David Foster Wallace: The future of fiction in the information age

Highlights from The Charlie Rose Show: "A conversation about the future of fiction in the information age with David Foster Wallace, author of "Jest", Jonathan Franzen, author of "Strong", and Mark Leyner, author of "Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog". on Friday, May 17, 1996"

www.charlierose.com/view/interview/6191

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  Education

[DoneBlock94]

"tv that makes fun of tv is itself popular tv" this guy deserves a posthumous credit for "community".

[Jeroen Meylemans]

It's not modernist. Wallace's fiction is not concerned with "How can we interpret the world?, not even with post-modernism's mantra of "which world?" He's a post-postmodernist author (whatever that means) emphasizing local knowledge and de-conditioning strategies to shake the reader out of his passive, entertainment-influenced slumber. Also, DFW and his work are awesome.So, go hate somewhere else.

[db0255]

Yeah. If anything, it's anti-modernist. He emphasizes consciousness and choose, which is the opposite of modernist.

[jcwhite1288]

And The Soup for that matter

[malcolmbryant]

DFW interesting? Extremely. How many people can write top class fiction, erudite prose and also publish scholarly works on mathematical logic? Er, not many.

[John O'Brien]

lololol are you serious? Juvenile tomes? Lol. Go fuck yourself faggot.

[Caleb Smith]

We got a person who thinks his thoughts matter here!

[cspj12]

that might be constructionist, if you have a labeling fetish. (which you seem to)

[Smoochy44]

I loved Bret Easton Ellis at 19, since, like Chuck Palahniuk, his style and subject matter is very focused on appealing to the demographic you speak of. But to imply that Ellis is "booky," is, well, shameful.

I suggest you reevaluate your interpretations of difficulty in prose style, substance, and what it means to be "postmodern," because you've clouded these obvious distinctions.

But most importantly, the type of comparisons you're making dismiss much of what Wallace reached for.

[floppykid]

And are both by overrated authors.

I'd place Foster Wallace in the same box as I would Easton Ellis.

The staple of angsty teens-angry twenty somethings, desperate to cling onto an author they deem booky.

When you compare him to the previous generations greats, McCarthy, Pynchon etc., he pales.

[Smoochy44]

I can assure you, the only thing Atlas Shrugged and Infinite Jest have in common is they were both printed on paper.

[Anarda Nashai]

However you come to judge this man, he's made some incredible contributions to American Literature. Pure genius as a prose writer. Perhaps he would have been an interesting man to have known also:)