Emails from ‘The Littlest Literary Hoax’
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posted an article about a few years old DFW/Delillo-related prank authored by a Jay Murray Siskind and published in Volume 11, Issue 4 of Modernism/Modernity, a scholarly literary critical quarterly review. According to the Chronicle, Mark Sample, an assistant professor of English at George Mason University, discovered the article, a review of Oblivion, in 2005 when one of his graduate students cited it in an essay. He forgot about it, time passed, then he got curious and dug some more to discover a good bit of humor behind the whole thing. I won’t go on to summarize all of the details, as plenty of information is out there already and many other blogs have covered it – see the following links:
Mark Sample’s original post regarding the ‘hoax.’
The Chronicle of Higher Education article, written by Peter Monaghan.
However, I do have this to add. I’ve got the email exchange between the graduate student, who asked to remain anonymous, and Sample, who kindly gave me permission to share it with you here. It’s a great little exchange, pretty funny. Enjoy after the break.
Paragraphs I… … (5): David Foster Wallace
The withered priest reads his lecture about Vermeer and limpidity and luminosity and about light as attachment/vestment to objects’ contour. Died 1675. Obscure in his time you see for painted very few. But now we know do we not, ahm. Blue-yellow hues predominate as against ahm shall we say de Hooch. The students wear blue blazers. Unparalleled representation light serves subtly to glorify God. Ahm, though some might say blaspheme. You see. Do you not see it. A notoriously dull lecturer. An immortality conferred upon implicit in the viewer. Do you ahm see it. ‘The beautiful terrible stillness of Delft’ in the seminal phrase of. The hall is dark behind Day’s glowing row. The boys are permitted some personal expression in choice of necktie. The irreal evenness of focus which transforms the painting into what glass in glass’s fondest dreams might wish to be. ‘Windows onto interiors in which all conflicts have been resolved’ in the much-referenced words of. All lit and rendered razor-clear you see and ahm. It meets TuTh after lunch and mail call. Resolving conflict, both organic and divine. Flesh and spirit. Day hears an envelope ripped open. The viewer sees as God sees, in other ahm. Lit up throughout time you see. Past time. Someone snaps gum. Whispered laughter somewhere up in a rear row. The hall is dimly lit. A boy off to Day’s left groans and thrashes in a deep sleep. The teacher is, it is true, wholly dry, out of it, unalive. The boy next to Day is taking a deep interest in that part of his wrist which surrounds his watch.
– from ‘Church Not Made With Hands’ in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, pp. 203-04
“The Planet Trillaphon…” by David Wallace
Perhaps this is old news for some, but Tin House has republished an early David Foster Wallace story, which was, according to Rob Spillman, only previously available in Wallace’s college literary magazine, The Amherst Review. The story is titled “The Planet Trillaphon As It Stands In Relation To The Bad Thing” and is available online in various PDF forms (though I hadn’t even known of its existence until I saw this issue of Tin House).
I’m happy to have discovered the story.
Here’s the first paragraph:
I’ve been on antidepressants for, what, about a year now, and I suppose I feel as if I’m pretty qualified to tell what they’re like. They’re fine, really, but they’re fine in the same way that, say, living on another planet that was warm and comfortable and had food and fresh water would be fine: it would be fine, but it wouldn’t be good old Earth, obviously. I haven’t been on Earth now for almost a year, because I wasn’t doing very well on Earth. I’ve been doing somewhat better here where I am now, on the planet Trillaphon, which I suppose is good news for everyone involved.
You can read the rest of the story by clicking over to this PDF file.
Uncategorized / 24 Comments
July 27th, 2009 / 11:02 pm
July 27th, 2009 / 11:02 pm
DFW Praise Compendium
At the height of my obsession with David Foster Wallace, garnered after reading ‘Infinite Jest’ over several weeks in 2001, an act which literally changed my life, I began going after any and every piece of writing not only of his, but that he had recommended, blurbed, mentioned in interviews, taught, etc. Many of these books also had a profound influence on my brain, including Gass’s ‘Omensetter’s Luck,’ McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’ and ‘Suttree,’ Donald Barthelme, and countless others.
During this period I began constructing a list of these texts as I found them. The list, which I remember as being several pages long, is now likely floating somewhere in one of my many expired computers. I was able, though, to find at least what makes up part of the list in an old email folder, and as such it appears below.
I know this is not an exhaustive list at this point, and if I find a later draft of it I will repost: in the meantime, however, if you have any other knowledge of blurbs or etc. (and any that might have occurred later in his life, after I stopped making the list, will obviously be absent) please comment them. Where I could, I tried to include the actual blurbs and/or comments, and in other places just included the names of authors mentioned in passing or other ways.
(It likely should be noted that many of these refs came from the amazing and wonderful interview conducted with Wallace by Larry McCaffery for the Review of Contemporary Fiction, which if you have not yet, you should read.)
Also included is a Reading List from a class Wallace taught on postmodern fiction (I believe), which is a pretty fantastic collection of texts.
Incomplete list is after the break:
Today at the Daily Rumpus: Useful Additions to D.T. Max’s “The Unfinished”
Rumpus regular Elissa Bassist offers up “Notes and Errata: A DFW Companion Guide to ‘The Unfinished’ by D.T. Max.” (I think we reported on the Max piece when it first came out, but anyone needing a refresher can get one here.) Basically, her piece catalogues any DFW work, interviews, or otherwise relevant points of reference in Max’s piece and, if that work or parts of it are available anywhere online, she links to it. Por ejemplo:
5. “Anything comforting put him on guard. ‘It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most ‘familiarity’ is meditated and delusive,’ he said in a long 1991 interview with Larry McCaffery, an English professor at San Diego State.”
6. “The critic James Wood* cited Infinite Jest as representative of the kind of fiction dedicated to the ‘pursuit of vitality at all costs.’”
*Two pertinent links: Book Review: James Wood’s The Irresponsible Self, by Nigel Beale(the quotation “pursuit of vitality at all costs” is given context here); Remembering David Foster Wallace (Wood’s comment is last)
Thanks for the good work, Elissa! I’m sure putting something like this together was tedious and time-consuming, but there are a lot of people out there who will be grateful you took the time to do it.
de-fête
[a guest post by our erstwhile friend & former colleague, Soffi Stiassni]
The New Yorker’s legacy of cartoon and caricature is not limited to anecdotal fodder about the Berkshires. In the March 9th Life and Letters feature on David Foster Wallace the eulogized writer is remembered with words by D. T. Max, and an eloquent portrait by Philip Burke. This frontal facing portrait is a caricature of photographer Nancy Crampton’s iconic shot of Wallace, featured in her book, “Writers: Photographs.” The book is a compilation of portraits and accompanying text from a wide array of novelists, poets, and people of the pen, from Lorrie Moore to Chinua Achebe. Sitters are pictured with pets (George Plimpton with cat and Cheever with dog), with cigarette (WH Auden and Anne Sexton), in the country and about town, and in several cases, seated before a rather dour gray studio backdrop, reminiscent of a high school yearbook photos. Wallace is one of the writers photographed against this unceremonious backdrop; he sits, arms crossed, backwards in the wooden chair, and dons a cut off Pomona College sweatshirt and the scratchy beginnings of a beard. He is sans infamous bandanna, which Burke chose to include in his rendering. To sit for a yearbook photo, particularly a senior portrait, can be the worry of an entire August. Though these photos often make their way to living room mantels and family mailers, they are very much the most public image one presents to themselves. Quite different than a candid snapshot which might accidentally reveal latent character, the formal posed portrait is a presentation deliberately selected by the sitter for the benefit of the viewer.
There is a god
via USA Today:
NEW YORK (AP) — A long, unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace is scheduled for a posthumous release next year.The Pale King, excerpted in The New Yorker magazine edition coming out Monday, is set in an Internal Revenue Service office in Illinois in the 1980s.
Wallace’s longtime publisher, Little, Brown and Company, will release the novel. Little, Brown said in a statement Sunday that the novel runs “several hundred thousand words and will include notes, outlines, and other material.”
Wallace, best known for the 1,000-page novel Infinite Jest, was a longtime sufferer from depression who committed suicide last fall. He was 46 and had been working on The Pale King for several years.
Sure, it wasn’t finished. Sure, it might not be fully what it would have been if completed under David Wallace’s human eye. But it’s what we have left, and I for one can breathe a little easier now knowing I will have the experience of reading another brick from my brother, even in such light.
I seriously pumped my fist and grinned and shook a little when I read this. I am giddy.
Thank you thank you.
EDIT: The NYer excerpt piece, Wiggle Room, is now available on their site here!!! Which, holy fuck, the first sentence: Lane Dean, Jr., with his green rubber pinkie finger, sat at his Tingle table in his chalk’s row in the rotes group’s wiggle room and did two more returns, then another one, then flexed his buttocks and held to a count of ten and imagined a warm pretty beach with mellow surf, as instructed in orientation the previous month.
And holy fuck the whole rest…
BONUS: a few pages of the manuscript, with notes, etc, as well as accompanying art by his wife Karen Green.
God.
This should be, I think, seen as a celebration, regardless of the sadder angles. As one who could not have adored him more, it seems more vital now than ever.
DFW Syllabus
You know a man is great when even his syllabus is a work of art.
Also included in the other pages (of which there are many): a wonderful reading list. At the height of my obsession, I made it policy to read every book DFW blurbed, reviewed, or mentioned in passing during interviews (including things like Brautigan’s ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ and Renata Adler’s ‘Speedboat’). I can’t remember him being off even once. Said compilation forthcoming.
David Foster Wallace Quote
Culled from the current issue of Harper’s (January 2009), as recited by Zadie Smith at a memorial service for DFW at New York University):
“[…]there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent…Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of that premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of that part or yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”
So I guess it’s me quoting Harper’s quoting Zadie Smith quoting David Foster Wallace, which is I think part of the magic of words and thoughts — that they course through so many minds, residing, then spreading again.
David Foster Wallace brings back feelings of J.D. Salinger’s alter-ego/character Buddy Glass — the philosopher at the bar, the one who tells you how it is outside the classroom. Much of how I try to act comes from his Kenyon Speech. It just moved me so much, the non-academic “real-life”ness of it all.
Writing as an act of love. If that sounds cheesey, we need more cheese.
David Foster Wallace Memorial Fund
from McSweeney’s:
Illinois State University has established the David Foster Wallace Memorial Reading Series and Award. Created to bring to their campus writers who will energize and challenge the community, the fund will also periodically honor a graduate or undergraduate student whose writing engages its subjects from an original, committed, and humane perspective. Tax-deductible donations may be mailed to Illinois State University Foundation, Box 8000, Normal, IL 61790-8000. Checks should be made out to “ISU Foundation, David Foster Wallace Memorial Fund.” Donations may also be made online, here. Gifts should be designated as being for the David Foster Wallace Memorial Fund.
David Foster Wallace was a member of the English Department faculty at Illinois State University from 1993 to 2002. During his years there, he completed Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. He was an outstanding colleague and teacher whose contributions to Illinois State University and to the world of letters this award will honor in perpetuity.
This is one I’ll be donating to.