DAVID FOSTER WALLACE 1962-2008
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Zora Neale Hurston: What Does
Soulful
Mean?” was originally conceived as an introduction for the Virago edition of
Their Eyes Were Watching God
and appeared subsequently in a revised version in
The Guardian.
“Middlemarch and Everybody” and “Hepburn and Garbo” were first published in
The Guardian.
“E. M. Forster: Middle Manager,” “F. Kafka, Everyman” and “Two Directions for the Novel” were published in
The New York Review of Books.
“Speaking in Tongues” was given as the 2008 Robert B. Silvers Lecture at the New York Public Library and published in a revised version by
The New York Review of Books.
“That Crafty Feeling” was given as a lecture at Columbia University, commissioned by Ben Marcus, and later published in
The Believer.
A revised version appears here. “One Week in Liberia” was the fruit of a trip organized and funded by Oxfam. It was published by
The Observer.
“At the Multiplex, 2006” and “Notes on Oscar Weekend” were published by
The Sunday Telegraph
. “Accidental Hero” appeared in a short version in
The Sunday Telegraph
and appears in full here. “Smith Family Christmas” was commissioned by
The New York Times
and “Dead Man Laughing” was published by
The New Yorker.
“Rereading Barthes and Nabokov” began life as a lecture, given at Harvard University, although it has been revised so extensively almost nothing of the original remains.
I am grateful to my editors, Simon Prosser and Ann Godoff, and to my agent, Georgia Garrett, for all their efforts on my behalf over the past ten years. For the help and advice I received on individual essays I thank Devorah Baum, Tom Bissell, Mark Costello, Hadley Freeman, Bret Gladstone, Mary Karr, Lee Klein, Cressida Leyshon, Lee Rourke, Lorin Stein, Martina Testa, Adam Thirlwell and Sunil Yapa. Particular thanks to Bob Silvers for sending interesting books and projects my way, and for so many ingenious edits. Special thanks to Lysbeth Holdaway for her guidance in Liberia.
My greatest debt, as ever, is to Nick Laird, my best reader and fiercest editor. Your work on this book—and support of its author—were essential.
INDEX
Aczel, Edward
Adams, J. Donald
Adam’s Rib
(film)
Adomitis, Dan
“Adult World” (Wallace)
Alix, Patrick
Allen, Woody
American Colonization Society
Americo-Liberians (Congos)
Amis, Kingsley
Amis, Martin
Anna Karenina
(film)
Another Country
(Baldwin)
Antonioni, Michelangelo
Apicella, Tina
Aristotle
Arnold, Matthew
Ash Wednesday
(Eliot)
Astaire, Fred
Atrocity Exhibition, The
(Ballard)
Auden, W. H.
Austen, Jane
authenticity
Author
death of
lack of control of
as modern figure
privilege of
Autograph Man, The
(Smith)
Bacall, Lauren
Baez, Joan
Baldwin, James
Ballard, J. G.
Balzac, Honoré de
Bana, Eric
Barth, John
Barthelme, Donald
Barthes, Roland
as left wing
on modernity of concept of author
see also
Author, death of
Bauer, Felice
BBC Talks of E. M. Forster, The
Beckett, Samuel
Begley, Louis
Bellissima
(film)
Bellow, Saul
Benjamin, Walter
Bennet, Elizabeth (char.)
Bhagavad Gita
Billy Budd
(Melville)
Blasetti, Alessandro
Bleak House
(Dickens)
“Blood Donor, The,”
Blood on the Tracks
(album)
Bluest Eye, The
(Morrison)
Bogart, Humphrey
Borges, Jorge Luis
Bovary, Emma (char.)
Boyd, Valerie
Brief Encounter
(film)
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
(Wallace)
bad reviews of
#2
#20
#42
#48
#59
Brod, Max
Brokeback Mountain
(film)
Brooke, Dorothea (char.)
Brownell, John
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(TV show)
Byron, George Gordon, Lord
Camille
(film)
Capote, Truman
Capote
(film)
“Cares of a Family Man, The” (Kafka)
Carver, Raymond
Casanova
(film)
Cash, Johnny
Cassavetes, John
Causabon (char.)
Cherry Orchard, The
(Chekhov)
Chicago
(film)
Chomsky, Noam
“Christabel” (Coleridge)
Christie, Agatha
Christopher Strong
(film)
“Church Not Made with Hands” (Wallace)
Citizen Kane
(film)
Clooney, George
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(film)
“Coeur Simple, Un” (Flaubert)
Colbert, Claudette
Coleman, Ella
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
(film)
Congos
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A
(film)
Conneh, Abraham Paye
constructive deconstruction
Conversations with Kafka
(Janouch)
Coover, Robert
Coupland, Douglas
Craig, Daniel
Crawford, Joan
cricket
Critchley, Simon
Crosby, Bing
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(film)
Cukor, George
Damon, Matt
Dangerous Liaisons
Date Movie
(film)
“Datum Centurio” (Wallace)
Davis, Bette
de Acosta, Mercedes
“Dead Parrot” sketch
“Death of the Author, The” (Barthes)
“Death Is Not the End” (Wallace)
“Death of Ivan Ilyich, The” (Tolstoy)
de Chirico, Giorgio
Defense Ministry, Liberian
Deleuze, Gilles
DeLillo, Don
De Niro, Robert
Denzil (uncle)
“Depressed Person, The” (Wallace)
Derrida, Jacques
De Sica, Vittorio
“Devil Is a Busy Man, The” (Wallace)
DiCaprio, Leonardo
Dickens, Charles
Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes
Didion, Joan
Dietrich, Marlene
“Dockery and Son” (Larkin)
Doe, Samuel
Do I Really Have to Communicate with You?
Don Bosco Homes
Doolittle, Eliza (char.)
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Dreams from My Father
(Obama)
Dust Tracks on a Road
(Hurston)
Dylan, Bob
Easy Cliché and Tired Stereotype
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Edward R. Murrow: An American Original
(Persico)
Eliot, George
advice given by
experience and
journal of
religious views of
romantic failings of
as writer of ideas
Eliot, T. S.
Eliser d’amore’
(opera)
Ellis, Bret Easton
Elphinstone, Major
Emerson, George (char.)
“Enactor” (char.)
“End and the Beginning, The” (Szymborska)
End of History and the Last Man, The
(Fukuyuma)
E. T.
(film)
Ethics
(Spinoza)
Evans, Marian.
See
Eliot, George
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
(Wallace)
Failure to Launch
(film)
Faith of My Fathers
(McCain)
Fawlty Towers
(TV show)
Fellini, Federico
Finnegans Wake
(Joyce)
Firestone
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Flaubert, Gustave
Flesh and the Devil
(film)
Flomo, John
“Forever Overhead” (Wallace)
Forster, E. M.
aesthetics of
concept of audience of
connection as theme of
conversational tone in broadcasts of
homosexuality of
simplicity vs. complexity in
social and political views of
Foucault, Michel
Frankl, Viktor
Freud, Sigmund
Freudianism
Friedberg, Jason
Gaddis, William
Gaghan, Stephen
Gaping Flaws
Garbo, Greta
Gardner, Ava
Garth, Mary (char.)
Genet, Jean
Get Rich or Die Tryin’
(film)
Ghanam, Kamal E.
Gift, The
(Hyde)
Gift, The
(Nabokov)
Gilbert, John
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Good Night, and Good Luck
(film)
Goons, The
Grable, Betty
Grand Hotel
(film)
Granola Cruncher (char.)
Grant, Cary
Gravity’s Rainbow
(Pynchon)
Great Escape, The
(film)
Greenblatt, Stephen
Greene, Graham
Grizzly Man
(film)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
(film)
Gyllenhaal, Jake
Haiti
Hall, Maurice (char.)
Hancock, Tony
Hancock’s Half Hour
Hannigan, Alyson
Hard Times
(Dickens)
Hayworth, Rita
Health Ministry, Liberian
Heidegger, Martin
Henry, Thierry
Hepburn, Audrey
Hepburn, Katharine
Oscar nominations of
Herriton, Philip (char.)
Hickock, Dick
Hicks, Amos (char.)
Hidden
(film)
Higgins, Henry (char.)
High Society
(film)
“High Windows” (Larkin)
History of Western Philosophy
(Russell)
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hoffman, Philip Seymour
Hofmann, Michael
Holdaway, Lysbeth
Homer
Honeychurch, Lucy (char.)
Howards End
(Forster)
How Not to Dress
Huffman, Felicity
“Human Personality” (Weil)
Hurston, Zora Neal
“I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas” (song)
In Cold Blood
(film)
Infinite Jest
(Wallace)
International Necronautical Society (INS)
Iraq War
Isherwood, Christopher
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (song)
“It’s Too Late” (song)
Jack, Richard S.
Jackson, Curtis “50 Cent,”
Jackson, Jesse
James, Henry
Janáček, Leoö
Jane Eyre
(Brontë)
Janie (char.)
Jealousy
(Robbe-Grillet)
Jesenská, Milena
Jews
Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen
“Joint Statement of Inauthenticity, The,”
Jolie, Angelina
Joyce, James
“Judgment, The” (Kafka)
Kael, Pauline
Kafka, Franz
as allegedly self-hating Jew
Brod’s friendship with
brothels visited by
descriptions of
diary of
letters of
organization of day of
and request for burning of work
revision of ideas on
time in
unconventionality of
on women
at work
Kant, Immanuel
Keats, John
Kelly, Grace
Kennedy, Robert
Kiedis, Anthony
King, Carole
King, Martin Luther
“Kubla Khan” (Coleridge)
Kundera, Milan
Kushner, Tony
Ladislaw (char.)
Lakes, The
Lancaster, Burt
Larkin, Philip
Lawrence. H.
League of Nations
Lean, David
Lectures on Literature
(Nabokov)
Ledger, Heath
Lee, Harper
Lennon, John
Lermontov, Mikhail
Letter to My Father
(Kafka)
Lewes, George
Li, Gong
Liberia
civil war in
education in
ex-combatants in
independence declared by
1980 coup in
poverty in
rubber workers in
UN sex abuse scandal in
Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary
Liberia: The Heart of Darkness
“Literary World, The” (Larkin)
Little Women
(film)
Lloyd, David
Locke, John
logotherapy
Lolita
(Nabokov)
Lydgate, Dr. (char.)
Lynch, David
Macaulay, Rose
Macaulay, Thomas
McCain, John
MacCarthy, Desmond
McCarthy, Joseph
McCarthy, Tom
Macro Planners