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greta_macionyte's review against another edition
2.0
I found this book dry and boring. I don't think the authors managed to capture the personality and the spirit of DFW.
andriawrites's review against another edition
3.0
First and foremost, DT Max's writing is completely horendous... Which I find quite strange for a staff writer at the New Yorker.
I picked up this book because I wanted to "crack' the puzzle and mystery that is David Foster Wallace and his mythical legacy. Having read some of Wallace's essays before, I felt like Max was trying to (unsuccesfully) mimick his complex and intricate writing style, which just made reading the book so much more of a challenge, because it just felt like a stylistic rip-off.
More often than not, passages were tedious and Max dragged on for three pages on things that could have been described in a simple paragraph.
Max had all the necessary elements for the story and biography of Wallace's life, it's just that the biography lacked a story telling component that I find necessary in biographies in order to avoid a list/hospital record/court document style of writing. The writing was bland, unemotional, and totally devoid of character.
Wallace was a really interesting person; he changed the landscape of contemporary American fiction and I don't feel like Max fairly portrays this in his biography.
I think I will wait on a volume of his collected letters and diary entries to get the "true" essence of DFW, or maybe I'll need to challenge myself to read Infinte Jest?
I picked up this book because I wanted to "crack' the puzzle and mystery that is David Foster Wallace and his mythical legacy. Having read some of Wallace's essays before, I felt like Max was trying to (unsuccesfully) mimick his complex and intricate writing style, which just made reading the book so much more of a challenge, because it just felt like a stylistic rip-off.
More often than not, passages were tedious and Max dragged on for three pages on things that could have been described in a simple paragraph.
Max had all the necessary elements for the story and biography of Wallace's life, it's just that the biography lacked a story telling component that I find necessary in biographies in order to avoid a list/hospital record/court document style of writing. The writing was bland, unemotional, and totally devoid of character.
Wallace was a really interesting person; he changed the landscape of contemporary American fiction and I don't feel like Max fairly portrays this in his biography.
I think I will wait on a volume of his collected letters and diary entries to get the "true" essence of DFW, or maybe I'll need to challenge myself to read Infinte Jest?
implicushions's review against another edition
2.0
i'm kinda ashamed i read this, but the fanboy in me won-out this time. can't say anything, how am i supposed to rate some dudes lifestory, or even the grammar used to describe it? he's an amazing writer and i'm sad he had to go through so much psychic pain.
geoffdgeorge's review against another edition
Reads like a book-length version of the original New Yorker profile (staid, linear, proficiently emotive, etc.). Annoyingly, Max occasionally takes some rather liberal liberties in connecting passages of DFW's fictional works to his real-life thoughts and actions, and I found more typos in my first-edition hardback than I expected to. (Toward the front of the book, it seemed like there was one every other page.)
All the same, though, I was grateful to have even a slightly deeper look into the desperate highs and lows of an author whose work first brought me to my knees in college. For that, the book is still valuable.
All the same, though, I was grateful to have even a slightly deeper look into the desperate highs and lows of an author whose work first brought me to my knees in college. For that, the book is still valuable.
heidihaverkamp's review against another edition
4.0
A searching, painful, paradoxical life. I've struggled to connect with DFW's fiction but ever since the same author's biographical piece appeared in The New Yorker (taken from this longer biography), he's fascinating me as a thinker, person, and writer. He was so focused but so scattered, so brilliant but so immature (until he was about 40), addicted to many substances but finally transformed and touched deeply by the recovery movement, so earnest although often such an embellisher or even liar. His struggle with mental illness is aching. His promiscuity, anger with his mother, and sometime misogyny (?), contrast with his searing critiques and lament for the state of American manhood.
Three stars because this early biography is sometimes a bit clunky on a sentence level. Also, the way Max talks about the Midwest as the primary influence on DFW's "orderliness," manners, kindness, and even some of his neuroses seems contrived. The Midwest he describes comes off as flat sometimes, and a place I don't recognize, as Midwesterner myself. He gives only simplistic examples and characterizations of its culture, which perhaps shouldn't be surprising since he's a literary East Coaster. Still, I was disappointed since rural Illinois and the Midwest were clearly a big part of what formed DFW and it seems as though it should've been more important in Max's research to get it right instead of just a superficial glossing.
Three stars because this early biography is sometimes a bit clunky on a sentence level. Also, the way Max talks about the Midwest as the primary influence on DFW's "orderliness," manners, kindness, and even some of his neuroses seems contrived. The Midwest he describes comes off as flat sometimes, and a place I don't recognize, as Midwesterner myself. He gives only simplistic examples and characterizations of its culture, which perhaps shouldn't be surprising since he's a literary East Coaster. Still, I was disappointed since rural Illinois and the Midwest were clearly a big part of what formed DFW and it seems as though it should've been more important in Max's research to get it right instead of just a superficial glossing.
arnovanvlierberghe's review against another edition
4.0
Lovingly written, with commanding knowledge of many of DFW's ideas and literary theories. Reading DFW is supposedly a bit like being DFW, or so the fan-made cliché goes, but this biography really brings it close to home. He probably (I guess) would've hated the idea of something like this ego-text being written about him, but I'm glad someone did.
andyc_elsby232's review against another edition
3.0
Four short years was all it took for the most humiliating and cringe facts of DFW's life to be trotted out into a biography written by a man who did not know him and one can only guess DFW would have despised.
And yet, I feel like I learned enough about DFW to know what he would have hated, so that's saying something.
It's very entertaining. The DFW fan might be better off without it, if they subscribe to the notion that an author's personal life should not influence the way their art is perceived. The sad fact is that a lot of wonderfully elusive shit makes too much sense to me now, and I hate that. I'm grateful I read it now, with my first-time reads of most of DFW's works years behind me, but I still think this was a mistake; a wickedly entertaining mistake, but an error in judgment nonetheless. It's an unreliable companion, one that's better for horrifying details than illuminating insights into an indefatigable mind's creative process.
And yet, I feel like I learned enough about DFW to know what he would have hated, so that's saying something.
It's very entertaining. The DFW fan might be better off without it, if they subscribe to the notion that an author's personal life should not influence the way their art is perceived. The sad fact is that a lot of wonderfully elusive shit makes too much sense to me now, and I hate that. I'm grateful I read it now, with my first-time reads of most of DFW's works years behind me, but I still think this was a mistake; a wickedly entertaining mistake, but an error in judgment nonetheless. It's an unreliable companion, one that's better for horrifying details than illuminating insights into an indefatigable mind's creative process.
readwritelib's review against another edition
4.0
DFW was a fascinating, complicated person and an excellent writer. Max captures all of this in his fantastic biography of Wallace, providing the necessary backstory to show who he was as a person and what made him tick. Having read Infinite Jest, this book helps ground it in the reality of the author and his craft, in spite of everyone raising DFW to a mythic status now that he never had during his life. My full review is at: https://movingbookmark.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/read-every-love-story-is-a-ghost-story-a-life-of-david-foster-wallace-by-d-t-max/
mattleesharp's review against another edition
3.0
This is definitely not going to be the definitive David Foster Wallace biography. Among many other things, it first needs another round of editing. It also felt like D. T. Max just didn't have enough source material. He leans too heavily on quotes from DFW's fiction to flesh out the relationships with people in his life (particularly his mother). Toward the end it even feels like chapters were just sort of organized by publication. If there is a gap of a couple years in publication (97-00, 05-07) you just kind of have to accept that you're not going to know that much about what DFW was feeling at the time. It's still pretty engaging writing and fills in a lot of detail. If you're interested in Wallace, it's worth reading, but you probably want to keep your eyes open for a better bio a few years down the road.