ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF by David Lipsky
There is that question we asked one another in college: Who in history, if you could meet and talk to whomever you wished, would you select?… Reading Lipsky’s book, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BEING YOURSELF, reads like a contemporary answer to the “who would you choose” hypothesis. Wallace is gone now, but what if you could just spend a few days with him, even a few hours? What was the man like, really? By his work, he will be remembered. But what of the man?
July 20, 2011
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Judi Clark · 
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Tags: biographical, DFW, Memoir, Travel, Writing Life · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Non-fiction
THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace
If a book has received more ink or been more anticipated in recent times I can’t recall it. So much has already been written about THE PALE KING that it seems arbitrary and irrelevant to add to the chatter. A quick Google search–”the pale king”–reports over 29 million hits. Twenty-nine million! A similar search of WAR AND PEACE, less than six million. It is, sadly, a fact that the David Foster Wallace industry is cranking along to a tune the author never realized. Indeed, his untimely demise has fed the engine of that industry in a way no living author can expect to enjoy. If for no other reason but my cynicism regarding exploitative posthumous money making I wanted to dislike this book. That was not the case. I did not dislike it. To the contrary, I liked it very much. But not without reservation.
May 11, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Boredom, DFW · Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Contemporary, Literary, Reading Guide
INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace
I’ve thought a great deal about this review, since beginning the book, in fact. (I wonder if even the word “review” is the right one. A review implies more than I think I can deliver.) This is no ordinary book and writing about it is not a normal experience. This book is big and thick and juicy and full of complexities, ripe with humor and allusion, digressions and insights. For this reader, it is the book of a dream. I mean that in two ways…
May 12, 2010
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: DFW, Future · Posted in: Allegory/Fable, Classic, Contemporary, Humorous, Reading Guide, Scifi, Unique Narrative
THIS IS WATER by David Foster Wallace
Disclaimer, I start this review with unabashed over-the-top hyperbole.
David Foster Wallace is not God, but close, maybe. That would be the only way to explain the current DFW hysteria: the web sites, a new movie, the buzz, the sales, YouTube. After reading this little book, no bigger than a long letter home from camp, I must conclude that, yes, DFW is–was–perhaps if not God, than a god.
October 4, 2009
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: DFW · Posted in: Non-fiction
