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David Foster Wallace and the Current Malaise

Over the next few days, I will probably tumbl a bunch of quotes from D. T. Max’s excellent biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. It’s the most interesting literary biography I’ve read in years. I’d never really thought of this before, but we usually say of a great or important author that s/he “captured the voice of a generation” or whatever, but this make it sound like the voice has been found and placed in a Zoo for Voices from the Past, where we can all gawk at it. Wallace’s work gave voice to contemporary experience. 

And we are still using the gift. Wallace invented (or at least popularized) a colloquial way of writing about ideas that has become the defining characteristic of most of the best contemporary YA fiction (…he said with bias) and most of the best contemporary literary fiction for adults (…he said, choking on the words literary fiction).

Right, so anyway, here is an observation from the book that struck me as very important:

“For Wallace, the great flaw of most fiction was that it was content to display the symptoms of the current malaise rather than to solve it.”

    • #david foster wallace
    • #every love story is a ghost story
    • #irony
    • #fiction
    • #what writing ought to do/be
    • #d t max
  • 8 months ago
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About

This is the tumblr of John Green, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I am also the co-creator of the vlogbrothers youtube channel.

I am best known on tumblr for a drizzle/hurricane metaphor.

You can ask me questions only if you agree not to get mad if I don't answer.

FAQ:
1. Why is your tumblr name fishingboatproceeds?
2. What does DFTBA stand for?
3. Do you and Hank consider yourself nerdfighters?
4. So, does the actual John Green run this tumblr, or is it run by an assistant?
5. Would you release a book that isn't YA?
6. Would you ever write a YA book with an adult in a key role?
7. How do I become a nerdfighter?
8. What's the story behind Pizza John?
9. How do you pronounce bufriedo?
10. How do you feel about the TFiOS movie rights being optioned?
11. Do you get a thrill from killing your characters?
12. "You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them." 
Can you talk about this?
13. What's this drizzle/hurricane metaphor that you're best known for on tumblr?

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