FART
An Infinite Jest-worthy acronym.
“The true noises of the night-time city”
Italo Calvino and David Foster Wallace on night noises.
“You were wrong about being done”
Gale Walden writes about her relationship with David Foster Wallace in life and in death.
TV nostalgia
Nostalgia for limited choices, with commericals.
Recently updated
DFW on the shelf: Now with a screenshot of an MSNBC guest with Infinite Jest and other interesting books behind him.
DFW on the shelf
On MSNBC just now: on a bookshelf behind Nick Ackerman, former Watergate prosecutor, a copy of Infinite Jest.
WWDFWS
What would DFW say about this?
An IRS pipeline
In The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell visits an IRS outpost.
Studs Terkel and DFW
Terkel’s observations about the waitress in Five East Pieces remind me of David Foster Wallace’s imagining of the life of a shopper waiting on line in a supermarket.
SFW on the shelf
Take a look at this tweeted photograph of Bryan Garner’s bookshelves. Can you spot the book by Sally Foster Wallace, David’s mother?
New not-new DFW
An excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King has been published by McNally Editions as Something To Do with Paying Attention. The excerpt, a section of the novel (§22), is indeed about paying attention, as is The Pale King itself. Someone who’s paying attention might notice that McNally’s new paperback is more expensive than the paperback edition of The Pale King itself.
Foot falls
“Oh no! The Silver Lake Foot has fallen down the steps at the #MetGala.”
National Archives
The National Archives of Game Show History.
Sally Foster Wallace (1938–2020)
Sally Foster Wallace’s Practically Painless English (1980) is a textbook noteworthy for the loopy humor of its sample sentences.
Word of the day: fuliginous
It’s a word I immediately associate with David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
James D. Wallace (1937–2019)
When Mr. Wallace was a brand new professor, students actually threw rocks at him, mistaking him for a fellow student sufficiently geeky to carry a briefcase.
Feet on the move
The Sunset Foot Clinic is leaving Silver Lake. And with it will go a famous happy foot/sad foot sign with a connection to David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.
Word of the day: fantod
“‘The U.S.A. fantods are meaning fear, confusion, standing hair.’”
Ads ’n’ rockets
Somewhere David Foster Wallace is shaking his head: both yes and no.
Deb Larson-Venable talks about David Foster Wallace
I found it by chance: a 2014 recording of Deb Larson-Venable talking with Christopher Lydon about David Foster Wallace. Deb is the executive director of Granada House, the halfway house where Wallace got sober.
Double articles
As in “the El Phoenix Room.” Gone but not forgotten.
Arf, arf, arf
The New York Times reports that two of Barbra Streisand’s three dogs are clones of a fourth now-dead Streisand dog. Reality is turning into a David Foster Wallace novel.
The Foot Clinic sign
Los Angeles’s Foot Clinic sign (happy foot/sad foot) comes to life in a music video by YACHT.
If the book fits
Infinite Jest and Jumperoo.
An Infinite Jest assignment
How I taught the novel when not dreaming.
Teaching Infinite Jest
“But do you want to put in the time to read Infinite Jest ?” I asked him. “That’s my decision!” he shouted.
David Brooks and SNOOTs
David Brooks misunderstands the David Foster Wallace acronym.
Brief Interviews with an apology
It’s weird.
“Day after day after day”
A high-school junior, a year’s worth of Wendy’s Chicken Nuggets, and Infinite Jest.
DFW and Illinois
A brief tour in The New York Times.