MetaFilter posts tagged with davidfosterwallace

Infinite Summer

mattbucher — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:46:49 -0800

Infinite Summer - "The Challenge: Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009" "You've been meaning to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon David Foster Wallace's masterwork, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat." There is also a Twitter account, hashtag (#infsum), and a Facebook group.

Colonel Sanders Wants to Sponsor Your Pot Holes

jwakawaka — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:08:36 -0800

Year of the Chicken Pot Pie, anyone? We're getting closer to David Foster Wallace's Year of the Whopper.

David Foster Wallace on Fatalism

homunculus — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:05:19 -0800

Consider the Philosopher. The early metaphysical investigations of David Foster Wallace.

John Ziegler vs. Nate Silver

billysumday — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:54:17 -0800

You may have heard of John Ziegler. A former right-wing talk radio host turned right-wing documentarian, he was once the subject of a well-known David Foster Wallace essay about conservative talk radio. Ziegler later gained some notoriety by slamming Wallace heartlessly after the author committed suicide, calling him an overrated writer and criticizing the press for its coverage of his death. Now, Ziegler has once again made waves by going nuclear in an interview with pollster-watcher Nate Silver over the legitimacy of a commissioned Zogby poll. Silver questions the value of the poll, which contains leading questions, and which Ziegler plans on using in his upcoming documentary to "numerically prove" that Obama supporters are grossly misinformed idiots. An excerpt from the end of the Nate Silver interview: NS: Well, since you’re running a website calling people misinformed, I’d like to see if -- there are certain things you’ve said that I would consider misinformed. JZ: Misinformed? You're a piece of work! You are never going to have the guts to post a representative transcript on your website! I thought you actually ran a legitimate website! NS: Thank you, have a good day. JZ: Go fuck yourself. And here is an excerpt from the David Foster Wallace essay (Wallace sort of hammers Ziegler in the essay over Ziegler's obsession with OJ Simpson and his determined and frequent use of the n-word on the many radio shows he's been fired from): The trouble starts when Tiger Woods wins the 1997 Masters. As part of his commentary on the tournament, Mr. Z. posits on-air that Tiger constitutes living proof of the fact that "not all white people are racists." His supporting argument is that "no white person would ever think of Tiger as a nigger," because whites draw a mental distinction "between people who just happen to be black and people who act like niggers." His reason for broadcasting the actual word "nigger"? "This all goes back to O.J. I hated the fact that the media treated viewers and listeners like children by saying 'Mark Fuhrman used the N-word.' I despised that, and I think it gives the word too much power. Plus there's the whole hypocrisy of how black people can use it and white people can't. I was young and naive and thought I could stand on principle." As part of that principled stand, Mr. Z. soon redeploys the argument and the word in a discussion of boxer Mike Tyson, whereupon he is fired, "even though there was very little listener reaction." As Mr. Z. understands it, the reason for his dismissal is that "a single black employee complained," and WWTN's parent, "a lily-white company," feared that it was "very vulnerable" to a discrimination lawsuit.

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace

Baldons — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:03:23 -0800

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone (warning: long article; could make you cry)

RIP, DFW

gerryblog — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:34:15 -0800

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about. First reported by an anonymous tip to a blog, the Los Angeles Times has confirmed that David Foster Wallace has hung himself.

Writers in Italy: Le Conversazioni

mattbucher — Thu, 31 May 2007 07:53:15 -0800

Le Conversazioni: Last summer a group of writers including David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, and Jeffrey Eugenides gathered on the Isle of Capri to discuss language and identity. This year's lineup includes Ethan Coen, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, and Chuck Palahniuk.

Oblivion

painquale — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:28:58 -0800

The David Foster Wallace Bibliography (in BibTex format) is ridiculously complete. The site also includes a zip file of DFW's essays and m p 3 s of a round table discussion. [via]

Michael, I'm On iTunes

eustacescrubb — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 05:38:53 -0800

iTunes Gets NBC Shows. And not just this season's: like a page out of Infinite Jest, iTunes and NBC are serving up classic NBC programs, including Knight Rider and Hitchcock Presents. (note: sorry - first link goes to iTunes Music Store -- no press releases available yet to link to.)

F/X porn

slipperywhenwet — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 07:51:32 -0800

Seeing The Matrix yesterday (and just before it, the preview for the third Terminator movie) reminded me of this old David Foster Wallace essay"F/X Porn", in which he points out how Hollywood blockbusters have become the equivalent of your average "2 for $10.99!!" XXX rentals. [Google cached version here.]

Big Fat Tycoon — Fri, 19 Oct 2001 18:03:46 -0800

A blistering dissection of David Foster Wallace and Simon Winchester's previously published essays on English usage, by Mark Halpern. Though I like some of Wallace's writing, I admit it's nice to see the scalpel taken to Wallace's "style for style's sake".

allaboutgeorge — Fri, 06 Jul 2001 22:43:09 -0800

Talking the talk: An interview with John McWhorter Speaking of linguistics and whatnot, I've been thumbing through the new-look East Bay Express. I read this, and I feel like McWhorter's never gotten over some black people wrongly labeling him as an Oreo cookie (never had someone assure him, in response to epithets like those, that there are 35 million ways of being African-American -- and that many of them involve fluency in "totally ass-kicking SWE," to reference David Foster Wallace's essay on Bryan Garner's new usage book in Harper's a couple of months ago).

I appreciate his iconoclasm (hell, like myself, he voted for Nader) and I'm willing to concede points of his basic argument and that I agree with him on some (the whole "niggardly" thing; the Ebonics controversy) points.

But after reading this, I wound up feeling irritated with him -- and especially put off by allowing himself to be ~~misrespresented~~ marketed as a conservative and, despite his vaunted speaking ability and academic credentials, his inability to get his points across in the media.