Comments on: DFW Praise Compendium

By: The best HTMLGIANT posts as chosen by you the readers of HTMLGIANT or at least some of you | HTMLGIANT

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:57:58 +0000

[...] Blake Butler: DFW Praise Compendium [...]

By: Word of the Day: Eukaryotic « Te Ipu Pakore

Word of the Day: Eukaryotic « Te Ipu Pakore — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:51:41 +0000

[...] Butler, “DFW Praise Compendium,” htmlgiant.com, 20 Apr. 2009, web, 6 Jan. [...]

By: GiovanniGF

GiovanniGF — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:39:00 +0000

There’s also this: “David Foster Wallace’s Top Ten List”
http://www.toptenbooks.net/blog/2007/03/is-david-foster-wallace-serious.html

The writer of the piece (and some of the commenters) assume DFW was being ironic, but I have seen another interview in which Wallace said The Screwtape Letters was his favorite book.

By: jpicco

jpicco — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:45:00 +0000

Actually, maybe he was more critical of Leyner and more flattering toward Pynchon and Barth.

By: jpicco

jpicco — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:25:00 +0000

Didn’t he recommend Mark Leyner somewhere? Possibly in one of the Supposedly Fun Thing… essays?

By: Mattbucher

Mattbucher — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:19:00 +0000

A blurb he gave for Antonya Nelson (his classmate at Arizona):
“I have been a Toni fan ever since I read a story of hers called ‘The Salad’ on my second or third day of graduate school. I read her newest collection so fast the pages are singed.”

Another Antonya Nelson blurb:
“Perfect…very strong, very fine, funny, dark, and smart. Antonya Nelson has clearly transcended the writer-to-watch stage: she’s a writer to be enjoyed and learned from, now.”

A blurb for a best of PG Wodehouse anthology:
“Timelessly funny and mean.”

A blurb for Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World:
“Hyde is one of our true superstars of nonfiction.”

A blurb for Storytown by Susan Daitch:
“This is an important collection by one of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the U.S. today”

A blurb for Colin Harrison’s (his editor at Harpers) Manhattan Nocturne:
“Totally enjoyable on all levels–the best piece of postmodern noir since James Ellroy’s “Big Nowhere”.

I believe he also blurbed Leyner’s My Cousin My Gastroenterologist (before dismantling it in E Unibus Pluram).

By: Sam Thielman

Sam Thielman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:53:30 +0000

Also worth nothing, on “The Best of PG Wodehouse” from the Modern Library:
“Pricelessly funny and mean.”

By: Sam Thielman

Sam Thielman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Also worth nothing, on “The Best of PG Wodehouse” from the Modern Library:
“Pricelessly funny and mean.”

By: Sam Thielman

Sam Thielman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:53:00 +0000

Also worth nothing, on “The Best of PG Wodehouse” from the Modern Library:
“Pricelessly funny and mean.”

By: tothesound » Self Defense

tothesound » Self Defense — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:19:17 +0000

[...] always been knitted to knowing endings as I only read it because I have been working my way through this list instead of the doing the other summer tribute, and In Watermelon Sugar came in the same book as [...]