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David Foster Wallace: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2012)

by David Foster Wallace(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1612192076 (ISBN13: 9781612192079)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Melville House

review 1: In which I learn that DFW must have been a total pain in the ass to interview, unless you were his buddy. Here's a condensed version of the book:Q: Interesting question. DFW: This isn't the right format to answer that, because I'd have to go into detail. Q: What's your writing process like?DFW: I don't really have one. [Note: when Eggers asks this question, DFW asks him to describe his (Eggers') process, then goes into some detail on his own]. Q: I really like your work. DFW: I'm really boring. It doesn't help that the general subjects of these interviews are, in reverse chronological order, his essay on McCain, the short stories in Oblivion, his readable but otherwise moderately bad book on Cantor, Amherst college, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Infinite ... moreJest, i.e., the first interview is interesting because it's about the important book; the other four are about things that are fairly interesting (stories), a'ight (essays/Cantor), and utterly uninteresting to the general reader (Amherst). And as time goes on, Wallace gets better and better/worse and worse at his 'aw-shucks golly who me?' silliness. The interviewers themselves vary in quality, too--the second guy is unbearably Wallacian, all self-conscious scene-setting that isn't funny or interesting; the Amherst woman is an undergrad conducting an email interview; Eggers is unbearably Eggersian. So it's up and down. A couple of things stand out: first, *all* of these people are obsessed with word length. You already knew that about Wallace, but it's interesting to see everyone else playing the game. The quantification of everything continues apace. Second, as time goes on and DFW's aw-shucksness reaches nigh-'50s levels, he becomes less and less willing to answer any questions, because of the inherent complications in explaining to people what he thinks about anything. This is not deep, it's potentially not even genuine. It's a laziness that you can see in much of his fiction, and it's a real flaw. All that said, the book's a great airplane read.
review 2: Good reading. It's obvious how much better DFW was at relating to the world through his 5 drafts approach than in person. He's painful self conscious in the inperson interviews and eventually switches to only email versions. Of all the authors I love, I think he is one of the last I would actually want to meet in person. But it's still fascinating how the same person comes through here and in his fiction. less

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