These days of Facebook
selfies and gasping self-promotion in all facets of the creative life pause a
moment to reflect on a pre-iPhone great, David Foster Wallace.
On the twentieth
anniversary of the publication of his ambitious tour de force, “Infinite Jest,”
consider this piece of journalism by The
New Yorker’s D.T Max about the inherent character of this literary original.
(Wallace committed suicide in 2008. He was 46 years old.)
“[Wallace] told most people that he did
not use e-mail, but he gave his students an address. Sections of “Infinite
Jest” began to appear in magazines, but he downplayed his growing fame as a
writer. Doug Hesse, a colleague, made the mistake of praising an essay of
Wallace’s. “He did this gesture of wiping the butt with one hand and pointing
to his mouth with the other,” Hesse remembers. “I learned really really quickly
not to go beyond the equivalent of ‘How’s the weather?’ ”
“Downplaying his growing fame as a writer”? There may be
those who say a man who enjoyed the kind of fame that Wallace did in the last
decade of his life could afford to be dismissive of the trappings that come
with being a household name. Still, imagine if this great were with us, how
instructive of a role model he would be for exposing the emptiness of fame in
our modern world.
Next: Running for
Your Life: What’s to Read?
