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markeefe's review against another edition
3.5
I gained a lot of insight into the life changes, mind, and writings of DFW through this book, and Max did a tremendous amount of good research and original interviews, which are also enlightening. The writing itself is a little hit-or-miss. Some sentences hold up those of his subject; others are awkward and confusing. He's also pretty bad with time, jumping back and forth six months here and there, and throwing in details in a "by the way" manner that he should have introduced chapters earlier. On the other hand, he does a good job of tying together themes that resonate through out Wallace's personal life and his works.
almartin's review against another edition
4.0
Totally straightforward, extensively researched, workmanlike (in the best sense of the term) biography of Wallace. Max's project appears to be a factual/chronological recap of things that happened in DFW's life. If you already have a dog in the DFW legacy/interpretation fight it will apparently provide plenty of fodder for outrage! of the warmed-for-too-long variety, but there's a lot here for semi-professional DFW appreciators (of which I identify) previously familiar with only the broad outlines of Wallace's life.
Max's authorial voice is unobtrusive; excerpts from Wallace's own letters are abundant. He seems to have envisioned his role mainly as an adept curator - no grand theories/musings about the source of David's personality/voice are extended, and Wallace's words are often allowed to simply speak for themselves. This approach seems wise for an author a step removed from Wallace's immediate network - an understated retelling is probably the only safe approach for a first survey of DFW's maximalist life/body of work.
The thrust and structure of the biography comes from DFW's writing. Wallace's outlook and depression is a constant companion, but, at least in this telling, manifests itself mainly through the prism of DFW's struggles with the creative process. Untangling the inner life of a writer sometimes famously tripped up by self-reference is no easy feat, but Max's retelling comes across as fair-minded, if ultimately sympathetic. DFW's brilliant mind is apparent throughout; his uncommon dedication to his students shines through; his conflicted, but often entirely callous treatment of women in his orbit is duly recorded.
Ultimately, I walked away from Every Love Story is a Ghost Story with a profound sense of sadness. Reading Max's biography over the course of a few days brought Wallace's presence into the background hum of everyday life; the world is a sadder place without him.
Max's authorial voice is unobtrusive; excerpts from Wallace's own letters are abundant. He seems to have envisioned his role mainly as an adept curator - no grand theories/musings about the source of David's personality/voice are extended, and Wallace's words are often allowed to simply speak for themselves. This approach seems wise for an author a step removed from Wallace's immediate network - an understated retelling is probably the only safe approach for a first survey of DFW's maximalist life/body of work.
The thrust and structure of the biography comes from DFW's writing. Wallace's outlook and depression is a constant companion, but, at least in this telling, manifests itself mainly through the prism of DFW's struggles with the creative process. Untangling the inner life of a writer sometimes famously tripped up by self-reference is no easy feat, but Max's retelling comes across as fair-minded, if ultimately sympathetic. DFW's brilliant mind is apparent throughout; his uncommon dedication to his students shines through; his conflicted, but often entirely callous treatment of women in his orbit is duly recorded.
Ultimately, I walked away from Every Love Story is a Ghost Story with a profound sense of sadness. Reading Max's biography over the course of a few days brought Wallace's presence into the background hum of everyday life; the world is a sadder place without him.
rissaleighs's review against another edition
2.0
Only got about half way through this. I picked it up mainly because the title intrigued me--never read any DFW. Two thoughts:
1) One sick puppy.
2) Was he really that great?
1) One sick puppy.
2) Was he really that great?
daniell's review against another edition
3.0
This is a faithful retelling of What Happened To Dave, told by a researcher bent more on Dave as a Person than What Dave Wrote (parenthetical note: I'm done using DWF-caps like that), which is to say that this is not an extensive literary treatment of Wallace, but the portrait of a person, mostly a depressed person.
Wallace as The Depressed Person (that one doesn't count because it's the title of one of his stories) prevails in Max's account. He clearly did a lot of legwork in getting material together, and the selections from that work he includes are uniformly choice. Wallace's Amherst period is the most interesting in the book, because this part most benefits from Max's digging. The nearness of Wallace's story is made more evident by the anecdotes Max includes; for instance, one Amherst friend of Wallace can be verified as resembling The Edge with a quick search (he's also a realtor in Texas).
The approach is loosely chronological, with most of the time devoted to 1994-1997, around the time Infinite Jest was published. A striking fact of Wallace's life was his need to teach in order to eat. Max writes of Wallace receiving the Guggenheim grant of $280,000 and not knowing what to do with the money, how he then gave some to members of his recovery group for their children's college payments and also bought a truck, a truck that he let one of his students borrow and quickly forgot what had become of it. He later told this to his class, and was embarrassed to see the student stand up and hand him his keys.
The truck story tells in micro the idea of Wallace that Max does a great job of presenting along with that of depressed person, namely, that of Wallace the recoverer. If he had a religion it was certainly AA support groups. At one point Max gives Wallace's list of things he would like to have as a recurring part of his life, a list including 5x AA Mtgs/wk. A benefit of reading Max was the idea that Wallace fictionalized his essays on many points of what editors call on-author details, details that cannot be verified and are the author's responsibility. In his post-9/11 essay published in Rolling Stone as "9/11: The View From the Midwest," he writes about watching the coverage at the house of his Baptist Church congregants. Max reveals is that they were families from his AA connection.
A strong point in Max's presentation is the role of Wallace's mother, Sally, in David's upbringing and consequent struggles. It's known that her love of grammar shaped Wallace into the literary person he became. In reading this I learned about the abuse Sally received as a child from her father that made her tend to ignore and internalize her problems, which bled into the Wallace family culture and lived with David for the rest of his life. The character Avril Incandenza in Infinite Jest is a lash against Sally, a grammar-obsessed, lusting, abusive parent. David's relationship with his mother goes a long way--in a kind of Freudian sense--to explain all of his relationships with girls. Max's presentation involved both desire for intimacy and selfish retreat, a point illustrated when Mary Carr asks David to get her son from school, to which David responded, "But I'm going to use my truck to go to the gym." Max clearly presents the inconstant nature of Wallace's romances.
One critique of his work is the lack of material included from The Pale King, but this is both reasonable and understandable given that Wallace never got the final cut of what Pietsch published. If you reference other reviews here on Goodreads you will see one of the more popular ones expressing disgust with Max's rampant comma splices, which tend to occur when he wants to pack more into a sentence than he ought.
Another critique is the way passages from his books are presented and explained. As I read I sensed that Max excerpted sections in order to make sure all of his works had their say, not necessarily because they had a direct bearing on Wallace's life. The treatment of his work seems very piecemeal, with no big interpretive ideas coming directly from Max about questions of meaning.
The no-big-idea critique is a sub-point of the idea that this seemed to be a book lacking a clear thesis and a strong narrative voice, almost a homage to Infinite Jest. Unfortunately Max did not set out to write a novel. The duty of a historian is not merely to say what happened, but to talk about the merit of what happened and to give weight to subjects and events. Unfortunately, Max gives a bland, factual recount of what happened with little critical overlay. Wallace is, unfortunately, a big enough figure to have a posthumous biography sell well, but not (I suspect) controversial or popular enough to have sales withstand tough critical analysis--it's a work for fans.
And yet perhaps his life was enough, perhaps his inner turmoil that Max presents so well speaks for itself, perhaps Wallace's self-critical impulse that led to his death necessarily forestalls more criticism. Max presents a depressed, troubled, neurotic, nymphomanical, fast-burning, empathetic, introspective, melancholic man who followed his heart till it cost him his life.
The end of the book is an example of the low-commentary stance Max takes. In the end, Wallace hangs himself and his life is over without any explanation why it had to be this way, what comes next, or what it all meant. There's some verity here that I think Wallace would have appreciated.
Wallace as The Depressed Person (that one doesn't count because it's the title of one of his stories) prevails in Max's account. He clearly did a lot of legwork in getting material together, and the selections from that work he includes are uniformly choice. Wallace's Amherst period is the most interesting in the book, because this part most benefits from Max's digging. The nearness of Wallace's story is made more evident by the anecdotes Max includes; for instance, one Amherst friend of Wallace can be verified as resembling The Edge with a quick search (he's also a realtor in Texas).
The approach is loosely chronological, with most of the time devoted to 1994-1997, around the time Infinite Jest was published. A striking fact of Wallace's life was his need to teach in order to eat. Max writes of Wallace receiving the Guggenheim grant of $280,000 and not knowing what to do with the money, how he then gave some to members of his recovery group for their children's college payments and also bought a truck, a truck that he let one of his students borrow and quickly forgot what had become of it. He later told this to his class, and was embarrassed to see the student stand up and hand him his keys.
The truck story tells in micro the idea of Wallace that Max does a great job of presenting along with that of depressed person, namely, that of Wallace the recoverer. If he had a religion it was certainly AA support groups. At one point Max gives Wallace's list of things he would like to have as a recurring part of his life, a list including 5x AA Mtgs/wk. A benefit of reading Max was the idea that Wallace fictionalized his essays on many points of what editors call on-author details, details that cannot be verified and are the author's responsibility. In his post-9/11 essay published in Rolling Stone as "9/11: The View From the Midwest," he writes about watching the coverage at the house of his Baptist Church congregants. Max reveals is that they were families from his AA connection.
A strong point in Max's presentation is the role of Wallace's mother, Sally, in David's upbringing and consequent struggles. It's known that her love of grammar shaped Wallace into the literary person he became. In reading this I learned about the abuse Sally received as a child from her father that made her tend to ignore and internalize her problems, which bled into the Wallace family culture and lived with David for the rest of his life. The character Avril Incandenza in Infinite Jest is a lash against Sally, a grammar-obsessed, lusting, abusive parent. David's relationship with his mother goes a long way--in a kind of Freudian sense--to explain all of his relationships with girls. Max's presentation involved both desire for intimacy and selfish retreat, a point illustrated when Mary Carr asks David to get her son from school, to which David responded, "But I'm going to use my truck to go to the gym." Max clearly presents the inconstant nature of Wallace's romances.
One critique of his work is the lack of material included from The Pale King, but this is both reasonable and understandable given that Wallace never got the final cut of what Pietsch published. If you reference other reviews here on Goodreads you will see one of the more popular ones expressing disgust with Max's rampant comma splices, which tend to occur when he wants to pack more into a sentence than he ought.
Another critique is the way passages from his books are presented and explained. As I read I sensed that Max excerpted sections in order to make sure all of his works had their say, not necessarily because they had a direct bearing on Wallace's life. The treatment of his work seems very piecemeal, with no big interpretive ideas coming directly from Max about questions of meaning.
The no-big-idea critique is a sub-point of the idea that this seemed to be a book lacking a clear thesis and a strong narrative voice, almost a homage to Infinite Jest. Unfortunately Max did not set out to write a novel. The duty of a historian is not merely to say what happened, but to talk about the merit of what happened and to give weight to subjects and events. Unfortunately, Max gives a bland, factual recount of what happened with little critical overlay. Wallace is, unfortunately, a big enough figure to have a posthumous biography sell well, but not (I suspect) controversial or popular enough to have sales withstand tough critical analysis--it's a work for fans.
And yet perhaps his life was enough, perhaps his inner turmoil that Max presents so well speaks for itself, perhaps Wallace's self-critical impulse that led to his death necessarily forestalls more criticism. Max presents a depressed, troubled, neurotic, nymphomanical, fast-burning, empathetic, introspective, melancholic man who followed his heart till it cost him his life.
The end of the book is an example of the low-commentary stance Max takes. In the end, Wallace hangs himself and his life is over without any explanation why it had to be this way, what comes next, or what it all meant. There's some verity here that I think Wallace would have appreciated.
mary412's review against another edition
3.0
I may have picked up this book because of the haunting picture on the cover. I still haven't read much DFW, but I will get around to it eventually.
lit_chick's review against another edition
5.0
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book. It goes without saying that I'm a huge DFW fan, and have been anticipating this book for a few months. Usually I don't hold non-fiction to as high a standard as I do fiction, but I have to say that Max has this beautiful, narrative and sympathetic writing style that made this book a joy to read. It had this weird meta-quality that made the book feel like a novel, and as it ended I had the weird sensation of losing a close friend. I'm grateful for all the work Max put into this biography, which stands alone, by any standard, as a Great Book.
sternjon's review against another edition
4.0
I can't say I loved this book, but I felt an unmistakable need to read it and I thought it was very well done; it
was fair and complex and clearly well researched.
I liked spending time with DFW, who does come to life on the page. I know the book is getting knocked for not being the kind of brave circus of a bio that DFW deserves, but as a matter of record, the book is necessary. The ending is so incredibly sad I can't even think too much about it.
was fair and complex and clearly well researched.
I liked spending time with DFW, who does come to life on the page. I know the book is getting knocked for not being the kind of brave circus of a bio that DFW deserves, but as a matter of record, the book is necessary. The ending is so incredibly sad I can't even think too much about it.