Total Page : 352
Publisher : Broadway
Publication Date : 2010 04 13
>> The boyish wonder
Probably the biggest question that you someone who at least must have a passing interest in David Foster Wallace to be visiting this page would like answered about this book is does it deliver the goods The book is billed as a conversation between the late David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky a Rolling Stone journalist and novelist Is it worth reading I would enthusiastically say yes even if you haven t cracked Infinite Jest or finished Consider The Lobster It s pretty true that you can get a good sense of the sort of person Wallace is by reading his work but the book gets across a lot of new detail and stuff I wasn t aware of The conversation is frequently engrossing and it covers incredibly diverse terrain including Wallace s very complicated relationship with fame his interesting thoughts about pop culture and the future of entertainment and books which are actually pretty optimistic considering the sheer tonnage of writerly sentiment about the end of civilization as well as a lot of stuff about Infinite Jest then brand new and what he thought the main points of the book were with some argumentation and elaboration with the author about them There s a lot about Wallace s drug problems and depression in here which cannot help but be more than a little sad Wallace sincerely believed that people just can t ever be completely happy that there s a restless part of us that can never be satisfied and while that is a debatable notion I do think it turned out to be true in his case Lipsky tactfully points out some hints of Wallace s future trajectory along the way but one can kind of sense that despite the zeal that Wallace had for his work and for quite a bit of life that the guy had a lot of issues and that writing never completely purged them
Still the point of the book isn t to pity Wallace Through the conversation Wallace comes across as the person one would expect him to exuberant highly intelligent open introspective incredibly silly at times but all in all a good guy and a real iconoclast Lipsky makes the incredibly accurate observation that he had never lost touch childhood and that definitely comes across in the book as he is capable both of wild eyed wonder and great anxiety Just a great person to hang out with for a few hours Lipsky keeps things moving briskly and the book is a highly addictive read I would seriously recommend the book if you re interested in DFW or you know good books
>> Alas poor Yorick
David Lipsky has done a laudable service for both David Foster Wallace and his readership with this jaunty road trip/interview/memoir As Infinite Jest was being launched in 1996 and Wallace was nearing the end of his book tour Lipsky a rising name in journalism followed Wallace through the last week of the tour the Midwest portion and recorded almost every word spoken The piece was supposed to run in Rolling Stone but never did Bad timing due to the untimely death of a rock star and other foibles of the industry Lipsky interviewed Wallace without ever being obtrusive or intrusive He allowed their relationship to form organically gradually and avoided a forced fellowship Rather than a stilted outcome of an interview this cohered with warmth wit warts a wink here and there and a wily charm A salty chatty Wallace emerges as a captivating and unreliable narrator of his own life
Lipsky precedes the interview with a mighty potent afterword a several page editorial that is also filled with specific facts about Wallace s depression and suicide I sprung a leak it was like he died all over again and I had to mourn him once more It was tender frank and genuine This is also the only section where it is revealed that Wallace had been on MAO inhibiters an old school anti depressant since 1989 a fact that Wallace chose not to reveal in the interviews On the contrary Wallace fairly denied being currently on any medication for depression But throughout the text of the interview Lipsky tells the reader each time the author s watch beeped an alarm It took me a while to put it together it seemed extraneous to tell us that But I think that Lipsky was allowing the reader to connect the dots and draw the arguable conclusion without making any personal statements Wallace was forthcoming about his depression and even about his ECT treatments electroconvulsive therapy But he was opaque about his current medication regimen He chewed tobacco almost ceaselessly drank Coca Cola like water and enjoyed the occasional draught beer And he ate like a lumberjack He was 6 2 and robust athletic
Throughout the three hundred pages of this protracted interview I engaged with the momentum of Wallace speak Because his verbiage is unedited it is sometimes necessary to read his sentences more than once They are often choked with articles prepositions and conjunctives that idiomatically are natural but difficult on the page initially However I got into the zone and flow Wallace is an enthusiastic interviewee if erratic at times He vacillates from agile amiable and arch to repetitive and awkward There are also words that hold a lot of charge for him such as continuum In fact Lipsky relates looking up that word after he went back to his hotel room because it was so fundamental to Wallace s formal conception of the psyche
For the most part I was illuminated by the book sized interview Wallace shares in depth insights on growing up his scholarly pursuits tennis depression love and of course the process of writing He discusses not all at once but at episodic intervals the themes of Infinite Jest and the fear that we are in a culture of entertainment addiction Additionally Lipsky and Wallace deconstruct movies from Lynch to Tarantino and several stops in between I was delighted that he waxed about my my favorite movie scene of all time the scene in True Romance between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper They argue and examine literature and gossip a little about other writers and celebrities Wallace had an almost childlike crush on Alanis Morissette permeated with a fetching adoration and wonder
There are about fifty pages in the middle that lost steam They were repetitive and grinding at intervals and seemed to be placed there in order to add to the road trip ambiance I got antsy and wanted to move ahead to more luminous discussions
By the end of the book I felt closer to understanding Wallace who yet remains an enigma and a haunting cautionary tale Unintentionally I felt a pull toward Lipsky too His observations are quick inconspicuous and often sublime I was impressed by his tasteful treatment of Wallace s memory of his regard for integrity and his ability to capture the essence of this beautiful and tormented man and phenomenal author
>> A 300 Page Interview
David Lipsky followed David Foster Wallace around the midwest for five days in 1996 his tape recorder running for nearly the entire time Alas the ROLLING STONE article that Lipsky was interviewing Wallace for never ran but Lipsky held onto the tapes Now 14 years later the tapes have been transcribed verbatim including many off the record comments and published as this 300 page book It s a true feast for the David Foster Wallace fan
Lipsky and Wallace talk about writers as varied as Stephen King Elizabeth Wurtzel and John Updike They sit in the front of a theater to catch the action flick BROKEN ARROW Wallace gives a reading at a bookstore for INFINITE JEST his recently released masterpiece and he s ambushed with an excruciating question and answer session his least favorite part of readings Lipsky and Wallace talk about Wallace s rumored drug abuse just rumors for the most part and depression Of course every word takes on new haunting meaning through the lens of Wallace s suicide which Lipsky addresses in the afterward
To be a fly on the wall for their five day conversation is an amazing experience Lipsky makes minimal contributions to the text fragmentary questions and explanations that only give the reader the barest sense of the settings Could the book have worked a little better as a proper biography of Wallace with the interview cut up That was my first thought when I started reading it But I think that Lipsky and his editor made the right choice ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF is an intimate portrait told mostly in Wallace s own words It s as close to an autobiography as we ll ever get and that s where its power comes from It deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Wallace fan
