Category Archives: David Foster Wallace

Demanding more to teach us we’re smart again

By TF | Published: June 28, 2010
I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us…that are a lot more [...]
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Black miracle – Extract from Infinite Jest

By TF | Published: March 30, 2010
It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give [...]
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I wish you way more than luck – extract from This is Water

By TF | Published: December 7, 2009
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically [...]
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Public Library 13.11

By TF | Published: November 13, 2009
Borges on the Couch by David Foster Wallace. One of my favourite authors reviews the biography of my other favourite author – and nails it. From the NY Times. In Retreat. Malcolm Knox on the future of gentlemen’s clubs, from The Monthly. ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’. Umberto Eco interviewed in [...]
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Public library 23.10

By TF | Published: October 23, 2009
Theoi Greek Mythology library. A great resource, everything you will need. Host by David Foster Wallace. This essay, though from 2005, is certainly new to me. It has a different tone to his better known essays – does this mean it is not as good? DFW’s non-fic strengths are (were) his wit and his keen observation of [...]
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Public Library 5.8

By TF | Published: August 5, 2009
Additions to the library this time are strictly – strictly – literary. Nixon’s obituary by Hunter S. Thompson from 1994. There were so many lead-ins from the article that I wanted to use, most of which included the word ‘scum’. Here is the one I settled for: “You don’t even have to know who Richard [...]
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Brief interview with hideous man

By TF | Published: July 5, 2009
B.I. #46 07-97 Nutley NJ ‘Alls I’m – or think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good it happened? No way. But did you ever read Victor Frankl? Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book. Frankl was in a camp at [...]
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Public Library 13.6

By TF | Published: June 12, 2009
Jon Baskin on why death is not the end for David Foster Wallace. From Point Magazine. The Sound of Young America speaks to Brother Ali. A piece on why Ali is important to hip-hop will be coming to the igloo soon. The Sydney Morning Herald‘s resident economic gangsta, Ross G, breaks down the psychology of [...]
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