by David Lipsky
I am not a huge DFW fan. I adore his essays but have yet to make it through his fiction. I read this mostly in response to my father, who knew him in college and was speaking often of him to me in May. It's a mixed experience of a book--it gives a true and incredible sense of the man behind the towe...
I saw a lot of 4 star reviews on this one, which I can completely understand, because I was going to give it 4 stars too, because how could I possibly give this the same amount of stars that I gave DFW's actual books? And then I thought, you know what, screw it, it's 5 stars. Maybe not a 5 stars i...
"But you know that writing down something somebody says out loud is not a matter of transcribing. Because written stuff said out loud on the page doesn't look said out loud. It just looks crazy." This is a quote from DFW nearly two-thirds through this transcribed interview, and it sums up why I find...
I like the way I read this book. Just a few pages at a time. There was a complex honesty throughout the conversations. You always know that DFW is planning answers, turning off the tape, even, to try them out first, but that he is doing that because he thinks the questions are important enough to...
This book is actually the transcripts that Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky did with David Foster Wallace over the course of five days that wrapped up DFW's Infinite Jest book tour. Fascinating for anyone who has been touched by Wallace's writing, and an excellent companion to Infinite Jest.
I didn't get very far. I really tried, but the writing was just so sloppy. There weren't clear indications of who was speaking or any discernable distinctions between actual speech and just thoughts or interpretations or whatever. it really seemed to be just straight transcription, and it was too mu...