Literature
- Books As Objects In The World
My colleague and great friend Mark Yakich's new book comes out this month; it's called Poetry: A Survivor's Guide and it is wonderful: One small thing I love about it is that it includes a few of Mark's drawings; another...
- Ends Of Things
film equipment for The End of the Tour at the Muskegon Airport in Michigan I wrote about the film The End of the Tour for 3:AM Magazine. I can't tell if the current hype around David Foster Wallace?spurred on by the film and countless reviews...
- In The Thick Of It, Visualizing My Writing Cabin
Last month I read D.T. Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, and my review of the book appears on the recently revamped site of the New Orleans Review. I enjoy writing book reviews; they are exercises...
- The Author Is Dead; Office Work Remains
I am fresh from my wonderful, stimulating panel on David Foster Wallace at this year's American Comparative Literature Association conference in Providence, Rhode Island. I am now sitting in the Providence airport waiting for my flight to Dulles to...
- T-rex In The Baggage Claim; Flies On Your Body
My good friend Greg Keeler just sent me some pictures that he took in the Bozeman airport, around the baggage claim. This one made me pause: What is that T-Rex doing in the baggage claim? The easy answer: Jack Horner is a local. But on another level,...
Literature
D.T. Max visit
It was a pleasure to have D.T. Max visit Loyola this past week. My current students had prepared questions about David Foster Wallace, long-form journalism, and writing in the age of digital media. I was so happy with how the conversation turned out?proud of my students and honored to have Daniel with us for a day. Here's the brief introduction I wrote for the event:
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I?ve savored Daniel?s profiles in The New Yorker for years, but it was probably his piece ?The Unfinished,? written shortly after the untimely death of David Foster Wallace, that really made me realize the courage and care of Daniel?s reportage. This article was the kernel for what would eventually become his biography Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace?who would dare to take on such a life? Such a cipher, such a tragedy, such a myth. I?ve been teaching the works of David Foster Wallace here at Loyola over the past several years, and to say that his oeuvre and his personality taken together are daunting is to vastly understate the case. Wallace?s fiction and nonfiction tunnel right into our most modern predicaments, from full-saturation entertainment to the worst kind of hyper-mediated solipsism.
But here?s the thing: Daniel takes on these big personalities, people who have, or who are, changing the shape of a given landscape?be it the slippery terrain of new media, the conservation of Nature, experimental cuisine, cancer, postmodern literature, contemporary art?and Daniel nestles right into the deepest contradictions, paradoxes, and puzzles that lie inside and around such figures and fields.
What makes Daniel?s writing so perfect for our time is that he dares to tackle the uncertain, the undone, the unfinished?those things that are in play, and up for grabs. He takes these subjects on with earnest attention, and with a savvy eye as to their blind spots and everyday conundrums. He writes the kind of stories we need to ponder, if not yet knowing how they will finish.
- Books As Objects In The World
My colleague and great friend Mark Yakich's new book comes out this month; it's called Poetry: A Survivor's Guide and it is wonderful: One small thing I love about it is that it includes a few of Mark's drawings; another...
- Ends Of Things
film equipment for The End of the Tour at the Muskegon Airport in Michigan I wrote about the film The End of the Tour for 3:AM Magazine. I can't tell if the current hype around David Foster Wallace?spurred on by the film and countless reviews...
- In The Thick Of It, Visualizing My Writing Cabin
Last month I read D.T. Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, and my review of the book appears on the recently revamped site of the New Orleans Review. I enjoy writing book reviews; they are exercises...
- The Author Is Dead; Office Work Remains
I am fresh from my wonderful, stimulating panel on David Foster Wallace at this year's American Comparative Literature Association conference in Providence, Rhode Island. I am now sitting in the Providence airport waiting for my flight to Dulles to...
- T-rex In The Baggage Claim; Flies On Your Body
My good friend Greg Keeler just sent me some pictures that he took in the Bozeman airport, around the baggage claim. This one made me pause: What is that T-Rex doing in the baggage claim? The easy answer: Jack Horner is a local. But on another level,...