical claim that experience is only perception.)
In addition, each new generation encounters technology that potentially threatens to upend the world as they know it when growing up. DeLillo says it in this documentary: Wallace’s voice is always a young voice. Perhaps he is being kind, as that might also be rephrased as: Wallace’s voice is often an immature voice.
Information technology - admittedly a broad classification - despite its association with our brains more than with our bodies is, nonetheless, just another set of tools. We have the choice to cherrypick what we want from that tech; we have the choice to turn off or get rid of the TV, as Wallace did at times during his life. Yet he was still addicted to the medium, and this personal addiction was magnified by him into an almost conspiratorial assault on the culture by the threat of mindless entertainment. This is nothing new. Edward R Murrow, the great investigative journalist from the 1950s, warned us about corporations and the dumbing-down of TV by the power of advertising and dollar wielding corporations. This is very much echoed in Infinite Jest as if it were something new: it is not new, though it has certainly spread since the 1950s.
Wallace was also preoccupied by cleverness, self-worth, and the precedents of prior generations of writers. Clinical depression is an awful thing: it is the great deadener, and those who have experienced it understand what it can do to a person over time.
When in a state of deep depression, the only option a person appears to have is to “watch, and not to live”, to turn the first statement above on its head. Wallace only began to write after his first major bout with depression, and so it is not unexpected that he wrote of a world in which he was - to quote Wallace - “stripped of agency”. But that does not mean, a priori, that the modern world, filled with technology and distractions as it is, is becoming a place where agency is absent for everyone. Wallace clearly felt it was this way for him, at times, but his addictions and in particular his addiction to self-reference, to solipsism as he called it, was a very personal thing, and perhaps not a universal malady of our times.
Which brings me, naturally, to the statement that perhaps an inordinate percentage of Wallace’s American generation, and the generations that followed it are self-centered, solipsistic, selfish, shallow, trivial, and completely self-absorbed. Coupled with this, however, is a growing awareness among members of the youngest generations that are currently alive in the US, is that the patriarchal values of prior generations are not sustainable, either for society or for the physical world itself. It appears that young people at present are more accepting of difference in the world, and are more aware that experience in one locale does not necessarily equip one to understand experience in another locale, and hence the need for interaction and actually experiencing the world elsewhere before we legislate or arbitrate on behalf of populations we do not know. This we certainly cannot do by simply “watching”, as Wallace would have it.
My personal concern with Wallace and his generation of writers is that - distilled over a little more time - they might not amount to more than a slightly better educated Beat Generation. The Beats and the Hippies went out into the world to experience it, that is, they pushed back against the claustrophobia and conformity of the late 1940s and 1950s, but in the process they often abandoned solid learning, and the shallowness of their knowledge was glaring once the bright novelty of their rebellion was dimmed by its ubiquity. In contrast to, but in many ways in concert with, the Beats and Hippies, the overly self-aware and technique-proficient artists of Wallace’s generation have walked away from experience and into their studies with their world-processors and TVs, and they have confused diffuse knowledge and information with the deeper understanding that comes from non-indulgent self-reflection. The world is not their interest: they themselves are their interest, and they confuse personal pathologies with pathologies that might or might not exist in the real world. And by “exist” I mean exist without a sufficient quantity of counter-pathologies that might very well help to restore the balance of a socially and economically sustainable culture.
In short, I still find that Camus, Mann, Woolf, Conrad, Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, et al. present and synthesize the world of experience, without resort to cheap irony or solipsism, in a deeper way than does the generation of Wallace (or Pynchon or Barth, for that matter.) Uncertainty is an integral part of experience and the world - one might say that it is the central understanding of people in the real world. Mature adults, paradoxically, do not keep referring to the underlying uncertainty of all action, the uncertainty of value of each action, the uncertainty of the purpose of self, in spite of the manifest uncertainty that is all around us. Being in the modern world, with all our experiences and understandings is about how to manage these paradoxes through meaningful compromises. There isn’t a solution to the conundrum of being sentiently human; there is only the understanding that we approximate understanding as best we can, without constant reference to those approximations.
Beckett says it well, and with a poetry I find absent in most modern writers: “For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker.”
@james Doctor I read it
Incredibly well put and salient in both literary and broader cultural contexts
This is a great comment. I like that it's been edited. I gotta offer a little criticism to be fair, so I will say that to group DFW's generation of writers as "slightly better educated" beats misses the whole point of this particular existential crisis. I believe the juxtaposition in time validates this generation's respect for the beats, but I think this will last on its own.
Also, I must say that, in possibly the worst forum for comment which I visit regularly, you have done a lot of heavy lifting to give me faith to carry on. Cheers.
Thank you for elevating UA-cam’s comments. This is at least 6 standard deviations above the mean in clarity * complexity. Thanks again. Makes me think that this type of thing is more common in our culture than I had estimated.
And somehow you missed the incredible generosity of spirit contained in his best writing, the desire to connect, communicate genuinely with another human being. Perhaps because you approached this with a preformed concept of who he was and his work. Or you failed to penetrate the work. Which makes your entire comment masturbation, performative, and self-congratulatory. Obtuse. You missed the point entirely.
40:10 wow
18:00 mm - 19 Offending with irony 32:32 - 34:13 Parts work
fantastic!
Hell of a thing to hear Postmodern and tradition in the same sentence.
Again, IJ is a post postmodern novel and hyper-realistic. I believe Wikipedia classifies IJ as "hysterical realism and post postmodern" when listing its genre, if memory serves.
This doc. could be much longer
Nothing is more self congratulating than the UA-cam comments of a DFW fan.
7:10 tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes
28:00 he is right, we used to wonder what other places were like, now I know without even having to go there at all.. therefore I don't want to do anything
"Nevertheless, Wallace stands alone" Aye...
Very interesting that the publisher Michael Pitsch(?) talks very much like David Foster Wallace. probably picked up his mannerism and tone from studying him and his work.
35:30
*Peach
Whats stopping me from reading IJ is that i feel footnotes in a novel are just such a digression. Like fuck it.
Ok so where is the video?
“Dooo doo doo doo doo doooo.” When I ever I think of DFW I think of that tick of his.
+oblong, about 22 minutes into this interview with Christopher Lydon - he describes himself as "fortunate" after having seen the people around him in the halfway house (ua-cam.com/video/qm_u3YoL8s8/v-deo.html). As far as his depression goes, the "Trillaphon" essay from 1984 (in the new Reader of his work) does a lot to illuminate his problems and viewpoint..and with a very clever Joycean ear. Thank you.
shell shock or separation anxiety hitting a wall
can't wait for the pale king
It's amazing
unbelievable how DFW cult has made so much of Wallace's failures...it's almost as they need his intellectual-jock-sensitive anti-hero to be more than he is...or could be....cultists desperately assure us DFW is great and 'see" greatness in his work, like spiritualists reading tea leaves, that simply does NOT exist and is impossible to substantiate. his work doesn't support it.
DFW would be the first to acknowledge his failure to achieve anything ever resembling great! No wonder he committed suicide. To fail to live up to 'boy genius' laurels, forever, each day, hour, and minute contributing it's mite to the solid accretions of failure is insupportable. He had intellect, but lacked the transformative imagination necessary for greatness. Like his tennis career, halfway great signified nothing in literature. A teacher, critic and essayist would have been a better metier...however, there is no glory in criticism...very sad. Zadie Smith's essay on DFW & Infinite Jest was the best...An A for participation.
This is pure audio.
Nice.
The end notes being on just one stereo channel is extremely annoying if you're listening through headphones. Whoever is responsible for that should feel really bad.
I think that's meant to take you out of things the same way flipping 600 pages back to find the note and read it would.
jeburke exactly. watch the speaker. observe.
how can one live : godly
28:00 - 30:00
DFW would def have an invite to my tea party; he would be the first to stir the cream inside my teacup amongst the many others in line worthy of the spoon. 🃏👑 keep writing and keep kuming smiling 😊
He ded.
@@ankursingh1912 very aware that he is , but he’s still coming to my tea party. 🥰🐇💀
Did you watch the whole video and then come on here to make a silly ironic tribute to him? You could very well consider him talentless, but I think this video shows at the very least he was pretty brilliant, and thoughtful about what he did. Where did you discover he was so bad to the people around him?
As a creative person, the cliche of depression giving the artist material to work with is just that, a cliche. Seems odd that someone obviously as smart and spiritually in-tune would believe this cliche.
I'm not sure it is. Depression often makes people stay isolated on their own, for months at a time with nothing but their thoughts. A lot of time to think about life, happiness, loneliness etc... depression isn't required for these things obviously but it can force you to confront things you might not have done.
ryan hobson On what do you base your statement?
ryan hobson no one has ever created any lasting art out of happiness
ya I think what people don't realize is it's the artist not the depression making the art and that its a common side effect to humans, not exculsively artists. It actual seems to get in the way a great deal more than inspire, I would imagine
"in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance. or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning"
maybe some things can both be cliche and have validity..?
I think if you consider a mathematics class teachers typically insist students show their work how they arrive at their conclusions whereas in an English class they usually just want the finished product an edited essay. Wallace with his footnotes seems to combine both expectations it's more thorough if a reader wants details and sources cited they are provided in the endnotes. He seemed very meticulous I am sure he would despise modern communications of just abbreviations and emojis that is just cave drawings a regression to someone of his intellect likely.
14:00
Why would it seem logical that Easterners would opt for a house without a basement?
And why in Illinois, where the winters are harsh, would any structure have a shallow foundation?
Somebody went cheap on the construction. :-)
What an unnecessary jab at Sylvia Plath at the end. We see here an attitude that is sadly redolent with so many others; that a man writing about the minutiae, repetitiveness and tedium of everyday depression makes him a brave genius of scope (just like Joyce!), but a woman of equal talent who does so is fobbed off as 'merely' obsessing over 'a small melancholy.' Plath's work is painted here as somehow myopic in the eyes of Costello, the apparently proud, self-affirmed bigot. He needs to give Brief Interviews With Hideous Men a closer reading as he obviously missed the many vital lessons Wallace laid so artfully there for him to find.
Women can never feel as deeply as a man, nor be as rational. Yes I am being sarcastic. No need to make a comparison like that with Plath. Both were clearly deeply depressed people. Being a man doesn't make one some how magically more poetic due to depression nor women less. Hemingway might be a better comparison. Plath was writing more or less up to her death. Hemingway, like Foster Wallace, killed himself when he found he couldn't write any more. You don't have to tear down a woman to build up a man.
Plath was psycho
Ad Hoc. exactly...
DFW was his generation's Holden Caulfield...the average bro marijuana culture mashup...long hair & top knot prob has its own wiki references & fan club...(laughing at how many fans & 'dudes' say he was ahead of his time for his hairstyle!)...with average bro sport culture, overlaid with the struggling intellectual weighed down by his mighty, troubled yet hidden visionary 'genius' (of course)...he hits all the 'cool' archetypes wo ever producing anything to live up to the boy genius or even, as he matured, any genius...yes, he was earnest and based on a few measly tidbits, his generation decided to adore him and award him their coolest bro writer participation trophy...
once DFW realized he had hadn't anything to sustain the hero-worship or deserve hailing as a visionary, and would only fail and fail and fail, year after year to live up to the hype...I'm sure he saw an excruciating future for someone who had collected too easily & too early notice of future expectation & greatness he couldn't live up to...
@@willnill7946 yeah, a psycho who made damn sure that her kids are safe from the smoke of that oven before she killed herself. 🙄
I assume he spent time doing public service in some way---helping others on the ground level, or doing animal rescue, etc, those types of actions that get you out of catering to ones own mirrors.
Being depressed is a modern luxury,. How well we get out of it is an indicator of how powerful are our imaginations.
Oh dear.....' which allows the reader to be not just someone else,.....but someone else.....
What a juxtaposition of such a depressed mind, set in neural pathways of deep intellect. ItsMost interesting how he says the depression is sometimes the catalyst for the deeper understanding. The bible says that pain makes you grow. Too bad his pain consumed him.I think hearing his story can help other depressed people. When you think of astronomy and dark matter, we are made if dark matter and light. The dark matter holds the light together, so although we want to be light mostly- the dark matter is still required outwisenthe light has no ability to stay grouped.His dark matter Consumed his light.
He was no Vonnegut 😂
Infinite Jest saved me while in prison.
Paying attention in high school would have saved you from prison. It would also have been much more useful in other ways.
@@schmetterling4477wow.
@@fanaticist I am living proof. I was paying attention in high school and I never went to prison. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 imagine having to no context into why he went to prison and jumping to that conclusion. What a stupid individual you are.
And his ghost cringes from the other side.
also please upvote so others can get smarter too
photo by CARLA GAHR
Ironically -- Sorry David -- I'm learning more about this genius through this documentary (and/or interviews) on UA-cam. I don't watch too much TV; I do watch too many "pop-culture" movies. But isn't it interesting, especially apropos of his explanation of documentaries presenting life-near-the-sea versus actually visiting the sea, I'm learning about his man through a collage of 2min. to 1.5hr. documentaries/interviews never having read a piece of his work. Regardless, I'm appreciating his story, and at least (possibly more) aware of my consumeristic/comoditized life. Look forward to reading -- at least -- some of his short stories.
There may not be something wrong with 6-8 hours of TV, but it is nice to remember that someone is trying to sell and offer seduction to you for 6-8 hours a day. In a time in our country when it is hard to find and commit to things that are important and good. Our experience is weird now, thrice removed from the real world. What at stake is, human agency, of how we experience the world. Would I go to the ocean or watch an amazing documentary about it? Who would want to live, when you can watch?
I don't agree with you, but I fucking loled. Well played.
the sky is blue
TLP rocks
I love Wallace but there's something of the puritan in him. I feel that Wallace lumps irony in with snark, which was also ubiquitous but is not quite synonymous. Irony is really a loving strip tease for someone you have the hots for, as is the case with Dickens who rarely ironies-down, whereas snark is the social imposture he derides as a solipsistic carapace.
Well I'll be dipped in sheep dip and launched into Vermont by frickin catapult.
+Ted Cushman Technically it was Canada, as Vermont, NH, Maine are all now part of The Great Concavity (Canadian soil)..
Nicholas Julian hahahaha
since when
Big fans of DFW over here. Who's is the next big mind for us? maybe you? submit your work to uslitmag.co.nr
RADIO, BRUV
If being able to play tennis very well, and to be good at maths, to have the opportunity to study philosophy, to get good, prestigious jobs, to come from an intellectually-stimulating family background with some degree of pedigree, if being a celebrated writer aware of ones own powers....if all this is not enough to create any happiness, ---and if given such a brilliant mind ---if all this is not enough to bring peace of mind, then maybe he was lucky to be able to commit suicide. I would hope that now, on the other hand, with some renewed discussions that entertain the idea that consciousness survives death....he may be the most unfortunate of all. Is this the real truth behind "cosmic horror"?
This idea that I am alone with my thoughts and no one understands me is b.s ---l.Wittgenstein showed us we have no thoughts that are not put into words, and we all can learn the words, so we all can/do have your thoughts. why is it DFW gets more play than LW ? because LW was onto something, and DFW goes down a dead end trail....They don't want you learning anything.
Not at all the case, Wallace is a post modern writer which takes directly after many of the traditions birthed from modernism one being the the limitation of language by Wittigestien , so to say Wallace is not aware of this is just flat out false. I'm not going to waste my time explaining the differences between modernism and post modernism, it essentially can be summed up as the modernist tended to be more optimistic about the human condition while the post modernist tend to be pessimistic, these core feelings are than expressed through the many different intellectuals tools we have to explain reality and in this specific case literary tools ect....
@Sterlin Walter - lol. I'll give you a couple of blaringly obvious reasons that have nothing to do with your conspiracy theory. Wittgenstein is a philosopher...he wrote one book while he was alive...in the 1900's...
Wallace is a contemporary fiction writer who wrote in English. That's enough. I don't know why I bother answering things like this. Sigh.
you're right, Total Noise.
You are mistaken about Wittgenstein. Yes, he once believed that we have no thoughts that are not put into words but that was before someone flipped him off and in his anger, suddenly realized he was wrong--we have a shared experience that often needs no words to convey. From that point on his ideas took a 180. As for DFW, he nails this early LW idea with Hal in IJ and the later LW with Don Gately. And what a beautiful trail DFW takes us down in IJ.
thanks, I appreciate your update, and will keep this in mind when I pick up IJ again.