David Foster Wallace - Death is Not the End

David Foster Wallace reads Death is Not the End, from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999).

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[ronnie2407]

DFW is incredible. Poignant, tender, precise and very, very funny at times too, '..known in American literary circles as the poet's poet or simply... the poet'..... 'he sat, or lay, or perhaps most accurately just reclined..'....RIP

[Zeesterling1]

Okay there's a reason this was the first piece. It is the best, if you understand it. The poet is DFW in his fears.

[deborahsgoode]

David Foster Wallace was brilliant in a deeply moving and poetic way. I look forward to getting to know his mind through the writing he left behind.

[madamimadamimadam]

@dancetyson I would argue this is his idea of hell. The writer who has achieved every goal available to him but still has years to live, knowing he has nothing left to give to his craft.

[timothywilliamowen]

@danbison They aren't fragments. That's all the first sentence. It's two and a half pages long. 

[KennyReddwooddforest]

That is so funny. But its really sad because he sees himself as a caricature, very self hating. What is funny is his wordings not the content. Shows his brilliance of writing. A man who had nothing to hide unlike those who he is so bitter about. Ohhh, I wish I could have met him. He tried to relieve people of loneliness, the loneliness that he knew himself. Friedrich Nietzsche once said: "Its lonely up there in the sky" meaning the person who is noble minded and has high goals for society.

[jgonzalezsolorio]

Sticking it to Guggenheim! Beautiful!!

[danbison]

So many sentence fragments!

[dancetyson]

This is his idea of heaven. The poet's heaven. A massively impressive description of peace.

[BCKBCK]

As all great art, it can hold multiple meanings. I think it is about how literary greatness does not translate into "life greatness", how a literary giant is just another regular man. When he tries to make the scene poetic at the end, he adds a footnote "that is not wholly true", which we cannot know if it's geared towards the entire text or just the last part. A very conceptual piece.

[BloggerMusicMan]

I found this brilliant. It could really mean different things to different people, all of which are equally poignant. I can picture it as a story about illusion vs. reality (how this seemingly extraordinary piece of man is really quite average), or how fame doesn't lead to happiness, or in fact leads to dread and real loneliness, or maybe it's a little autobiographical, as some of the things that apply to this man could easily apply to Wallace. That's what made him a masterful writer. RIP