January 5th, 2012 / 3:52 pm
 Snippets
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Q: How much distance is there between David Foster Wallace–the narrator–and yourself?

DFW: I don’t understand the question?

– Full interview from 1998 at Slate

13 Comments

  1. January 5th, 2012 / 3:58 pm Gian—

      Golly.

  2. January 5th, 2012 / 4:16 pm lorian long—

      welp, there goes the rest of my work day

  3. January 5th, 2012 / 6:53 pm Leapsloth14—

      This interview reads like a send up of an interview. Anyone else thought it was almost its own satirical form? Anyway, I logged on here to write the word, Golly. Gian beat me to the spiked punch.

  4. January 5th, 2012 / 7:51 pm Bobby Dixon—

      This is a bit of a tickle for me.

  5. January 5th, 2012 / 8:33 pm Gus Guest—

      He seems like a dick in the beginning. That’s all I read.

  6. January 5th, 2012 / 8:54 pm Trey—

      cool

  7. January 5th, 2012 / 10:46 pm tao lin—

      ‘And so me and the PR guy went out and ate like threepieces of cake each and apologized to each other for three hours.’

  8. January 5th, 2012 / 11:13 pm deadgod—

      I think the answer to the question snipped here, which rephrasing relies on something Wallace had said, is revealing:

      Q.  How crafted is that persona?  Because it has the appearance of course of, like, nakedness, and an actual opening up of the thought process.  But at the same[ ]time, you said, like with the David Lynch thing, you felt it sort of turning[ ]into shtick.

      “Shtick” is a word that Wallace had used in referring to himself writing non-fiction:

      [T]here was kind of a shtick emerging.  And the shtick was somewhat neurotic, hyperconscious guy, like, showing you how weird this think is that not[ ]everybody thinks is weird.

      It shouldn’t be troubling that there is a “shtick”, a “persona”–that’s inescapable in being a ‘person’ at all and is only intensified in the cases of performer and, perhaps more so, of celebrity.  What might be intriguing even to a Wallace agnostic is that this “persona”, “DFW”, doesn’t mutate upon being outed – upon being referred to explicitly – but rather folds ‘beting stripped “naked”‘ into its performance — into its clothesure.

  9. January 6th, 2012 / 1:55 am postitbreakup—

      I only understand what you’re saying maybe 1 out of 10 times, but when I do, I’m always rewarded!

  10. January 6th, 2012 / 4:43 am The Ghost of Richard James—

      It figures some of you would identify with the guy interviewing David Foster Wallace. What a bunch of queers. That man talked mean to me! That man said I asked stupid questions! That man is very disrespectful! I don’t like that! No one is allowed to talk to me like that! My name is Johhny Fauntleroy! I’m the King of France! My question is: what are you wearing right now? Pinafores?      

  11. January 6th, 2012 / 9:32 am JW—

      Is someone paying you to be a petulant child, or did you just volunteer?

  12. January 6th, 2012 / 3:52 pm Truth Teller—

      It figures that you would be one of the millions sucking DFW’s cock as if he could do no wrong.

  13. January 6th, 2012 / 4:31 pm ZZZZZIPPP—

      THIS IS NOT THE LESSON WE SHOULD TAKE FROM THE INTERVIEW