D. Max - Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story - A Life of David Foster Wallace

—— 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.

41 “It seems sort of cheaty,” from a letter to Corey Washington, July 15, 1983.

43 “Blob-like” and “out of control,” from a letter to William Kennick, February 4, 1985.

44 “I got to wondering,” from a letter to Gerry Howard, January 21, 1986.

44 “the loss of the whole external world,” from the McCaffery interview.

44 “The world is everything,” from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophus (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010) at § 1.

44 “This book will perhaps,” from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus , at 27.

45 “the sensitive tale,” from the McCaffery interview.

Chapter 3: “Westward”

50 “Instead of the ‘guru’ system,” from a letter by Mary Carter, February 12, 1985.

50 “I don’t have any money,” from a letter to John Leggett of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, April 9, 1985.

53 “a vast sprawl,” from Pynchon, Crying of Lot 49, at 14.

53, “A real blast,” “I’m not ready or able,” “a kind of urine-yellow,” and “Perhaps only

54 half true,” from a letter to Corey Washington, August 25, 1985.

54 “replete with poisonous spiders,” from a letter to William Kennick, undated, circa November 6, 1985.

54 “You use a propane torch,” from a letter to Corey Washington, August 25, 1985.

55 “trapping little inspirations,” from “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.”

55 “I love it here, Corey,” from a letter to Corey Washington, September 14, 1985.

57 “I was a prick,” from Loren Stein, “David Foster Wallace: In the Company of Creeps,” Publishers Weekly , May 3, 1999.

60 “rung his cherries,” from an interview with Laura Miller for Salon.com, March 9, 1996.

65 “I’ve been advised,” from a letter to Frederick Hill Associates, September 28, 1985.

66 “I defy you,” from a letter to Bonnie Nadell, November 7, 1985.

66 “I would have called myself Seymour Butts,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, circa February 2, 2001.

67 “as a newly hatched chick,” from Leon Neyfakh, “Gerry Howard on Discovering, Editing, and Hatching David Foster Wallace, New York Observer, September 17, 2008.

67 “not, of course, letting her know,” from a letter to Corey Washington, December 30, 1985.

68 “If this seems fast” and “neurotic and obsessive,” from a letter to Gerry Howard, January 21, 1986.

68 “This Carver/Apple joke” and “The more you condense,” from a letter by Gerry Howard, January 10, 1986.

69 “while potentially disgusting” and “a whole set of readers’ values,” from a letter to Gerry Howard, January 19–20 1986.