D.T. Max & Tom McCarthy discuss David Foster Wallace
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ส.ค. 2024
- Brilliant, quirky, and gifted David Foster Wallace exploded onto the literary scene with the publication of his compelling novel, Infinite Jest. He was heralded as one of the new great voices in the literary world. Within 12 years of the books publication, at the age of 46, Wallace had killed himself.
The New Yorker's D.T. Max delves deeply into David Foster Wallace's life trying to figure out the man behind this extraordinary and unusual voice in his new biography, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story. Join D.T. Max and novelist Tom McCarthy as they look more closely at Foster's gift and his pathos.
November 28, 2012
35:24 begins the epic 33 second saga of Tom McCarthy struggling to find his bottle of water.
Is that the highlight?
Sums up the whole talk. I skimmed. DT could not stop blabbering. Anyways, here I am replying to your comment 10 years later, hope you're doing well!
Interesting talk. But again the anecdote of Wallace pinning this phrase of Kafka's - 'The disease was life itself' - to his wall is trotted out. Problem is, Kafka never wrote such a line. It was taken from a Time magazine article by Stefan Kanfer on Kafka, and described Kafka's physical ailments, that 'the malady was life itself'. The article also didn't appear until 1983, which means if Wallace pinned it to any wall it will have been Amherst College, not high school. It disappoints me we're already trading in myths about Wallace after only a few years. It took me literally twenty seconds to Google that Kafka thing, not sure why critics like Max and McCarthy can't.
cancerparty
Thank you for remaining awake!
At 51:00 Max asks McCarthy if he could think of another suicide in Infinite Jest. Too bad they could not have thought of Clipperton, the tennis player who held a Glock to his temple as he played tennis matches and threatened to blow his brains out if he lost, and no one one had the stomach to beat him. He eventually visits ETA, though he is not a student there, visits James O. Incandenza and Mario and actually blows his brains out. Mario clean up the mess. Afterward the room in which he killed himself in is set aside, and cadets who cannot "hang" or deal with the pressure of academic life at ETA are invited to "spend time in the Clipperton Suite." The surreal Clipperton episode I think shows how the spectre of suicide and the threat of suicide haunts the world of ETA and Infinite Jest and Wallace's world.
This guy didn't need a microphone.
The analytical value they are trying to pull from his work and life are speculative. What they miss is motivation, high pressure childhood, evolving psychosis, background in philosophy, background in grammar, addiction: guilt vs pleasure, long sustained periods of feeling unloved in a double bind, that his worth as a human being was tied to how well he wrote and his books sold. He wanted to kick depression and be loved, it's a simple coincidence that he was our generations greatest writer.
Spoken like someone who hasn't read the bio. I found the Max actually wrote a very thoughtful and insightful biography, with a much better grip on philosophy and literary theory than most people have.
Killing me that the mic picks it up every time they breath praying that they adjust the levels
D.T. MAX, respond to this and be honest re: --- In his book Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, D. T. Max mentioned in passing that Wallace “threw a coffee table” and “tried to push Karr from a moving car,” which Karr said is “about 2% of what happened.” She tweeted:
tried to buy a gun. kicked me. climbed up the side of my house at night. followed my son age 5 home from school. had to change my number twice, and he still got it. months and months it went on
Likewise, the 2012 Atlantic interview with Max on the subject is full of red flags, and couches Wallace’s behavior as “creative”:
One thing his letters make you feel is that he thought the word was God, and words were always worth putting down. Even in a letter to the head of his halfway house-where he apologizes for contemplating buying a gun to kill the writer Mary Karr’s husband-the craftsmanship of that letter is quite remarkable. You read it like a David Foster Wallace essay.
That’s one of the most shocking things you discovered: that he considered-granted in a half-baked manner-murdering Karr’s then-husband. He later went on to have a tumultuous relationship with her.
Yes, certainly. I didn’t know that David had that in him. I was surprised, in general, with the intensity of violence in his personality. It was something I knew about him when I wrote The New Yorker piece, but it grew on me. It made me think harder about David and creativity and anger. But on the other end of the spectrum, he was also this open, emotional guy, who was able to cry, who intensely loved his dogs. He was all those things. That, in part, is why he’s a really fascinating guy and an honor to write about.
You write that Infinite Jest was motivated by his “dysfunctional yearning for Mary Karr.” How did she influence his drive to write the book?
What I meant by that was that he was trying to impress her. He really wants her to think he’s doing wonderful work, and I think when she, at various times, breaks up with him, he’s thrown into those negative spirals that can also be enormously productive for a person, a creative spiral of anger. Almost like something out of a Hollywood movie. There’s a note in one of my files where he says something like, “Infinite Jest was just a means to Mary Karr’s end, as it were.” A sexual pun.
“[I]t grew on me.”
Sort of sad that the person who wrote the book on DFW doesn't understand anything about him.
What do you mean
Drink every time he says "David Foster Wallace"
13:10
One of these guys wrote a book on Wallace and yet it would take anybody a few hours (tops) to find an interview, on YT, where David says he hadn’t read Pynchon’s ‘the crying of lot 49’ until after having published Infinite Jest. Are they saying Wallace was lying when they imply here that he read it as early as high school (or, according to Max as late as college)? Because they don’t mention the fact that he had publicly stated the opposite a number of times... which is odd considering if I had written a book on the guy I would probably know all those interviews backwards and would have mentioned it as it would be an interesting contradiction and yet because he doesn’t here I’m unsure whether even to believe him. (And This is just something I remembered after having seen some of them once within the last year or so).
Yeah that is strange I saw the interview where dfw said he didn’t read 49 before he wrote IJ. This biographer has mentioned that David lies/stretches the truth sometimes. So not sure who to believe on this.
DT Max could play Lucien in some Sandmam film, he seems the most perfect library master
Crying of Lot 49 doesn't hold up? Gimme a break...
Pynchon is annoying.
not all the time, though
I read the biography & liked it. HOWEVER, DT Max leans way too heavily on characterizing DFW as "Midwestern" - as if that explains anything.
+David Moulton I haven't read it and so I don't know to what extent he characterizes DFW as Midwestern and all that, but I am definitely of the opinion that where you come from informs your personality and even your worldview to a large extent. Again, I don't really know what your referencing, though, so perhaps he overreaches, but I need to check out the bio either way. Cheers
+AOB Well, it can be a destiny you choose if you want it, but it can also result in a lot of extremely vacuous, lazy characterizations in the third person. DFW was smart and resourceful enough to decide things for himself.
David Moulton Yeah, again, I'm completely uninformed on what Max was positing, so I probably shouldn't even have commented. I was just trying to say that people definitely tend to have different sensibilities and values based upon where they were born. Things can be ingrained in people, even really smart people, based on where they grew up.
Also Madame Psychosis who tried'to kill herself in the middle of the book
D.T. Max, doesn't seem capable of more than the superficial as in the bio, in which thinking qua thinking pretty much plays no part.
Essentially painful viewing with that running up against with McCarthy's erudition.
What’s with all the background noise.
I would say with literature that unlike with music, where you have many child prodigies, literature requires maturity and growth.
Kafkaesque or a life longing to be a part of something rejecting him. I think it would be great to be in the audience and just viewing and not reacting while strange people you never met are trying to apply half truths in order to fully understand you while you are still wondering -- WHO THE HELL ARE ALL THESE AMATUERS?
great comment
9:55 for the erroneous Kafka anecdote, incidentally.
I agree with HonusToThe , it's odd to see such a careless speaker and mediocre mind to be pronouncing about someone as complex and cautious as DFW. One doesn't come away with much. Surely Max's book is better than this, though now one wonders.
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Does anyone else find D.T. Max obnoxious? I'm not sure if it's his nonchalance or irreverent tone about DFW but it rubs me the wrong way. Moreover his book titling skills are abysmal and some marketing person really should've told him that
@@sterrejalou I suppose it's just clunky or cheesy or something. Titles of things are, I think, rather important. They preface the content in some way that reveals an attitude or take on the content itself. Thus, "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" fails for me in how literal and heavy-handed it is - like yes, he's dead, we get it. There's something unsubtle about it, something that is quite unlike DFW himself's writing and titling; things like: "Good Old Neon" or "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All" or even "Infinite Jest" come to mind. Each of these titles have a different take on the forthcoming writing. "Infinite Jest" alludes to content in the book subtly, but is also a reference to Shakespeare and the novel's structure; "Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All" is much more explanatory, clunky too, but admittedly so, like DFW's poking fun at the stuffiness of titles - it's hilarious; finally, "Good Old Neon" is much less obvious, more subtle and classically poetic. This is emblematic of DFW's impressive range. By contrast, "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" is generality, one that by the way sounds ugly (generality is another thing DFW adamantly avoids).
I suppose one could rebut that this title has no obligation to be similar to DFW's - it's not by him, it's a book about him. But this harkens back to why I don't like DT Max in the first place: irreverence. The title should at least be considered and thoughtful, and it's just not. It's an ugly blip on DFW's legacy and it bothers me.
@@sterrejalou this is actually a verbatim line in The Pale King, interestingly enough
Shut up Tom McCarthy.
Not for the first time, I really needed to say that.
i'm about to start watching and I'm willing to bet no one mentions DFW'S obvious Monty Python influences...
Was just reading the chapter on the multiple Separatists movements, one of which is named "Le Front de la Liberation de la Quebec", what I imagine is a joke on the numerous leftist factions in Life of Brian, such as "People's Front of Judea". Any other influences that come to mind?
The movie "Infinite Jest" always reminded me of the joke that was so funny anybody who heard it would die. Then the Allies translate the joke into German and use it as a weapon during WWII.
The way we will come to think about DFW is coming into form and conversations like this are very rough for that reason. The hard-edged way we know Dante now is obviously a literary sandpapering of what Dante Alighieri was actually like as an entity with a few hacked off limbs and prosthetic attachments and probably some total bullshit, too. Same with most writers. McCarthy's point about Hamlet and the title "Infinite Jest" around 52m is him trying to pull together a symbol out of the murk of DFW's suicide. Maybe that symbol will press into the ultimately "complete" way they'll talk about the guy, maybe it won't. His actual lived experience and such is irrelevant by this point and the literary world will have its way with his corpse no matter how that sounds.
I think DFW was murdered. There, I said it.
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