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The Last Interview
David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
In intimate and eloquent interviews, including the last he gave before his suicide, the writer hailed by A.O. Scott of the New York Times as “the best mind of his generation” considers the state of modern America, entertainment and discipline, adulthood, literature, and his own inimitable writing style.
In addition to Wallace’s last interview, the volume features a conversation with Dave Eggers, a revealing Q&A with the magazine of his alma mater Amherst, his famous Salon interview with Laura Miller following the publication of Infinite Jest, and more.
These conversations showcase and illuminate the traits for which Wallace remains so beloved: his incomparable humility and enormous erudition, his wit, sensitivity, and humanity. As he eloquently describes his writing process and motivations, displays his curiosity by time and again turning the tables on his interviewers, and delivers thoughtful, idiosyncratic views on literature, politics, entertainment and discipline, and the state of modern America, a fuller picture of this remarkable mind is revealed.
In addition to Wallace’s last interview, the volume features a conversation with Dave Eggers, a revealing Q&A with the magazine of his alma mater Amherst, his famous Salon interview with Laura Miller following the publication of Infinite Jest, and more.
These conversations showcase and illuminate the traits for which Wallace remains so beloved: his incomparable humility and enormous erudition, his wit, sensitivity, and humanity. As he eloquently describes his writing process and motivations, displays his curiosity by time and again turning the tables on his interviewers, and delivers thoughtful, idiosyncratic views on literature, politics, entertainment and discipline, and the state of modern America, a fuller picture of this remarkable mind is revealed.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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1462 people want to read
About the author
David Foster Wallace
131 books13.3k followersDavid Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative literary voices of his generation, Wallace is perhaps best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His unfinished final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
September 6, 2021
I love listening to David Foster Wallace talk It’s so much more accessible than his writing but still interesting, authentic and intellectual, so this book was perfect for me.
I’d highly recommend it to any DFW fan, or anyone thinking about reading his work.
I’d highly recommend it to any DFW fan, or anyone thinking about reading his work.
March 16, 2016
The irony is that, for me, David Foster Wallace interviews are The Entertainment. I could lose days in their plush, welcoming sincerity, even their tortured self-consciousness. He's like Garth Brooks--you know the aw-shucks-ism is an act, but it's the pose of someone who really wants to be humble and sincere and so you can't help but love him.
January 16, 2018
"For me, art that's alive and urgent is art that's about what it is to be a human being."
A slim volume bringing together six interviews with David Foster Wallace from 1996 to 2008. My favourite is the first, 'Something Real American'. I'd recommend this compilation to fans of DFW rather than any casual reader unfamiliar with his work. My level of interest fluctuated considerably while reading but there are some nuggets that I had to write down to be able to come back to later.
On what is uniquely magical about fiction:
"A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff that can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely. There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do... I feel unalone-intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way I don't with other art." [12]
"a contempt for the reader, an idea that literature's current marginalisation is the reader's fault. The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in a way that it's also pleasurable to read." [10]
"I like stuff that sounds intimate to me, and that sounds like almost there's somebody talkin' in my ear. And I think at least some of the stuff that I do tries to sound out-loud, aural, you know, with an A-U. R-A-L." [41]
On footnotes:
"the way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops... And in a way, the footnotes, I think, are better representations of, not really stream-of-consciousness, but thought patterns and fact patterns." [43]
On his process of writing:
"What anybody else ever gets to see of mine, writing-wise, is the product of a kind of Darwinian struggle in which only things that are emphatically alive to me are worth finishing, fixing, editing, copy-editing, page-proof-tinkering, etc." [73]
"maybe being able to communicate with people outside one's area of expertise should be taught, and talked about, and considered as a requirement for genuine expertise." [90]
On realism:
"I mean, a lot of stuff that's capital-R Realism just seems to me somewhat hokey, because obviously realism is an illusion of realism, and the idea that small banal details are somehow more real or authentic than large or strange details always seemed to me to be just a little crude." [100]
Fascinated as I am by what literary giants consider to be great books, here is a list of what DFW mentions throughout the course of these interviews (or "the stars you steer by"):
- Socrates funeral oration
- The poetry of John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Keats (shorter stuff), Philip Larkin (more than anybody else), Louise Gluck, Auden.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- Some of Shakespeare
- Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method
- Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic
- William James' Varieties of Religious Experience
- Wittgenstein's Tractatus
- Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Hemingway
- Flannery O'Connor
- Cormac McCarthy
- Don DeLillo
- A.S. Byatt
- Cynthia Ozick ('Levitations')
- Pynchon (25% of the time)
- Donald Barthelme ('The Baloon')
- Tobias Wolff
- Raymond Carver (the famous stuff)
- Steinbeck (occasionally)
- Stephen Crane (35%)
- Moby Dick
- The Great Gatsby
- George Saunders
- A.M. Holmes ('A Real Doll')
- Kathryn Harrison
- Mary Karr
- Cris Mazza
- Rikki Ducornet
- Carole Maso
- Joan Didion
- Pauline Kael
- McPhee
- Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology
- Annie Dillard
- The Lord of the Rings (a bitchingly good read)
- Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
A slim volume bringing together six interviews with David Foster Wallace from 1996 to 2008. My favourite is the first, 'Something Real American'. I'd recommend this compilation to fans of DFW rather than any casual reader unfamiliar with his work. My level of interest fluctuated considerably while reading but there are some nuggets that I had to write down to be able to come back to later.
On what is uniquely magical about fiction:
"A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff that can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely. There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do... I feel unalone-intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way I don't with other art." [12]
"a contempt for the reader, an idea that literature's current marginalisation is the reader's fault. The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in a way that it's also pleasurable to read." [10]
"I like stuff that sounds intimate to me, and that sounds like almost there's somebody talkin' in my ear. And I think at least some of the stuff that I do tries to sound out-loud, aural, you know, with an A-U. R-A-L." [41]
On footnotes:
"the way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops... And in a way, the footnotes, I think, are better representations of, not really stream-of-consciousness, but thought patterns and fact patterns." [43]
On his process of writing:
"What anybody else ever gets to see of mine, writing-wise, is the product of a kind of Darwinian struggle in which only things that are emphatically alive to me are worth finishing, fixing, editing, copy-editing, page-proof-tinkering, etc." [73]
"maybe being able to communicate with people outside one's area of expertise should be taught, and talked about, and considered as a requirement for genuine expertise." [90]
On realism:
"I mean, a lot of stuff that's capital-R Realism just seems to me somewhat hokey, because obviously realism is an illusion of realism, and the idea that small banal details are somehow more real or authentic than large or strange details always seemed to me to be just a little crude." [100]
Fascinated as I am by what literary giants consider to be great books, here is a list of what DFW mentions throughout the course of these interviews (or "the stars you steer by"):
- Socrates funeral oration
- The poetry of John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Keats (shorter stuff), Philip Larkin (more than anybody else), Louise Gluck, Auden.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
- Some of Shakespeare
- Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method
- Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic
- William James' Varieties of Religious Experience
- Wittgenstein's Tractatus
- Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Hemingway
- Flannery O'Connor
- Cormac McCarthy
- Don DeLillo
- A.S. Byatt
- Cynthia Ozick ('Levitations')
- Pynchon (25% of the time)
- Donald Barthelme ('The Baloon')
- Tobias Wolff
- Raymond Carver (the famous stuff)
- Steinbeck (occasionally)
- Stephen Crane (35%)
- Moby Dick
- The Great Gatsby
- George Saunders
- A.M. Holmes ('A Real Doll')
- Kathryn Harrison
- Mary Karr
- Cris Mazza
- Rikki Ducornet
- Carole Maso
- Joan Didion
- Pauline Kael
- McPhee
- Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology
- Annie Dillard
- The Lord of the Rings (a bitchingly good read)
- Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
March 9, 2013
In which I learn that DFW must have been a total pain in the ass to interview, unless you were his buddy. Here's a condensed version of the book:
Q: Interesting question.
DFW: This isn't the right format to answer that, because I'd have to go into detail.
Q: What's your writing process like?
DFW: I don't really have one. [Note: when Eggers asks this question, DFW asks him to describe his (Eggers') process, then goes into some detail on his own].
Q: I really like your work.
DFW: I'm really boring.
It doesn't help that the general subjects of these interviews are, in reverse chronological order, his essay on McCain, the short stories in Oblivion, his readable but otherwise moderately bad book on Cantor, Amherst college, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Infinite Jest, i.e., the first interview is interesting because it's about the important book; the other four are about things that are fairly interesting (stories), a'ight (essays/Cantor), and utterly uninteresting to the general reader (Amherst). And as time goes on, Wallace gets better and better/worse and worse at his 'aw-shucks golly who me?' silliness.
The interviewers themselves vary in quality, too--the second guy is unbearably Wallacian, all self-conscious scene-setting that isn't funny or interesting; the Amherst woman is an undergrad conducting an email interview; Eggers is unbearably Eggersian.
So it's up and down. A couple of things stand out: first, *all* of these people are obsessed with word length. You already knew that about Wallace, but it's interesting to see everyone else playing the game. The quantification of everything continues apace. Second, as time goes on and DFW's aw-shucksness reaches nigh-'50s levels, he becomes less and less willing to answer any questions, because of the inherent complications in explaining to people what he thinks about anything. This is not deep, it's potentially not even genuine. It's a laziness that you can see in much of his fiction, and it's a real flaw.
All that said, the book's a great airplane read.
Q: Interesting question.
DFW: This isn't the right format to answer that, because I'd have to go into detail.
Q: What's your writing process like?
DFW: I don't really have one. [Note: when Eggers asks this question, DFW asks him to describe his (Eggers') process, then goes into some detail on his own].
Q: I really like your work.
DFW: I'm really boring.
It doesn't help that the general subjects of these interviews are, in reverse chronological order, his essay on McCain, the short stories in Oblivion, his readable but otherwise moderately bad book on Cantor, Amherst college, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Infinite Jest, i.e., the first interview is interesting because it's about the important book; the other four are about things that are fairly interesting (stories), a'ight (essays/Cantor), and utterly uninteresting to the general reader (Amherst). And as time goes on, Wallace gets better and better/worse and worse at his 'aw-shucks golly who me?' silliness.
The interviewers themselves vary in quality, too--the second guy is unbearably Wallacian, all self-conscious scene-setting that isn't funny or interesting; the Amherst woman is an undergrad conducting an email interview; Eggers is unbearably Eggersian.
So it's up and down. A couple of things stand out: first, *all* of these people are obsessed with word length. You already knew that about Wallace, but it's interesting to see everyone else playing the game. The quantification of everything continues apace. Second, as time goes on and DFW's aw-shucksness reaches nigh-'50s levels, he becomes less and less willing to answer any questions, because of the inherent complications in explaining to people what he thinks about anything. This is not deep, it's potentially not even genuine. It's a laziness that you can see in much of his fiction, and it's a real flaw.
All that said, the book's a great airplane read.
April 7, 2021
The thing about the Last Interview series is that you can usually find most—if not all—of the interviews online, so that the value of the individual books lies in having the interviews neatly collected in one place. At this, of course, the series succeeds; but then the volumes that I've read so far (including this one) are so poorly edited, so riddled with little mistakes, that you have to wonder whether the editors (?) do more than very casually cut and paste.
Anyway, that's just to say that these editions are probably not really worth the money in the end, even if suckers like me (and like many of you, probably) will still want to get them for the sake of completeness and so on.
These interviews with David Foster Wallace were ok. He's not the best interviewee, and the interviewers for the most part did not ask particularly interesting questions. If you're a big fan of DFW and hang on his every word, then this collection is likely to offer you more than it did me.
Aside from an observation about footnotes, the only thing that really struck me was the following response to Dave Eggers, since it matches my own observations so well, and because, if this was an issue in 2003, it is staggering to think of how much worse it has become.
Anyway, that's just to say that these editions are probably not really worth the money in the end, even if suckers like me (and like many of you, probably) will still want to get them for the sake of completeness and so on.
These interviews with David Foster Wallace were ok. He's not the best interviewee, and the interviewers for the most part did not ask particularly interesting questions. If you're a big fan of DFW and hang on his every word, then this collection is likely to offer you more than it did me.
Aside from an observation about footnotes, the only thing that really struck me was the following response to Dave Eggers, since it matches my own observations so well, and because, if this was an issue in 2003, it is staggering to think of how much worse it has become.
"The reason why doing political writing is so hard right now is probably also the reason why more young … fiction writers ought to be doing it. As of 2003, the rhetoric of the enterprise is fucked. 95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it's supposed to be about. Meaning it's become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody's pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil. […] There's no more complex, messy, community-wide argument (or "dialogue"); political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one's own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything's relentlessly black-and-whitened. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying. […] Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you're in conflict with is an asshole—but it's childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community." (74-75)If you're interested, you can read the entire interview online (it was published in The Believer): https://believermag.com/an-interview-...
December 6, 2014
The latest in Melville House's Last Interview series, this collection compiles several interviews that David Foster Wallace gave—including the last before his death. I certainly make no claims to be a DFW expert, so I'm unsure whether these pieces are collected here for the first time or if they're just reprinted from other sources: the only information Melville House offers in the press release is that this is "a unique selection of [DFW's] best interviews."
For the DFW completist, here are the interviews collected in this volume:
- "Something Real American": Interview by Laura Miller, Salon, 9 March 1996
- "There Can Be No Spokesperson": Interview by Tom Scocca, Boston Phoenix, 20 February 1998
- "A Brief Interview with a Five-Draft Man": Interview by Stacey Schmeidel, Amherst Magazine, Spring 1999
- "To Try Extra Hard to Exercise Patience, Politeness, and Imagination": Interview by Dave Eggers, The Believer, November 2003
- "Some Kind of Terrible Burden": Interview by Steve Paulson, To the Best of Our Knowledge, 19 June 2004
- "The Last Interview": Interview by Christopher Farley, Wall Street Journal, May 2008
In these interviews, DFW speaks about a range of subjects, but the ones to which he keeps returning (along with some quotes of his):
- His teaching career: "I was hired to teach creative writing, which I don't like to teach."
- Pop culture: "I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water a hundred years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in."
- Magazine editors: "God love magazines, but the editor picks the title [of the piece], and they don't even really consult with you about it. And if you protest, they'll invoke house style, blah blah blah blah..."
- Writing book reviews: "In my opinion it's far more difficult to write a review of something that you don't like because if you're a fiction writer you know how hard you work even on something that seems really crummy to somebody else."
- The film Good Will Hunting: "I think it's the ultimate nerd fantasy movie."
- The role of footnotes in Infinite Jest: "the footnotes were an intentional, programmatic part of Infinite Jest, and they get to be kind of—you get sort of addicted to 'em... And in a way, the footnotes, I think, are better representations of, not really stream-of-consciousness, but thought patterns and fact patterns."
- The difference between his fiction and nonfiction: "Fiction's more important to me. So I'm also more scared and tense about fiction, more worried about my stuff, more worried about whether I'm any good or not... I guess nonfiction seems a lot more like play. For me."
- Loneliness and alienation: "... there is this existential loneliness in the world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me."
- Writing for an audience: "The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it's also pleasurable to read."
- The role of fiction in our lives: "I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art."
For the DFW completist, here are the interviews collected in this volume:
- "Something Real American": Interview by Laura Miller, Salon, 9 March 1996
- "There Can Be No Spokesperson": Interview by Tom Scocca, Boston Phoenix, 20 February 1998
- "A Brief Interview with a Five-Draft Man": Interview by Stacey Schmeidel, Amherst Magazine, Spring 1999
- "To Try Extra Hard to Exercise Patience, Politeness, and Imagination": Interview by Dave Eggers, The Believer, November 2003
- "Some Kind of Terrible Burden": Interview by Steve Paulson, To the Best of Our Knowledge, 19 June 2004
- "The Last Interview": Interview by Christopher Farley, Wall Street Journal, May 2008
In these interviews, DFW speaks about a range of subjects, but the ones to which he keeps returning (along with some quotes of his):
- His teaching career: "I was hired to teach creative writing, which I don't like to teach."
- Pop culture: "I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water a hundred years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in."
- Magazine editors: "God love magazines, but the editor picks the title [of the piece], and they don't even really consult with you about it. And if you protest, they'll invoke house style, blah blah blah blah..."
- Writing book reviews: "In my opinion it's far more difficult to write a review of something that you don't like because if you're a fiction writer you know how hard you work even on something that seems really crummy to somebody else."
- The film Good Will Hunting: "I think it's the ultimate nerd fantasy movie."
- The role of footnotes in Infinite Jest: "the footnotes were an intentional, programmatic part of Infinite Jest, and they get to be kind of—you get sort of addicted to 'em... And in a way, the footnotes, I think, are better representations of, not really stream-of-consciousness, but thought patterns and fact patterns."
- The difference between his fiction and nonfiction: "Fiction's more important to me. So I'm also more scared and tense about fiction, more worried about my stuff, more worried about whether I'm any good or not... I guess nonfiction seems a lot more like play. For me."
- Loneliness and alienation: "... there is this existential loneliness in the world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me."
- Writing for an audience: "The project that's worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it's also pleasurable to read."
- The role of fiction in our lives: "I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art."
April 22, 2017
"If it looks chaotic, good, but everything that's in there is in there on purpose." - DFW on Infinite Jest [SALON, 1996]
This small collection of interviews grants a glimpse into David Foster Wallace's writing, opinions, and personality. I look forward to diving into his short stories and essays once I'm finished with IJ.
I'm sad he's gone.
This small collection of interviews grants a glimpse into David Foster Wallace's writing, opinions, and personality. I look forward to diving into his short stories and essays once I'm finished with IJ.
I'm sad he's gone.
August 31, 2018
Selfish thought of the day: I can never forgive DFW for not staying around long enough for him to get to write about Trump as POTUS.
December 25, 2021
Initially I wondered at my choice of book to read over a holiday that is usually considered festive, but I was happy to pick it up, read some great remembrances, put it down and do stuff, pick it up again and find more brilliant insights. There are currently 37 books in the series from Penguin Random House of "last interviews" and this was my first. It works really well as a book one can read, put down and come back to in between tasks. I am sorry David Foster Wallace is no longer here with us on earth or for that matter here in Illinois where I live.
This book of his thoughts and experiences as told to the interviewer is not at all depressing as I feared it could be, but really full of imaginative, original thinking from Wallace and appreciation or respect from his interviewer.
"So it was two and a half years of sixteen-hour days...With Infinite Jest I spent a lot of time clutching my head in shit-hole apartments...In a way I'm lucky it's as short as it is.
We kept cutting and cutting. I wish we hadn't. But they said we need to keep the price down, which meant keeping the pages down. I didn't take it well. The book business is already a pathetic tentacle of the movie business, and once they start dictating length of novel based on suggested retail price we may as well write grosses, sequels, and personal trainers into our contracts." [the book Infinite Jest is over 1,000 pages]
Good stuff!
This book of his thoughts and experiences as told to the interviewer is not at all depressing as I feared it could be, but really full of imaginative, original thinking from Wallace and appreciation or respect from his interviewer.
"So it was two and a half years of sixteen-hour days...With Infinite Jest I spent a lot of time clutching my head in shit-hole apartments...In a way I'm lucky it's as short as it is.
We kept cutting and cutting. I wish we hadn't. But they said we need to keep the price down, which meant keeping the pages down. I didn't take it well. The book business is already a pathetic tentacle of the movie business, and once they start dictating length of novel based on suggested retail price we may as well write grosses, sequels, and personal trainers into our contracts." [the book Infinite Jest is over 1,000 pages]
Good stuff!
December 6, 2017
It's been almost ten years since David Foster Wallace tragically took his own life and, well... I miss him.
I truly do. I miss having new material from him to read, whether it's fiction to break my brain to or non-fiction to expand my mind. So, I bought this book hoping to dull the ache of his absence and, I must say, it was utterly satisfying. These interviews are utterly simple and it's refreshing to read Wallace's word when he's not asked to reinvent the world by a fanboy interviewer. He's asked questions about his relationship to his work, mostly and it's still as breathtaking as it's ever been to read him rack his brain for simplicity.
One issue I had is that the collection is rather front-loaded. The first half is a lot more interesting than the latter, except for the interview he gives about his collection OBLIVION. This might be a spoiler, but I think you need to know that his last interview was him talking about John McCain for four pages. By far the least interesting piece in the collection. I'm also surprised it didn't have the thunderous interview he gave to Larry McCaffery from Dalkey Archives Press, which is by far the best interview he's ever given. He was young and angry back then. I read it at least once a year since I found out about it in 2010.
I truly do. I miss having new material from him to read, whether it's fiction to break my brain to or non-fiction to expand my mind. So, I bought this book hoping to dull the ache of his absence and, I must say, it was utterly satisfying. These interviews are utterly simple and it's refreshing to read Wallace's word when he's not asked to reinvent the world by a fanboy interviewer. He's asked questions about his relationship to his work, mostly and it's still as breathtaking as it's ever been to read him rack his brain for simplicity.
One issue I had is that the collection is rather front-loaded. The first half is a lot more interesting than the latter, except for the interview he gives about his collection OBLIVION. This might be a spoiler, but I think you need to know that his last interview was him talking about John McCain for four pages. By far the least interesting piece in the collection. I'm also surprised it didn't have the thunderous interview he gave to Larry McCaffery from Dalkey Archives Press, which is by far the best interview he's ever given. He was young and angry back then. I read it at least once a year since I found out about it in 2010.
June 5, 2015
another book by wallace (or next-to-wallace) as a preparation of reading IJ. well, i promise - after lipsky i`ll go straight to IJ. btw this book is pretty awesome, coz it`s small and funny.
January 18, 2017
This man had such a brilliant and fascinating mind. It is sad and incredible to think about what else he might have created.
December 21, 2012
DFW is a famous author. Over the last 20 years lots of people have interviewed him. This book collects 6 of those interviews, the earliest from 1996. It also includes, as you would expect from the title, his last interview from 1998 (about four months before his suicide).
This last interview is a short one discussing the release of McCain's Promise (in book form). While interesting to hear DFW talk politics, it was a bit of a letdown since it was so brief, and all too final. It's certainly not the fault of Melville House or DFW. The fault lies with me, and my hope that their was some grand, insightful, and unseen interview waiting to be read.
I am happy to have this slim volume of interviews sitting among the other books on my DFW shelf.
This last interview is a short one discussing the release of McCain's Promise (in book form). While interesting to hear DFW talk politics, it was a bit of a letdown since it was so brief, and all too final. It's certainly not the fault of Melville House or DFW. The fault lies with me, and my hope that their was some grand, insightful, and unseen interview waiting to be read.
I am happy to have this slim volume of interviews sitting among the other books on my DFW shelf.
December 19, 2016
Very interesting, of course, but not strictly necessary. I like watching clips on YouTube of him more. The actual last interview with Wallace is a bit of a letdown, as it's very short and mostly about John McCain.
Read
October 30, 2018This. man. is. tedious. I could hardly make till the second interview. I thought I would take away something better but the second interview drained me so bad that I'm dropping this book here for now. The interviews have not been compiled properly, in my opinion. Or maybe they are compiled simply as they were, and the man himself made an absolute mess of them by making them sound like an extended babble. Anyway, too many books to read, too little time.
May 24, 2013
An interesting idea for a series of books. On the one hand, it looks like they might be part of the increasingly dark "let's cash in on the tragic death of a famous author" mini-industry that's sprung up around David Foster Wallace's memory. When you look at it closer, it's actually a series of interviews, each taking place near the time of one of his books being published, or having some other connection to a biography of his writing life.
(In other words, only the title is blatantly opportunistic. Mostly.)
I'm a big fan of Wallace's, so I was torn about this book. I didn't know if I wanted to like it or not. That continued the entire time I was reading it. Truthfully, I was so closely on the lookout for sensationalism, for any forced "foreshadowing" moments where something meaningful about Wallace's eventual suicide might rear their ugly heads (the sort of moments that on TV would include a orchestral brass section suddenly playing "DUH DUH DAAAAAAA!"), moments that would prove this book to be an effort to cash in on a tragedy.
I held onto that nagging suspicion almost the entire book (not hard, it's only 113 pages and took me about an hour) while I stood in a Barnes and Noble. But if there is any indication of my final opinion, of the eventual resolution to my suspicions, it's that after finishing the entire book I decided to buy it anyway.
As to the interviews themselves, they're a mixed bag. They mostly go to prove the old adage about an interview letting you know almost as much about the interviewer as the interviewee (I'm not sure that's an actual adage, but it seems pretty accurate!). But they do seem somewhat well chosen, and by someone who wanted to not only represent a history of Wallace, but to paint a picture of his interaction with the outside world.
For example, the first piece was from March, 1996 following the publication of Infinite Jest, the novel that put Wallace on the map in a big way. Laura Miller, working for Salon conducts a somewhat rote interview that one might of a first time author. Wallace isn't on his game yet either. It's an interesting picture of a mind full of great ideas that hadn't fully fleshed them out yet.
The second is much better: Tom Scocca writing for the Boston Phoenix in 1998 following up on the publication of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, the first collection of Wallace's long non-fiction magazine articles. Not only is the David Foster Wallace "voice" much closer to what fans of his will recognize, but it's got really wonderful behind the scenes stuff, about his process but also about the way some of his most beloved pieces of writing came to exist, and how the long form magazine article industry/machine works.
The 'famous alumni' type interview done with his college newspaper could easily have been stilted, having been done by letter, but has some interesting material about his writing process and his feelings about, and approach towards, interviews. And the interview by Dave Eggers for the November 2003 Believer is actually great fun. Not only does it swing wildly from high concept mathematics, to the process of writing and planning one's writing, to the increasingly ugly, partisan political discourse in America led by self serving pundits on both sides (yes, this was apparently a scary problem as far back as 2003, [sigh]), but it also has one of those great tones of 'two writers talking.' It's fun watching Eggers bounce back and forth between journalist, trying to nail down a good piece for his own magazine, and young writer enjoying a conversation he's having with a colleague!
I won't say that this book left me with any new revelations on one of my favorite authors. I can't say there was anything really earth shattering contained here, or any interviewing masterpieces that show how it's really done. But at the end of the day, despite my suspicions and misgivings, I enjoyed this book. And it helped me to expand my understanding of David Foster Wallace, who meant a great deal to me. Three and 1/2 stars.
(In other words, only the title is blatantly opportunistic. Mostly.)
I'm a big fan of Wallace's, so I was torn about this book. I didn't know if I wanted to like it or not. That continued the entire time I was reading it. Truthfully, I was so closely on the lookout for sensationalism, for any forced "foreshadowing" moments where something meaningful about Wallace's eventual suicide might rear their ugly heads (the sort of moments that on TV would include a orchestral brass section suddenly playing "DUH DUH DAAAAAAA!"), moments that would prove this book to be an effort to cash in on a tragedy.
I held onto that nagging suspicion almost the entire book (not hard, it's only 113 pages and took me about an hour) while I stood in a Barnes and Noble. But if there is any indication of my final opinion, of the eventual resolution to my suspicions, it's that after finishing the entire book I decided to buy it anyway.
As to the interviews themselves, they're a mixed bag. They mostly go to prove the old adage about an interview letting you know almost as much about the interviewer as the interviewee (I'm not sure that's an actual adage, but it seems pretty accurate!). But they do seem somewhat well chosen, and by someone who wanted to not only represent a history of Wallace, but to paint a picture of his interaction with the outside world.
For example, the first piece was from March, 1996 following the publication of Infinite Jest, the novel that put Wallace on the map in a big way. Laura Miller, working for Salon conducts a somewhat rote interview that one might of a first time author. Wallace isn't on his game yet either. It's an interesting picture of a mind full of great ideas that hadn't fully fleshed them out yet.
The second is much better: Tom Scocca writing for the Boston Phoenix in 1998 following up on the publication of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, the first collection of Wallace's long non-fiction magazine articles. Not only is the David Foster Wallace "voice" much closer to what fans of his will recognize, but it's got really wonderful behind the scenes stuff, about his process but also about the way some of his most beloved pieces of writing came to exist, and how the long form magazine article industry/machine works.
The 'famous alumni' type interview done with his college newspaper could easily have been stilted, having been done by letter, but has some interesting material about his writing process and his feelings about, and approach towards, interviews. And the interview by Dave Eggers for the November 2003 Believer is actually great fun. Not only does it swing wildly from high concept mathematics, to the process of writing and planning one's writing, to the increasingly ugly, partisan political discourse in America led by self serving pundits on both sides (yes, this was apparently a scary problem as far back as 2003, [sigh]), but it also has one of those great tones of 'two writers talking.' It's fun watching Eggers bounce back and forth between journalist, trying to nail down a good piece for his own magazine, and young writer enjoying a conversation he's having with a colleague!
I won't say that this book left me with any new revelations on one of my favorite authors. I can't say there was anything really earth shattering contained here, or any interviewing masterpieces that show how it's really done. But at the end of the day, despite my suspicions and misgivings, I enjoyed this book. And it helped me to expand my understanding of David Foster Wallace, who meant a great deal to me. Three and 1/2 stars.
December 15, 2018
The book is everything but complex, anyway, it reveals little by little a tiny piece of Mr. Wallace's inner picture, which complex works might fail to deliver. It reveals incredible stories (like a bag of pot for a bus driver), as well as it brings a unique point of view on many things just by the way. Also, the interview format, which appears quite raw after a while, helps here. It exposes his thinking in a different way than his polished, edited, many times rewritten work. Even if he fully understands the question and answers it in a very complex, yet comprehensible way, he mostly ends up saying his classical "I doubt, it does make any sense at all". Good read.
Read
October 2, 2021I will never read Infinite Jest, but I would actually read an Infinite-Jest-length book of DFW interviews. I am feeling extremely lazy tonight and want to get around to watching Adam Curtis' documentary so I will subside to the impulse of quoting my favorite parts of this book (which also has a lot of them, so.)
“If work is going shitty, I try to make sure that at least a couple hours in the morning are carved out for this disciplined thing called Work. If it’s going well, I often work in the p.m. too, although of course if it’s going well it doesn’t feel disciplined or like uppercase Work because it’s what I want to be doing anyway. What often happens is that when work goes well all my routines and disciplines go out the window simply because I don’t need them, and then when it starts not going well I flounder around trying to reconstruct disciplines I can enforce and habits I can stick to.”
“Most of the modern writing I like the best is both sophisticated and colloquial—that is, high-level and complicated but at the same time intimate, sort of like a smart person is sitting right there talking to you—and I think I do little more than try to achieve this same high-low blend”
“Well, like I said, I am a Five Draft man … the first two of these drafts are pen-and-paper, which is a bit old-fashioned, but other than that I don’t think there’s anything very distinctive about my work habits. I fluctuate between periods of terrible sloth and paralysis and periods of high energy and production, but from what I know about other writers this isn’t unusual.”
“I’ve hit on an effective way to handle all this schizogenic stuff, which is to keep the whole thing at a very simple level, roughly a level/vocabulary that an average US fifth-grader can understand. I want my work to be good. I want to like it. This is the only part that has anything to do with me. I can’t make it have an ‘impact’ on anybody else. This doesn’t mean I can’t hope it has one, but I can’t do anything to guarantee it, or even to cause it. All I can do is make something as good as I can make it (this is the sort of fact that’s both banal and profound), and promise myself that I’ll never try to publish anything I myself don’t think is good or finished.”
“The problem with interviews (including even very considerate ones where you let me write answers out instead of just saying them) is that no truly interesting question can be satisfactorily answered within the formal constraints (viz. magazine-space, radio-time, public decorum) of an interview. ”
“...and I of course am a whore...”
“I think The Simpsons is important art. On the other hand, it’s also, in my opinion, relentlessly corrosive to the soul, and everything is parodied, and everything is ridiculous. And, maybe I’m old, but for my part I can be steeped in about an hour of it, and then I sort of have to walk away and look at a flower or something.”
“For the purposes of this conversation I’ll say yes, but sitting in a bright, quiet room in front of the paper it’s much more: uhh does this make me want to throw up? Does this seem real? Is this the sort of thing the person would say? It’s much more kind of boneheaded and practical than that. You realize this, right? There’s something very artificial about once the book’s all through galleys and, you know, now I’m engaging in critical discourse about it—I might be right, but it’s very different than what it’s like actually to do the things.”
“Probably all jobs are the same and they’re filled with horrible boredom and despair and quiet little bits of fulfillment that are very hard to tell anyone else about. That’s just a guess.”
“If work is going shitty, I try to make sure that at least a couple hours in the morning are carved out for this disciplined thing called Work. If it’s going well, I often work in the p.m. too, although of course if it’s going well it doesn’t feel disciplined or like uppercase Work because it’s what I want to be doing anyway. What often happens is that when work goes well all my routines and disciplines go out the window simply because I don’t need them, and then when it starts not going well I flounder around trying to reconstruct disciplines I can enforce and habits I can stick to.”
“Most of the modern writing I like the best is both sophisticated and colloquial—that is, high-level and complicated but at the same time intimate, sort of like a smart person is sitting right there talking to you—and I think I do little more than try to achieve this same high-low blend”
“Well, like I said, I am a Five Draft man … the first two of these drafts are pen-and-paper, which is a bit old-fashioned, but other than that I don’t think there’s anything very distinctive about my work habits. I fluctuate between periods of terrible sloth and paralysis and periods of high energy and production, but from what I know about other writers this isn’t unusual.”
“I’ve hit on an effective way to handle all this schizogenic stuff, which is to keep the whole thing at a very simple level, roughly a level/vocabulary that an average US fifth-grader can understand. I want my work to be good. I want to like it. This is the only part that has anything to do with me. I can’t make it have an ‘impact’ on anybody else. This doesn’t mean I can’t hope it has one, but I can’t do anything to guarantee it, or even to cause it. All I can do is make something as good as I can make it (this is the sort of fact that’s both banal and profound), and promise myself that I’ll never try to publish anything I myself don’t think is good or finished.”
“The problem with interviews (including even very considerate ones where you let me write answers out instead of just saying them) is that no truly interesting question can be satisfactorily answered within the formal constraints (viz. magazine-space, radio-time, public decorum) of an interview. ”
“...and I of course am a whore...”
“I think The Simpsons is important art. On the other hand, it’s also, in my opinion, relentlessly corrosive to the soul, and everything is parodied, and everything is ridiculous. And, maybe I’m old, but for my part I can be steeped in about an hour of it, and then I sort of have to walk away and look at a flower or something.”
“For the purposes of this conversation I’ll say yes, but sitting in a bright, quiet room in front of the paper it’s much more: uhh does this make me want to throw up? Does this seem real? Is this the sort of thing the person would say? It’s much more kind of boneheaded and practical than that. You realize this, right? There’s something very artificial about once the book’s all through galleys and, you know, now I’m engaging in critical discourse about it—I might be right, but it’s very different than what it’s like actually to do the things.”
“Probably all jobs are the same and they’re filled with horrible boredom and despair and quiet little bits of fulfillment that are very hard to tell anyone else about. That’s just a guess.”
December 6, 2020
this was probably not meant to be read in one sitting, but here we are. dfw’s voice is now rattling around in my head. it’s not entirely unpleasant.
there’s a lot of stuff repeated in these interviews, but i think seeing the through lines in his thinking changes how i see my own relationship to the process of creating things and (much more challengingly) living with them after I have.
there’s a lot of stuff repeated in these interviews, but i think seeing the through lines in his thinking changes how i see my own relationship to the process of creating things and (much more challengingly) living with them after I have.
August 20, 2022
There's a chance that I'll come back and reread this book once I've read his own books. Although I'll probably listen to the radio interviews or read printed ones from the internet. It was not as informative as I'd expected it to be. Although, reading his thoughts on state of literature is really insightful. A portion of the interview about reviewers is something I'll remember for a long time.
May 27, 2019
Spans a decent chunk of his career and the interviews are well-selected to present DFW in his essence. You can certainly see the seeds of some texts (especially The Pale King) through his fascinations discusses throughout the interviews.
February 9, 2020
I don't really have anything reflective to add about these interviews, just that I miss having his voice around in the world with an intensity that borders on the physically painful.
November 30, 2021
every time I read stuff by/abt dfw I just feel like I should never watch tv ever again
November 23, 2018
It's interesting to hear DFW in these interviews. I found about 1/3 of them to be really interesting. The others, not so much. I think the best part of these interviews is not that it's a peek inside DFW's mind, which, if you think this book's is going to provide, it may only a little, but rather the book recommendations and when Wallace rambles off what it is he's reading, or what his 'influences' are.
July 22, 2019
The premise of these series of books is morbid but good.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
January 16, 2025
An amazing human who was lost but aren’t we all? So honest and did not become something he was not only for more success.
This was a sad book but one that made me appreciate writers and professors. Our world is worth exploring even if the journey is difficult.
This was a sad book but one that made me appreciate writers and professors. Our world is worth exploring even if the journey is difficult.
July 23, 2015
This is not a review.
"I've done some book reviews, it's difficult to do. In my opinion it's far more difficult to write a review of something that you don't like because if you're a fiction writer you know how hard you work even on something really crummy to somebody else."
David Foster Wallace went beneath my skin. It feels ironic to even attempt a book review for these interviews; DFW made it very clear on how he feels about reviewing. I'm not certain if those were even his feelings or just the intellectual thought process for which he provided.
This is in no way intended to be disrespectful, but just the thoughtful notion of continuing on for how I feel for this book makes me think that Wallace is turning over in his grave when someone like me is going against the very concept he was establishing in his interviews and works of fiction. I've never read any of his writings, but I've always been curious and they're definitely in my TBR pile. Especially after taking a glimpse into the tiny fraction of how he perceived the world.
It's disheartening to read, coming from his own mouth, that he wanted to live over the age of 50 with his health-habits. But he was definitely right about this...
"I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction... we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way."
Rest in peace, David Foster Wallace. In all honesty, I have no idea what you went through or how you felt or thought. But I thank you for leaving behind some great works of art that I can enjoy down the road. If I were to imagine you doing something that makes you happy, that would be to imagine your reaction to seeing your own drawings of "smiley faces".
"If there's something to be talked about, that thing is this weird conflict between what my girlfriend calls the "inner sap", you know? The part of us that can really wholeheartedly weep at stuff, and the part of us that has to live in a world of smart, jaded, sophisticated people and wants very much to be taken seriously by those people. I don't know that it's that irony tyrannizes us, but the fashions that are so easy to criticize but are so incredibly powerful and authentic-seeming when we're inside them, tyrannize us. I don't know that it's ever been any different. That probably makes absolute no sense."
"I've done some book reviews, it's difficult to do. In my opinion it's far more difficult to write a review of something that you don't like because if you're a fiction writer you know how hard you work even on something really crummy to somebody else."
David Foster Wallace went beneath my skin. It feels ironic to even attempt a book review for these interviews; DFW made it very clear on how he feels about reviewing. I'm not certain if those were even his feelings or just the intellectual thought process for which he provided.
This is in no way intended to be disrespectful, but just the thoughtful notion of continuing on for how I feel for this book makes me think that Wallace is turning over in his grave when someone like me is going against the very concept he was establishing in his interviews and works of fiction. I've never read any of his writings, but I've always been curious and they're definitely in my TBR pile. Especially after taking a glimpse into the tiny fraction of how he perceived the world.
It's disheartening to read, coming from his own mouth, that he wanted to live over the age of 50 with his health-habits. But he was definitely right about this...
"I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction... we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way."
Rest in peace, David Foster Wallace. In all honesty, I have no idea what you went through or how you felt or thought. But I thank you for leaving behind some great works of art that I can enjoy down the road. If I were to imagine you doing something that makes you happy, that would be to imagine your reaction to seeing your own drawings of "smiley faces".
"If there's something to be talked about, that thing is this weird conflict between what my girlfriend calls the "inner sap", you know? The part of us that can really wholeheartedly weep at stuff, and the part of us that has to live in a world of smart, jaded, sophisticated people and wants very much to be taken seriously by those people. I don't know that it's that irony tyrannizes us, but the fashions that are so easy to criticize but are so incredibly powerful and authentic-seeming when we're inside them, tyrannize us. I don't know that it's ever been any different. That probably makes absolute no sense."
January 5, 2015
I highlighted many sections in this book, including these parts about sadness:
"The sadness that the book [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through, was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift.
A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it's the same thing.
Some of my friends got into AA. ... I went to a couple of meetings with these guys and thought that it was tremendously powerful. That part of the book is supposed to be living enough to be realistic, but it's also supposed to stand for a response to lostness and what you do when the things you thought were going to make you OK, don't.
The bottoming out with drugs and the AA response to that was the starkest thing that I could find to talk about that. I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values. Probably the AA model isn't the only way to do it, but it seems to me to be one of the vigorous."
***
"It's a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you—I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out?"
***
"It took years after I'd graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all."
***
"The truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture."
"The sadness that the book [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through, was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift.
A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it's the same thing.
Some of my friends got into AA. ... I went to a couple of meetings with these guys and thought that it was tremendously powerful. That part of the book is supposed to be living enough to be realistic, but it's also supposed to stand for a response to lostness and what you do when the things you thought were going to make you OK, don't.
The bottoming out with drugs and the AA response to that was the starkest thing that I could find to talk about that. I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values. Probably the AA model isn't the only way to do it, but it seems to me to be one of the vigorous."
***
"It's a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you—I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out?"
***
"It took years after I'd graduated from Amherst to realize that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all."
***
"The truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture."
Read
July 15, 2016A slender volume of interviews, at least one of which I'd definitely read before. Almost a classic example of a "completists only" book. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the interviews, I did, and I got some book recommendations out of them, but that's about it. If a copy comes your way, feel free to pick it up, it's distracting, but definitely not worth going out and buying, especially when they'll charge ya 15 bucks for 100 pages -- although it's nowhere near as exorbitant as the publishing industry's post-mortem swindle known as This Is Water.
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