Stuff for DFW Dorks, Completists, Collectors (or all of the above)

The year before DFW died, he contributed an "Untitled Chunk" to the debut issue of Chaffey College's Literary Journal. Chaffey's a community college just down the road from the Claremont Colleges where he taught. I was lucky enough to find a copy of the journal earlier this year.

Table of contents from The Chaffey Review: Volume 1 (January 2009).

And here's Michelle Dowd's, the editor of The Chaffey Review, tribute to David Foster Wallace, that prefaced the issue.

How was "Untitled Chunk"?

It's good. I was probably overly intrigued by it at first, thinking I'd happened upon some obscure piece of his, but then the tax and I.R.S. lingo appeared, and I realized it was an excerpt from The Pale King.

"David Foster Wallace and the Nature of Fact" by Josh Roiland.

Long essay, published last Fall, on DFWs personal ethos on genre classification/rules for journalists v. fiction writers writing non-fiction essays. Good stuff.

http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/23_free_essays_stories_by_david_foster_wallac...

Links to freely available DFW essays.

Thanks for that, Z. That's a great resource.

Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace?

8: I just heard about this today, and now I just saw your post, Rique. Curious to hear how you feel about it.

I'm not sure yet, Bubba. I need to hear his voice as DFW.

I really think Zach Galifianakis could pull it off. No, wait, Jason Schwartzman!

Meryl Streep!

I am picturing her in the headband. She just might be able to pull it off.

Ha!

Maybe if the movie was starring Meryl Streep DFWs estate wouldn't have released a statement saying they do not endorse it?-- http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-the-david-foster-wallace-estate...

So I am sure this was posted somewhere on this group but I have just discovered it today. Unfortunately I'm at work so don't have time to read the whole thing but the introductory part with all the pet peeve type phrases listed one after another was making me almost break out in hives and then I got into DFW's prose and then I started to feel better and then I remembered that he was not with us and got sad. I mean I didn't even hear about this guy until after his death and it still makes me sad.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf

That's classic DFW, Anna, and worth rereading. Although I don't know that I've ever read this original Harpers piece before. I don't remember that first page of "bad" usage. That's hysterical. The piece was later revised & retitled "Authority & American Usage" when it was collected in Consider the Lobster. I know what you mean about reading him now & remembering.... I rarely read him anymore for that very reason.

DFW and the blurbs he wrote:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/david-foster-wallace-and-blurbspeak

18> I wonder if the books with DFWs blurbs will eventually become collectibles like the books Thomas Pynchon blurbed? I picked up a copy of Didman by John Speicher the other day solely for the Pynchon blurb. Great article, Karl.

Following is old but I somehow missed it:
20 Pages that were Cut or Excised from Infinite Jest.
Source is Paul Debraski's DFW -- Three Items About What Didn't Make Infinite Jest.

I picked up a copy David Lipsky's book of DFW interviews, Although of course you end up becoming yourself Have not seen the movie based on it, but it looks promising. It's a nice window into DFW the person vs. DFW, the Literary Superstar.

You guys probably posted this somewhere in this group but I have not read it before and LOVED it.
http://observer.com/1997/10/john-updike-champion-literary-phallocrat-drops-one-i...

Not specifically DFW related, but tangentially related to literary postmodernism, entertainment's addictive nature, and unreliable narrators: I began reading Pack of Lies by Gilbert Sorrentino. A postmodern fun-house mirror of a book, actually a trilogy.

http://www.raintaxi.com/a-pack-of-lies/

Like Infinite Jest, a book that's almost impossible to summarize, but very funny in its acidic take-downs of American obsessions and pretensions.