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A review by andyc_elsby232
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max
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.