David Foster Wallace and Michael Silverblatt, 1996, 1/3

American author David Foster Wallace sat down with Michael Silverblatt of KCRW's Bookworm in 1996, shortly after Wallace's novel Infinite Jest was published. This was their first of a memorable series of conversations.

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw960411david_foster_wallace

Category:

Education

Tags:

• david foster wallace
• michael
• silverblatt
• bookworm
• radio
• interview
• infinite jest
• contemporary
• american
• fiction
• literature
• sierpinski
• gasket
• triangle
• fractal

[secondthoughtplease]

@jabbadooable the interviewer is one of the really honest thinkers on books, full of dignity and questions. the comment and the thumbs up somehow proof the failure of youtube as a medium of gain rather than one of dismissal and ignorance... in a way a shame, but then, does it matter?

[jabbadooable]

The interviewer's voice in this makes me want to vomit.

[FreedomFries999]

This interviewer just refuses to give up on his theory that this book is based on fractals. He sounds pretty darn disappointed that he was wrong.

David Foster Wallace must have had a great deal of restraint, being able to humor someone who insisted that the book was about something the author knew it wasn't.

[peteagassi]

Fractal structures, blah blah blah... blah blah blah blah blah.... Fractal structures = lazy writing

Talking about creativity is so silly. People create and that's it.

[peteagassi]

All this pretentious psychobabble makes me want to vomit.

[ToxicMayo9]

@diahni I think it was because his anti depressants stopped working

[calabiyou]

wish he could have stayed and endured this wierd world with us.

[ValisX]

its funny how every interview I've heard, Foster asks "Does that make any sense?"

[brttbts]

@jcalz216 thanks!



[jcalz216]

@brttbts

He means John Dos Passos, the author of "Three Soldiers," "1919," and "Manhattan Transfer," among others.

[brttbts]

what book does he mention at about 6:19 that he says people related to filmmaking?

[diahni]

Forget the interviewer - I love DFW's voice. I still have such a hard time imagining why he chose to end his life. I know, I know, depression does this - but not everybody who is profoundly depressed resorts to suicide. The ones who don't have close loved ones, I think, as did DFW.