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storyonlystory's review against another edition
3.0
A poorly written book that felt somewhat voyouristic to me. I've only read *auto*biographies before. It was interesting and I'm glad I read it but it really was badly written.
lola425's review against another edition
3.0
Max was able to write this biography without fawning or making DFW seem like a saint. He shed light on some of DFW's flaws without passing judgment and discussed his accomplishments with gushing over his brilliance. I read that Bret Easton Ellis had been tweeting that this bio revealed that DFW was an insecure fame seeking phony (how hilarious is that? If you put all those words together my first guess would have been Ellis himself). That is not the reading I'd give it: it just proves that DFW was a flawed human being, as all of us are. To try and denigrate his gifts because he struggled with his won ego is unfair.
valigator's review against another edition
3.0
Like David Foster Wallace's life, this book ended abruptly. After hundreds of pages, interviews, letters he wrote to other writers, his whole death spiral seemed to take just a dozen or so pages and I was left stunned. I guess no one truly understands why after so many years of suffering he just couldn't take it anymore, but I felt like the book was rushed to publication after his death. It was a really long slog to get through and in the end I wasn't sure if it was worth it.
adamz24's review against another edition
3.0
A basically very good intellectual biography, if critically dubious at times, but also filled with unnecessary amounts of detail re DFW's personal life, which sadly is probably what is getting this book to sell as well as it seems to be.
We knew enough about DFW's personal life (depression, addiction, major relationships, etc) before this book came out. All I found out from this book were some personal details about DFW that were of interest to me in that I related to them/was to some extent happy to know I shared some interests I wasn't aware I'd shared with DFW: his appreciation of P.G. Wodehouse, his turning to "sad Springsteen and Neil Young" when in bad shape, his writing while listening over and over again to Born in the U.S.A., his taste for M*A*S*H*, The Wire, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files, his well-hidden liking for U2 (oops).
But even these are obviously things I didn't need to know; they are only of mild interest to somebody interested in his writing, and could've been guessed at. Wallace's comic descriptions bear enough resemblance to Wodehouse that I could've guessed that he'd read Wodehouse. His appreciation for Springsteen is predictable given Springsteen's lyrical sincerity and emotional poise in dealing with serious issues re being a human being+American life, etc. etc.
these are only minor details in the book, of course. Unfortunately, much of the book is given to long and detailed accounts of DFW's love life, nearly all of which are totally unnecessary and totally, creepily voyeuristic and hence disrespectful, though some are funny, like the anecdote on his hour-long attempt, in a lobby, to convince Elizabeth Wurtzel that letting him fuck her would constitute a "therapeutic favor." His fiction shows an extensive discomfort with masculinity and its implications re women and the relationship (especially the distance) between men and women. That is enough. Nobody needs to know, especially not in such detail, that DFW was a pussy hound, struggled to keep serious relationships going, but yearned for a serious, adult domestic existence.
All that said, the book does give a good account of Wallace's intellectual development and ideas on what fiction ought to do and how one should live her life. As an intellectual/literary biography, this book is perfectly competent. Max's sketch of Wallace's personal side is the problem; it borders on the distasteful, and ironically will likely have the effect of further romanticizing Wallace and his tragic death, which seems to be the opposite of what Max at least ostensibly wanted, which was to write an account of a very mortal, very troubled, but intensely compassionate man who wrote some good and important fiction and non-fiction.
We knew enough about DFW's personal life (depression, addiction, major relationships, etc) before this book came out. All I found out from this book were some personal details about DFW that were of interest to me in that I related to them/was to some extent happy to know I shared some interests I wasn't aware I'd shared with DFW: his appreciation of P.G. Wodehouse, his turning to "sad Springsteen and Neil Young" when in bad shape, his writing while listening over and over again to Born in the U.S.A., his taste for M*A*S*H*, The Wire, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files, his well-hidden liking for U2 (oops).
But even these are obviously things I didn't need to know; they are only of mild interest to somebody interested in his writing, and could've been guessed at. Wallace's comic descriptions bear enough resemblance to Wodehouse that I could've guessed that he'd read Wodehouse. His appreciation for Springsteen is predictable given Springsteen's lyrical sincerity and emotional poise in dealing with serious issues re being a human being+American life, etc. etc.
these are only minor details in the book, of course. Unfortunately, much of the book is given to long and detailed accounts of DFW's love life, nearly all of which are totally unnecessary and totally, creepily voyeuristic and hence disrespectful, though some are funny, like the anecdote on his hour-long attempt, in a lobby, to convince Elizabeth Wurtzel that letting him fuck her would constitute a "therapeutic favor." His fiction shows an extensive discomfort with masculinity and its implications re women and the relationship (especially the distance) between men and women. That is enough. Nobody needs to know, especially not in such detail, that DFW was a pussy hound, struggled to keep serious relationships going, but yearned for a serious, adult domestic existence.
All that said, the book does give a good account of Wallace's intellectual development and ideas on what fiction ought to do and how one should live her life. As an intellectual/literary biography, this book is perfectly competent. Max's sketch of Wallace's personal side is the problem; it borders on the distasteful, and ironically will likely have the effect of further romanticizing Wallace and his tragic death, which seems to be the opposite of what Max at least ostensibly wanted, which was to write an account of a very mortal, very troubled, but intensely compassionate man who wrote some good and important fiction and non-fiction.
cinthyaolguin17's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
inthecommonhours's review against another edition
Just realized I'd rather reading his writing than about writing about him.
emcort's review against another edition
4.0
A wealth of information about how his work was tied to his life. But it ended very abruptly, the paragraph after his suicide.
Since the final chapter was entitled "The Pale King," I was hoping for more information about the note he had left about the publication of the unfinished novel, or the process of preparing it.
Since the final chapter was entitled "The Pale King," I was hoping for more information about the note he had left about the publication of the unfinished novel, or the process of preparing it.