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

3.0

The first half of this book was almost painful, a linear narrative full of DFW trivia. This book is really only worth reading for the genesis of Infinite Jest, which I really want to go back and read, and, sadly, DFW's decline and suicide. I was intrigued to read that towards the end of his life Wallace was reading Camus, because their "projects" were actually quite similar. They both of course saw life as without any inherent meaning but nevertheless sought to show a way for human beings to live with dignity in a meaningless universe. Both seemed to conclude that meaning and purpose were to be found in community and belonging (cf. The Plague). Anyway, I wish I could give this book a higher rating, because I did enjoy reading it, but I just think that there was so much more Max could have done with his subject. There's no real discussion of his place in American literature, his legacy, whether his project will leave a mark on American discourse. Max's "just the facts, m'am" style just doesn't satisfy, because there is more to assessing a life than adding up the facts about a person.