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Skip the philo piece. The Math book has some skim-worth writing, DFW riffing. I made it about half-way before I totally started losing the thread. But, yes, perhaps a dozen or 13 paragraphs in there that won't be wince-producing.



Err, uh, Everything existent in book form? It doesn't strike me as there being anything weird. Indeed, a fairly short list:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...
Stephen--stop that whinging! Take, read. All of it! It all makes IJ better for when you return to it.

The Uncollected DFW
I enjoyed this litcrit book covering Broom, Girl, IJ and Hideous Men -- part of an "Understanding ____________" series:
Understanding David Foster Wallace
I agreed with its thesis that DFW represents a sort of bridge between postmodern tradition and something new and yet-to-be-properly-named ('post-post-modernism' is a clumsy term that's been tossed about).
And for one more tidbit, this is DFW's first published piece of writing, from the Amherst Review:
The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing

....have not read it yet, tho.

Shit man, they printed new drafts in the Pale King paperback and that commencement speech, we'll probably see those dopey poems he wrote as a kid about the Viking and his mother next. Inventions of the Infinite Hare.

FWIW I gave the math book to my spousal overunit, who taught himself calculus at thirteen and was a math major before he switched over to philosophy &c &c, and he read about two chapters and said something like "I am handing this back to you before I throw it across the room."
I mean, I read Bill Bryson FFS, so it's not like I put facts before 'a fancy prose style,' but that was....maybe disappointing. Sorta.


I want his LETTERS. A nice juicy selection of 'em, too. But that might take ten years at least, depending on just how juicy some of them are.



Is the TOC out?

Federer Both Flesh and Not
Fictional Futures
The Empty Plenum
Mr Cogito
Democracy and Commerce
Back in New Fire
Terminator 2
The Nature of the Fun
Overlooked: Five Direly Underappreciated (wow that is scraping, that's what, 2-3 pp long?)
Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama
Best of the Prose Poem
Twenty-Four Word Notes
Borges on the Couch
Deciderization 2007
Just Asking
and that's it.

http://www.salon.com/1999/04/12/wallace/

"The Empty Plenum" is his review of Wittgenstein's Mistress and "Borges on the Couch" is a review of a biography of Borges. Also, "Best of the Prose Poem" is a book review.

If I may veer back on topic, The Broom of the System is the last DFW for me. I'm hoping to fit it in before Flesh and Not so I can dovetail first/most recent books nicely.

PW says '“Deciderization 2007—A Special Report” (his introduction to The Best American Essays 2007)' - yikes, that's pretty bad.

But then they couldn't push out another collection and bank upon it! Duh!
If I may veer back on topic, The Broom of the System is the last [fictional]DFW for me."
That's how it worked out for me as well. I look forward to your take on it even more because of that parallel.

It's shameless but that is a really good introduction all the same.

And I'm just letting you know that four of them are, in fact, reviews.


He really would be better served by some of the shorter book reviews - the Ballard, Dead Elvis, Acker (the Acker especially has some interesting points on aesthetics vs reader enjoyment) than some of this throwaway crap, like the prose poem thing. This is like one of those things where Updike collected even his answers to Cosmo quiz-type shit, except at least it was Updike's own decision to do that.



For one thing, websites often do just disappear. Even big, popular ones. For another thing, the Estate might decide to issue a big old DCMA to that site any day now about all that stuff they tracked down (I'm surprised they haven't done so already). And some of us do like to have books, not PDFs or HTML files. It's one thing to have a bunch of scanned files floating around the net. A hardback book, even in today's everything-is-disposable age, is a legacy, and I don't think it's moot to point out that maybe DFW isn't being served well by this.

It's shameless but that is a really good introduction all the same."
And by your own criteria, then it probably shouldn't have been included, since it is widely available in a very popular book that had a huge print run - and is probably still in print -- yup, for eleven bucks. http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Americ...

Some of that's here http://theknowe.net/dfw -- the first one is about the loud music complaint. It's not an op-ed piece but a letter responding to one supposedly by someone else also named David. -- Except for the 'Removed due to take down notice from Bonnie Nadell' ones. Oops.

Novels (Done)
Short story collections (One left)
Uncollected Fiction (Dec 2013)
Non-fiction (Three Left)
Signifying Rappers
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will
Interviews
Conversations with David Foster Wallace
The Last Interview and Other Conversations
Secondary Materials
Books mentioned in this topic
David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide (other topics)Understanding David Foster Wallace (other topics)
Consider David Foster Wallace (other topics)
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (other topics)
The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (other topics)
More...
Novels
The Broom of the System (1987)
Infinite Jest (1996)
The Pale King (2011) [Paperback with extra chapters]
Short story collections
Girl with Curious Hair (1989)
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)
Oblivion: Stories (2004)
Uncollected Fiction (20??)
Non-fiction
Signifying Rappers (1990)
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997)
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003)
Consider the Lobster (2005)
This is Water (2009)
Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2010)
Both Flesh and Not (2012)
Interviews
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace (2010)
Conversations with David Foster Wallace (2012)
The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2012)
Secondary Materials (for when you gets around to it)
David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (2003)
Understanding David Foster Wallace (2003)
Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays (2012)
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (2012)
The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (2012)
A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies (2013)
For additional, non-book material see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fo...
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/...
http://theknowe.net/dfw