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:
Showing posts with label Infinite Jest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Infinite Jest. Show all posts
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, December 19, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
2666, the New Novel by Roberto Bolaño
A few months ago I finished reading the English translation of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives. I’m a slow reader, plus I read more than one book at a time, but the time expense was worth the enviously dizzying, meandering, and generally satisfying result. The Savage Detectives doesn’t feature any detectives in the classic Merriam-Webster definition. Instead its pages are populated by hundreds of Latin American poets, wannabes, groupies, and hangers on. This mammoth book’s plot, if you can call it that, is a fractured, voluminous story of renegade Chilean poets who start an extremist poetry movement. These are young men and women using poetry to rebel and grow up and run off and make love and slowly or quickly die. The book reads like a progression of short stories, all connected, sometimes tenuously, by a core of poets that realizes the only way to speak out against repression in 1970s Central America is to kick in the teeth of established literary greats like Pablo Neruda.
The Savage Detectives shouts to the rooftops in a style that reminds me of sitting around a huge campfire with a hundred guests telling their stories of events surrounding the core poets. Imagine writing a book with a hundred different voices, spanning decades, and covering thousands of miles. Bolaño wrote like a man on fire. Which he sort of was: he died in 2003 at age 50. In the 1990s he knew he was a goner and he pushed his poetry aside and feverishly ground out short stories and novels. English translators are still catching up.
Just before he died, Bolaño completed what many critics are calling his greatest accomplishment, 2666, a novel published this week in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I don't have my copy yet, but it sounds sprawling, split into five sections that, from what I’ve read, could be five separate novels and is “…based in part on the still unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, in the Sonora desert near the Texas border.” It also no doubt touches upon many themes struck in Detectives (and it should be said, his short stories and other novels): literature as journey, as country, as a political ideal; sex and violence; spiritual longing; the search for home/country.
Adding to the mystique is that, while getting a proper release in hardback, it’s also being published concurrently as a set of three paperbacks. In a sleeve!
I love packaging: if the book looks unique, I’ll consider buying it based on physical merits. Plus 2666 is big. 900 pages big. I love big books. Well, the idea of them. I love picking them up and walking around the bookstore with them. And if I buy them I will certain start them and maybe the story will hold my interest enough to get to the end (often by page 200 you pretty much get the idea of any novel) and then I can let it sit like a trophy on my shelf. That’s what happened with DFW’s Infinite Jest; I never got past page 200. But I will come back to that one day. Promise.
2666 sounds irresistibly nuts and maybe groundbreaking and possibly disappointing and wonderfully huge. It’s one book, it’s three books, it’s one book. I guess the idea is to read it and find out. Coming so fresh off of The Savage Detectives I’m not sure I’m ready for another heady, heavy dose of Bolaño. But one thing is certain; I won’t be able to stay away for long.
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