Upload

This video is unavailable.

David Foster Wallace on "Prior To"

imbeccable imbeccable·65 videos
29

Subscription preferences

Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

Working...
93,526
Like     Dislike 15

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to like imbeccable's video.

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to dislike imbeccable's video.

Sign in to YouTube

Sign in with your Google Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to add imbeccable's video to your playlist.

Uploaded on Sep 18, 2009

Taken from LAWPROSE.org
"Bryan Garner routinely interviews judges and others on the art of writing. LawProse maintains a one-of-a-kind video archive of these educational interviews. These are excerpts from some interviews."

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

The interactive transcript could not be loaded.

Loading icon Loading...

Loading icon Loading...

Ratings have been disabled for this video.
Rating is available when the video has been rented.
This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Top Comments

  • wmotiger

    You sure wouldn't know this was his opinion from reading Infinite Jest.

    · 62

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate wmotiger's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate wmotiger's comment.
  • Shawnruss

    At this time I'm enjoying this video, prior to that I was not.

    · 39

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Shawnruss's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Shawnruss's comment.

All Comments (222)

Sign in now to post a comment!
  • blackacidlizzard

    "the downside of starting to pay attention"

    A fitting epitaph for many a man broken by this world.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate blackacidlizzard's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate blackacidlizzard's comment.
  • destybenway

    What do you mean by that?

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate destybenway's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate destybenway's comment.
    in reply to TheEccentricHippie (Show the comment)
  • alsvid shaggy

    he wasn't saying don't use polysyllabic words. He was saying use as few syllables as necessary. One seven syllable word is better than 12 one syllable words.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate alsvid shaggy's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate alsvid shaggy's comment.
    in reply to wmotiger (Show the comment)
  • TheEccentricHippie

    The one thing that has always confused me about DFW is that his writing style seems to directly contradict his opinions in real life.

    · 4

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate TheEccentricHippie's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate TheEccentricHippie's comment.
  • Hanah Bae

    Sorry, I'm just appreciating how much you use use in this comment.

    · 3

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Hanah Bae's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Hanah Bae's comment.
    in reply to brandon cadran (Show the comment)
  • Jeffrey White

    It's important to note that he is speaking in the context of legal writing—the interview is from lawprose.org. So he's probably talking about that bureaucratic jargon in political bills and laws, as well as the nonsensical fine print you see at the bottom of things. That, I think he's saying, could be simplified.

    · 7

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Jeffrey White's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Jeffrey White's comment.
  • Jeffrey White

    Excluding the fact that he was a recovered addict and attended AA/NA meetings his entire adult life.

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Jeffrey White's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate Jeffrey White's comment.
    in reply to garr123 (Show the comment)
  • brandon cadran

    is it nice to use an alternative though? I mean what you are saying goes completely against what David Foster Wallace is trying to get at. Why use a bigger word when use would be perfectly fine. If you feel that you are going to overuse the word use, then utilize makes no difference. They are the same word just spelled differently. So using the word utilize would only add to your overuse of words pertaining to the "employment of something for a particular purpose."

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.
    in reply to Andrew Marr (Show the comment)
  • brandon cadran

    It does seem to be a big unknown word, but his argument in this video is not to use more or larger words than you have to. Formicating is only one word. One word saves me much more time than if he said, crawling sensation on his skin from ants crawling up and down his arm

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.
    in reply to garr123 (Show the comment)
  • brandon cadran

    Well through deriving the morphemes from the word formicating it would in an extremely technical sense, from its latin/greek roots, mean "bits moving forward". Bits could also be replaced by "small things", "crumbs", "grains".

    Formicating is presently used to describe a crawling sensation on the skin. In the passage there isn't actually ants on his skin, it's imagined. If he said crawling it wouldn't have been as vivid. Formicating is the most accurate word for the imagination of ants on the arm

    ·

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.

    Sign in to YouTube

    Sign in with your YouTube Account (YouTube, Google+, Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, or Chrome) to rate brandon cadran's comment.
    in reply to garr123 (Show the comment)
  • Loading comment...
Loading...
Advertisement
Loading...
Working...
Sign in to add this to Watch Later