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danchibnall's review against another edition
5.0
One of Stephen King's greatest characters ever, Roland Deschain of Gilead, was a Gunslinger. In King's universe, a Gunslinger was a kind of "walking justice" that roamed the worlds trying to keep order where disorder reigned. These men were by no means sages or smiling monks. They were filled with a sense of right and wrong in the world that made them lethal when they needed to be. But it was their knowledge, their ability to understand others around them, that made them best suited for their jobs.
Without sounding cheesy, I believe David Foster Wallace is a type of Gunslinger in our world. He just did it with words rather than bullets.
I thoroughly enjoy DFW's work because it is so deep, so funny, and filled with moments where you say to yourself, "I know the exact feeling from which that passage sprang." He's like a painter who paints a scene that you can look through and say, "I've seen that, and I felt the way the painter does."
DFW's knowledge of the world, and of the human condition, really comes through in this book. Reading the transcript of his interviews with David Lipsky makes you feel happy to be a human being, and happy that there are other people out there who feel compassionate about the written word. Wallace was one of those rare men who could be hilarious one moment and genius the next. He proves that simply because something is complex does not mean we should shun it; we should embrace it because we will learn more about ourselves when we do.
To understand him more, read the book.
There are many moments when I am reading that I wish he were still alive.
Without sounding cheesy, I believe David Foster Wallace is a type of Gunslinger in our world. He just did it with words rather than bullets.
I thoroughly enjoy DFW's work because it is so deep, so funny, and filled with moments where you say to yourself, "I know the exact feeling from which that passage sprang." He's like a painter who paints a scene that you can look through and say, "I've seen that, and I felt the way the painter does."
DFW's knowledge of the world, and of the human condition, really comes through in this book. Reading the transcript of his interviews with David Lipsky makes you feel happy to be a human being, and happy that there are other people out there who feel compassionate about the written word. Wallace was one of those rare men who could be hilarious one moment and genius the next. He proves that simply because something is complex does not mean we should shun it; we should embrace it because we will learn more about ourselves when we do.
To understand him more, read the book.
There are many moments when I am reading that I wish he were still alive.
cuckmulligan's review against another edition
3.0
Nice little bit of closure after reading Infinite Jest. I must have heard the anecdote of DFW's epiphanic viewing of Blue Velvet in like five different places by now.
nataliedallaire's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
robdabear's review against another edition
4.0
There was something really haunting about reading David's voice. Sure, The End of the Tour came out and pretty much distilled the book's key moments, but there was just something about reading his words with all of the stutters and tics and so on that was really just kind of...sad. Lipsky, for one, sort of mostly succeeds in not being disingenuous, and I may just pick up whatever it is he's written one of these days, but the real focus here was DFW's voice, now long gone and suddenly a topic of debate.
No human being is perfect, everyone has their flaws and black marks and bad periods, and there's no need to try to make excuses for others' wrongdoing. But, well, I've been stuck thinking about Infinite Jest since I finished a little over a week ago, and then to be transported back to 1996, to sit with David and listen to him talk and talk about the tour and the book and the world that he lived in (particularly of interest, when a couple hundred miles away, little one-year old me was tottering around, unaware of the world I was born into), I don't know. It was a kind of powerful experience for me. So, yeah.
No human being is perfect, everyone has their flaws and black marks and bad periods, and there's no need to try to make excuses for others' wrongdoing. But, well, I've been stuck thinking about Infinite Jest since I finished a little over a week ago, and then to be transported back to 1996, to sit with David and listen to him talk and talk about the tour and the book and the world that he lived in (particularly of interest, when a couple hundred miles away, little one-year old me was tottering around, unaware of the world I was born into), I don't know. It was a kind of powerful experience for me. So, yeah.
mg_libros's review against another edition
5.0
Es muy interesante esto de casi escuchar hablar a un autor a través de la transcripción de las cintas. Y más sabiendo el rumbo que acabarían tomando las cosas para él.
Quizás no es un libro para leer al sol en vacaciones y le pega más sofá y manta.
Quizás no es un libro para leer al sol en vacaciones y le pega más sofá y manta.
varvara's review against another edition
5.0
I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those annoying people who go around telling other people to read David Foster Wallace, like, now, because he’s just fascinating.
jdgerlach's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
daniell's review against another edition
3.0
The journalist's job is to accurately depict, and this involves picking and choosing what will and will not be represented. The journalist's genius is choosing the best possible things said surrounding them with the most appropriate facts and observations. AOCYEUBY is the transcription of David Lipsky's five days with DFW in 1996 shortly after the release of Infinite Jest. Lipsky interviewed Wallace on assignment from Rolling Stone, later winning a National Magazine Award for his work.
The book reads as you would expect, as more of a directed monologue than a dialogue. Lipsky does well to step aside and let Wallace talk while prodding just enough to keep him articulating. The conversation spans a lot of different topics, but given the timing of the interview Wallace's new popularity is a major theme. When these interviews took place IJ was #15 on NYT's fiction bestseller list and Lipsky asking Wallace versions of “so, what do you think about all this” is prominent.
More interesting are the discussions they have relating to the themes of IJ, Wallace’s upbringing, and their intersection. Wallace is an addictive person, and he talks about his experiences with drugs (minor and boring), alcohol (more prevalent), and television (most prevalent). Hearing him talk about his own struggles with an inordinate draw toward the tube nicely compliments his more researched essay “E Unibus Plurum” on modes of expression in entertainment.
You can’t not have respect for him when he talks about the isolation and struggle that went into IJ, paired with the misperceptions he had received up to that point from critics who could not have mathematically read his thousand-page book with any depth—not to mention his endurance to the strange cost of literary fame. His idea is that literary celebrity is different than most other celebrity in that when he writes, he’s not acting or presenting a kind of front as a television or film actor, or pop musician does. Literature is a dense medium, so personal vestment in one’s work is automatic, putting the author in a strange place. He seemed to handle the newfound popularity in a positive way, but he was certainly not geared toward that kind of attention and recoils at the idea of enjoying his success, capitalizing on his work, and standing out. This man hates the idea of taking an advance on a book, thinking that it will taint anything that follows due to the sheer pressure of having to come up with a work on a certain timeframe. You can understand why he gravitated toward essay-writing.
The takeaway is that in late Summer 2008 the world lost a burgeoning mind and a heart that was bigger. His whole tack with IJ was to present ideas that would at once hook you in the gut and make you feel something true, his own antidote to cynical PM-lit/media. Noble. I’m on his team.
The book reads as you would expect, as more of a directed monologue than a dialogue. Lipsky does well to step aside and let Wallace talk while prodding just enough to keep him articulating. The conversation spans a lot of different topics, but given the timing of the interview Wallace's new popularity is a major theme. When these interviews took place IJ was #15 on NYT's fiction bestseller list and Lipsky asking Wallace versions of “so, what do you think about all this” is prominent.
More interesting are the discussions they have relating to the themes of IJ, Wallace’s upbringing, and their intersection. Wallace is an addictive person, and he talks about his experiences with drugs (minor and boring), alcohol (more prevalent), and television (most prevalent). Hearing him talk about his own struggles with an inordinate draw toward the tube nicely compliments his more researched essay “E Unibus Plurum” on modes of expression in entertainment.
You can’t not have respect for him when he talks about the isolation and struggle that went into IJ, paired with the misperceptions he had received up to that point from critics who could not have mathematically read his thousand-page book with any depth—not to mention his endurance to the strange cost of literary fame. His idea is that literary celebrity is different than most other celebrity in that when he writes, he’s not acting or presenting a kind of front as a television or film actor, or pop musician does. Literature is a dense medium, so personal vestment in one’s work is automatic, putting the author in a strange place. He seemed to handle the newfound popularity in a positive way, but he was certainly not geared toward that kind of attention and recoils at the idea of enjoying his success, capitalizing on his work, and standing out. This man hates the idea of taking an advance on a book, thinking that it will taint anything that follows due to the sheer pressure of having to come up with a work on a certain timeframe. You can understand why he gravitated toward essay-writing.
The takeaway is that in late Summer 2008 the world lost a burgeoning mind and a heart that was bigger. His whole tack with IJ was to present ideas that would at once hook you in the gut and make you feel something true, his own antidote to cynical PM-lit/media. Noble. I’m on his team.