David Foster Wallace on Realism, Irony, & Commercial Art

[cosg9531]

A shame he chose for his appearance to be brief.

[moffettone]

anybody know where I can find the interview in its entirety?

[plasticbratt]

@moffettone -

This particular clip can be heard in two different episodes of PRI's To the Best of Our Knowledge. If you search the shows archives, you will find a few DFW appearances. Most notably, there is a Wallace retrospective episode released after his death, which includes clips from previous shows along with some really good/moving interviews with Amy Wallace and others. The KCRW Bookworm episodes are far better, I think, but the TTBOOK stuff is really valuable.

[moffettone]

@plasticbratt thanks

[borjon23]

The "inner sap" sounds a great deal to me like the "sacred"... something that can't or shouldn't be subjected to parody and humor.

[ndg43]

He's talking about merging one's sensitivity and ability to cry with one's 'coolness' factor or post-modern sensibility. Everything is about irony today--if one expresses sensitivity, there's an immediate danger of being labelled sentimental.

[proustie]

@ndg43 Yes, and it's interesting how that set of worries resonates throughout his work. Like the Harper's essay about usage, where he's talking about "discourse communities" (or whatever the phrase is) in schools and the need to be accepted by peers even if the content of those peers' world-view is kinda anathema.

[8644371]

I've heard him talk a lot about a face-value/inner-value conflict. I wonder if it depressed him a lot.

Damn. I have to pick up one of his books some time.