The Archives of David Foster Wallace

The New Yorker just published an article about the recent acquisition by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas of the David Foster Wallace archive. The content of the archive offers an amazing glance into the inner workings of an unparalleled (and missed) writer. It includes multiple drafts of his novels "Infinite Jest" and "Broom of the System", and copious drafts of and notes for many of his essays, including those collected in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again".

That DFW held on to early drafts and working notes is no surprise. I generally keep everything I've written. Not because I want future generations of admirers to gaze upon my words in reverence, but because I'm obsessed with not throwing away or deleting even a sentence that might come in handy later. I have dozens of saved drafts of stories and novels, dog-eared printouts and forgotten archived.doc files, sure that the minute I delete or toss something, tomorrow I'll wish I had it to use again.

Part of DFW's archive are hundreds of books from his personal collection. “Virtually all of the books are annotated, many are heavily annotated." Apparently, "Wallace was especially fond of taking notes and compiling vocabulary lists on the inner cover. The collection, heavy on contemporary fiction, contains nearly all of Wallace’s friend Don DeLillo’s novels, including some pre-publication typescripts. Other titles include Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink,” and “The Tipping Point,” and Jonathan Franzen’s “Strong Motion.”

What I love about this is the idea of Wallace, whose writing brims with impressive verbiage, scribbling down the words he was most fond of in the white space of his collection. I tend to treat my books as beautiful totems of the author that must be retained in their new condition and wouldn't dream of writing in them. I wrote words I liked and wanted to use in my writing in a notebook. But, a part of me loves this idea of adding to a classic, long published book that I admire. Even if I attempted this, I couldn't come up with as eloquent a doodle vision as this.

DFW was working on a novel when he died. "The Pale King" will be released by Little, Brown in April '11, at which time, according to ew.com, "Little, Brown will create a website to make large chunks of the manuscript available to fans, so they can see how the book came together and 'have a detailed sense of Wallace as a working writer.'"

Archiving the physical work of esteemed authors is nothing new. Especially at the Ransom Center, which also hosts the archives of Norman Mailer, Walt Whitman's poem and essay manuscripts, the letters of Edith Wharton, along with material from Carson McCullers to James Jones to James Baldwin, among many others. But you don't have to be dead to enjoy such a status, as the Ransom Center also houses material from Thomas Pynchon, Larry McMurtry, and Don DeLillo.

Watch DFW on Charlie Rose from 1997 here. It's a pretty incredible interview, where Rose asks David his take on some contemporary movies, about David Lynch who he wrote about in "Fun Thing", and about the movie Shine whose director Scott Hicks was a guest earlier on the same show. Incredible, but a little sad and cringy the way Rose squeezes David for information about things other than his writing, in order to get deeper into his writing mind. Rose also doesn't always listen to David's answers or allow the interview to flow organically. Rose also asks about David's non-fiction, his use of footnotes and endnotes, and his fame in the wake of "Infinite Jest".

DFW talking about which group of writers he considered himself a member of:

The Separation Anxiety Blues

My writing group is taking a break. It was a good run, but I’m ready to give it a rest for a while. For the last meeting they critiqued 35 pages of my new novel. I had rushed to finish that much to hand out. It has some problems, some first-draft woe. Such as lack of characterization and long scenes where I lovingly describe apartment interiors and the finer points of videocassettes. My hapless protagonist is getting sucked into the potentially lucrative but certainly questionable business of pornography. So apartments and videocassettes (it’s 1994) play a huge role. Okay, not so huge, but it’s only a first draft. I’ll save the chapters’ worth of living room, bedroom, and kitchen description for my book of linked stories on indoor living.

My group, called Council, or Mini Council, or Secret Mini Council, is an off-shoot of a Grub Street novel workshop where many of us met, first hand or by a couple degrees. The Mini Council is an extension of this class, in many, but certainly not all, ways. Every other Thursday we met at a member’s home in JP, after having read up to 100 pages of one or two writers' work.


Two weeks is a perfect length of time to read 100 pages. For me, anyway. I’m a sort-of slow reader. And we’re reading with an editorial eye for structure, syntax, dialogue, pacing, plot, character, all that good stuff. So this adds a layer of…reading to the reading. I always come away with some points to make, some helpful (hopefully) suggestions. But I’m amazed at what the other Mini Council members bring to the discussion. Details about motive or structure I just never considered, never imagined, had no idea existed. It always makes me want to go back and read the pages again. I’m still learning, still building my critical eye.

With the Mini Council on hiatus I can concentrate on other reading. Such as a literary journal that I’m supposed to be reviewing for The Review Review website. I’ve had this issue for a few months now, and I still haven’t finished it. Granted, it’s a double issue, thick with review-fodder such as a 100-page tribute to David Foster Wallace. Also, I tend to ignore reading for pleasure more when I’m in Mini Council. Actually, that’s not true. I just do less of it.


But at the moment I’ve fallen out of the reading habit. I’ve lost that readin’ feeling. Must. Get. Back. And I will. I’ve got about three books started, and I just have to finish those up, and move on to the next. Soon I’m off for a week’s vacation, and that’s when I’ll break this cycle of non-reading. I get a lot done down there (away from here) and so will be sure to pack plenty covers, soft and hard. I may even bring my laptop to get some writing done.

I miss the Mini Council already. But it will be back in the fall, in some form. I may join in the games, or I might take another Grub class. Or, I may lay low and just do the writing. Who can say? I like being coy. I’m the coy narrator. Actually, coy narrators drive me bats. Don’t do this at home, kids.

Megan Fox On Esquire Cover

Now that I have your attention…it has recently come to mine that Esquire has reinstated the practice of publishing fiction. At least online. The last time I bought a hard copy of Esquire was about two years ago, and it appeared they had given up fiction for good. They had always published great journalism and essays—but their fiction had become history.

A shame, because their literary heritage is long, having published works by Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Hammett, among many other greats. Who can forget this iconic cover from October 1973 showing all literary lions (along with a scant two lionesses) past and (circa-‘73) present?


Crack this decades old issue and you'll find 540 pages of great writing. What are the chances of this happening today? Slim. And if it did, it would be about how the authors looked, not about what they wrote. Nothing more than a fashion spread with token essays and one or two stories thrown in to make it look legit. Still, I'd probably buy it.


I also dusted off this paperback that I picked up at a book sale a couple years ago. Great Esquire fiction from the first fifty years. Will they even be able to fill a comparable-sized book for the second fifty?


If the current fiction page of their website is any indication, yes. Here I found stories by Don Delillo, Richard Russo, Chris Adrian, Jonathan Lethem, and David Foster Wallace. Good news all around. Well, for the most part. Esquire is still a magazine for men, so most of the stories are by male authors. And a cursory search of the site yields no address, email or otherwise, to send unsolicited manuscripts. That means an un-agented writer doesn't have a chance. Unless…

Fiction Contest

That's right, Esquire is running a fiction contest. The winner gets a cool $2500.00 and the winning story published in Esquire. But before you upload your latest short masterpiece to their site, check these posted rules:

"The first and most important rule — besides, of course, that the story has to be original — is that the story must be based on one of three titles that we have provided.

The titles are:

1. "Twenty-Ten"

2. "An Insurrection"

3. "Never, Ever Bring This Up Again"

A date, a thing, and a statement. No exceptions. Make of them what you will, do with them something great. But no taking an old story and slapping one of our new titles on it. We'll know, and we won't be happy.

Second rule: Your story cannot exceed 4,000 words. We are serious about that, too.

Other rules: You may submit only one story. The contest begins on May 1, 2009. All entries are due by midnight of August 1, 2009 and must be submitted electronically here at esquiresubmissions.com."

Hold up, there's more:

"Return to Esquire.com frequently for inspiration. Because we also have a second announcement:

Starting immediately, we will be publishing great new American fiction exclusively online, starting right here with "The Gray," a new story by Aaron Gwyn and the best bar-fight story we've ever read. It is just the first of many new stories that will find their first publication at the all-new esquire.com/fiction. Bookmark it. And get to typing."

I'm put off by prompts, but maybe I'll give the title suggestion thing a try. How about you? Thinking of entering? Which title would you use? I like 3. "Never, Ever Bring This Up Again."

I'm off to pick up the latest Esquire. Meanwhile, Megan decides what to read next:

Memorial

I’m not sure I can stand to look at another photo of David Foster Wallace. The one that especially kills me is the one where he’s outside, in shadows, staring down. He looks like he can’t wait to do what he finally did in September of this year: hang himself. He was 46.


I can name a dozen writers, purveyors of bad writing all, I wish would also follow through on this solipsistic death wish, but don’t. (Not yet anyway). And then there’s DFW, who did. He was a manic depressive and fought this most of his life. He went off his meds, from what I can tell, and was never able to live life in any way that could fulfill him and make him happy. He never thought he was good enough. Even though he was more than good enough in his students’ eyes and for his devoted readers.

The end of a year brings reflection for what has come in the last 300 fifty whatever days. Only because magazines and newspapers make us reflect. Because they have to fill in the few weeks at the end of the year with fodder that can be written ahead of time while the staff takes the holidays off. But, I’d be lying if I said I don’t read over the top ten lists and the notable deaths with interest.

Mixing all of this (deaths, top ten lists, writers) comes Roberto Bolaño and his latest posthumously translated novel 2666 (mentioned three times now in the past month on this blog). Bolaño didn’t kill himself. At least, not intentionally. But he died young. At age 50. In 2002. He did not live to see the translation of 2666 reach the American bestseller lists and numerous top ten best of end-of-year greatest-thing-ever until-next-year award mention notice countdown.


DFW and RB are dead. But they have more in common than being praised, lauded writers who died young. They both wrote at least one behemoth novel that scraped at greatness, whether by design or marketing savvy. 2666 is over 900 pages long, published simultaneously in hardcover and in a set of three paperbacks. DFW was in his 30s when his doorstop of a book, Infinite Jest, was published.


Over a thousand pages long, with almost two hundred more pages of end notes, the thing was a brilliant mash-up mess of meta entertainment and faux history (and it took place in Massachusetts. Bonus!). Well, that’s what I hear anyway. I didn’t actually read it. I got to about page 150 while trying to keep up with all the end note references (the only book I’ve read necessitating two bookmarks working simultaneously). I eventually traded it in for credit at some used book store that is probably closed now. I caught up with his work when I read his wonderful collection of essays, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” Where DFW goes on a cruise and to a state fair and does nothing more, and nothing less, than write about his experiences. Along with maybe some relevant history and research. Entertaining and enlightening. Maybe everything he ever wanted to be, he was already.


And so then I went on two Internet dates in the late nineties with a grad student who had been a student teacher at the same school where DFW taught writing in the mid-nineties. She said he was a nice guy who was attracted to gregarious women because he was basically shy and introverted (Really? A writer who’s introverted?). She described witnessing women (or overhearing about? Or possibly trying herself?) crowbar-ing their way into his life, trying to grab his attention in the most ‘outgoing’ ways. One woman climbed his fire escape and threw dog shit through his window to get his attention. It worked and he let her in. I tell this story for no reason but to show that the celebrity of a writer, the cult of a writer, has nothing (should have nothing) to do with his writing. The writer should be invisible and the writing should stand up for itself. I avoid looking at author photos. It deflates the experience of reading a book even before I’ve read the first line. I don’t really want to know what the writer looks like, where he lives, where he went to school, how many publishing credits he has to his name, and how many years younger he is.

DFW was already pretty famous before he died. Bolaño has become relatively famous in American in part because he’s dead, and dead writers (especially dangerous Chilean writers with an abundant, posthumously translated back catalog) hold an undeniable mystique that all the Oprah and NYT bestseller list appearances can’t assuage. But in death, both writers are being canonized, lionized, lovingly glanced at over the shoulders of bestselling, genre writers by an adoring reading public that includes gregarious flirty girls, readers who connect on some generational level with these authors, lovers of damn good writing, and the curious who have come to these writers after the fact, either to chase the ambulance or to see what all the literary fuss is about.

If nobody knew about DFW and RB, would their deaths matter so much now? I guess if I follow my own theory, my own sick logic, then the only thing that matters is the writing, the work, and the author can kill himself ten times over while the writing stands on its own merits. But I know what both writers look like, I’ve seen the author photos, the dust jackets depicting their tragic, elegiac images at different ages and times, and I know how each died (Bolaño died of liver failure, possibly deriving from complications of early heroin use) and all I can say now is I wish both were still alive to feed us hungry readers, us craving fans, just a bit more of that sweet great good writing.