18. In keeping with his new maturity, Wallace also became more straitlaced about the need for literal accuracy in nonfiction. When Becky Bradway, his former colleague at Illinois State, wrote him for her textbook on creative nonfiction in 2007 and asked what his standard of accuracy was in his writing, he answered, “We all knew, and know, that any embellishment is dangerous, and that a writer’s justifying embellishment via claiming that it actually enhances overall ‘truth’ is exceedingly dangerous, since the claim is structurally identical to all Ends Justify Means rationalizations.”
Works by Wallace
Throughout this book I quote liberally from David’s work. To avoid clutter, unless otherwise indicated in the chapter-by-chapter notes that follow, quotations are drawn from the following editions of David’s work.
FICTION
David Foster Wallace, “The Planet Trillaphon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad Thing,” Amherst Review, 1984.
——. “Solomon Silverfish,” Sonora Review, Fall 1987.
——. The Broom of the System (New York: Penguin, 1987).
——. Girl with Curious Hair (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).
——. Infinite Jest (New York: Little, Brown, 1996).
——. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (New York: Little, Brown, 1999).
——. Oblivion: Stories (New York: Little, Brown, 2004).
——. The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011).
NONFICTION
——. “Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, Spring 1988.
—— and Mark Costello, Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present (New York: Ecco Press, 1990).
——. “The Horror of Pretentiousness,” Washington Post, February 19, 1990.
——. “The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s ‘Wittgenstein’s Mistress,’” Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1990.
——. “Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes,” Harper’s, December 1991.
——. “Rabbit Resurrected,” Harper’s, August 1992.
——. “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993.
——. “Ticket to the Fair,” Harper’s, July 1994.
——. “Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise,” Harper’s, January 1996.
——. “Feodor’s Guide,” The Village Voice, April 9, 1996.
——. “John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One,” New York Observer, October 13, 1997.
——. “Neither Adult nor Entertainment,” Premiere, September 1998.
——. “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub,” Rolling Stone, April 13, 2000.
——. “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s,” Rolling Stone, October 25, 2001.
——. “Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage,” Harper’s, April 2002.
——. Everything and More: A Compact History of ∞ (New York: W. W. Norton/Atlas Books, 2003).
——. “Consider the Lobster” in Consider the Lobster: Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2005).
A NOTE ON SOURCES
Much of what I know about David came from my interviews with his many friends, family, and professional associates thanked in the acknowledgments section. A second source are his books and the third avenue are his extraordinary letters, loaned to or copied for me by dozens of correspondents. David may have been the last great letter writer in American literature (with the advent of email his correspondence grows terser, less ambitious). Happily several of these collections are now or about to be available at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, where Wallace’s papers are housed and where scholars and researchers can consult them. In addition, much of Wallace’s juvenilia and marginalia from which I quote are now at The Ransom.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES, BY CHAPTER
Chapter 1: “Call Me Dave”
3 “My father’s got,” from David Lipsky, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (New York: Broadway, 2010) at 49.
6 “This schizogenic,” from an interview with Larry McCaffery for the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993.
7 “a really serious jock,” from Lipsky, Although of Course, at 52.
8 “imposter syndrome,” from a letter to Rich C., September 19, 2000.
Chapter 2: “The Real ‘Waller’”
18 “a way to hide,” from Stacey Schmeidel, “Brief Interview with a 5-Draft Man,” Amherst Magazine, Spring 1999.
23 “foppish aesthetes,” from the McCaffery interview.
24 “not trusting me with reality,” from a letter to Mary Karr, circa January 22, 1992.
25 “special sort of buzz,” from McCaffery interview.
25 “required thumbing-the-nose,” from an appearance on The Charlie Rose Show, March 27, 1997.
26 “Any relationship” and “The Sabrina Brothers in the Case of the Hung Hamster,” from Sabrina, Fall 1982.
28 “the smell of flowers” and “dealing with, yes,” from a letter to Corey Washington, June 30, 1983.
29 “practically rammed,” from a letter to Corey Washington, August 20, 1983.
30 “Pretty [as Updike’s prose was],” from the McCaffery interview.
30 “God damn Charlie,” from a letter to Corey Washington, July 1, 1983.
30 “Don’t do LSD,” from a letter to Corey Washington, August 5, 1983.
31 “It comes into your dreams,” from Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999) at 73.
31 “so much so that,” from a letter to Steven Moore, March 7, 1988.
32 “a kind of midlife crisis,” from the McCaffery interview.
32 “The same obsessive studying,” from the Schmeidel interview.
32 “a teenyweeny bit,” from a letter to Corey Washington, August 20, 1983.
33 “I came very close,” from a letter to Corey Washington, November 1, 1983.
34 “You now see before you,” from a letter to Corey Washington, October 4, 1983.
35 “a weird kind of forger,” from Lipsky, Although of Course, at 258.
37 Roses are Red, from a letter to Corey Washington, December 4, 1983.
38 “almost like having,” from an appearance on The Charlie Rose Show, March 27, 1997.
39 “A mite better than,” from Alan Lelchuk, Miriam in Her Forties (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1985), at 329.
40 “It’s really ulcer-city,” from a letter to William Kennick, February 4, 1985.