David Foster Wallace and the foolishness of reality - Part 1. My portrait of Wallace quoted in The Guardian - Wallace and Gaddis
literature·@paolobeneforti·
0.000 HBDDavid Foster Wallace and the foolishness of reality - Part 1. My portrait of Wallace quoted in The Guardian - Wallace and Gaddis
<html> <p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/David_Foster_Wallace.jpg/800px-David_Foster_Wallace.jpg" width="800" height="638"/></p> <p>I was really surprised when, some years ago, I read an article by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Every-Love-Story-Ghost-Wallace/dp/0670025925">DF Wallace's biographer, D T Max</a>, that talked about a portrait of Wallace I did. <a href=" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/09/david-foster-wallace-worshipped-secular-saint"><strong>The article</strong></a> used my painting of Wallace as an example of a sort of "cult" grown around the american writer after his death (before it too).</p> <p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/tICO9DZ.jpg"/></p> <p>I read every books Wallace wrote, I read 2 biographies (one is by D T Max), I read a lot of essays and articles about him, I watched the movie "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Tour">The end of the tour</a>". I followed for many years the first mailing list about Wallace, <strong>wallace-l</strong> (I don't know if it still exists). An italian guy I know, Alessandro Raveggi, wrote even an <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foster-Wallace-Italian-Alessandro-Raveggi-ebook/dp/B00KAB2L8S">essay about DFW in italian</a>. </p> <p>When Wallace committed suicide, 9 years ago, I was shocked and felt a great sorrow. We knew Wallace was not fine, in the last year, but no one suspected that his depression, after an attempt to change the antidepressants he used to take, could lead him to death.</p> <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace">David Foster Wallace </a>was a celeb, among writers, since his most important books, "Infinite jest", was printed, in 1996. So I'm not going to summary what you can read in many books, articles, videos, talks about him. <em>I always try to focus on original content, on Steemit.</em></p> <p>Instead, I'm going to compare Wallace's point of view about life and literature to Gaddis' one. I'll try to do it shortly, but I know I could write a lot exploring that subject. That’s why this post is the first of a series.</p> <p>The path marked by Wallace's books, in just about 15 years of work, has been a great and mostly new one for Literature. Shortly, he passed from a very smart, ironic and imaginative fiction and non fiction (“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broom_of_the_System">The Broom of the System</a>”, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Supposedly_Fun_Thing_I%27ll_Never_Do_Again">A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again</a>”) to exploring and going beyond the postmodern tradition (“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_the_Course_of_Empire_Takes_Its_Way">Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way</a>”), to reaching a will to write and tell of today’s human condition, to understand it using the literature (“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest">Infinite Jest</a>”, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblivion:_Stories">Oblivion</a>”, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale_King">The Pale King</a>”). I shall return on this point – the road – in the next parts of this post.</p> <p>Why I want to compare the thought of Wallace as a writer to Gaddis’ one? </p> <p>Let me summary the principal concept contained in Gaddis’s last book, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agap%C4%93_Agape">Agapē Agape</a>”: Writers, thinkers, creators have to lead their work to find other people, other minds who can understand it, who appreciate it; kindred minds can feed each others and take advantage from their own works: this way their work can be useful for mankind too.</p> <p>What about Wallace’s thought? Literature can help you to understand the people around you, can teach you to be aware of the world you live in and its foolishness. Literature – the kind Wallace tried to write – can show you that there are little things you can do to make sense of your life.</p> <p>(<em>These are my interpretations in short, of course.</em>)</p> <p>So, Gaddis’ idea sounds elitist. Wallace’s one sounds almost religious. But Gaddis was not an elitist and Wallace was not a religious man. They both tried, in the end, to tell and show how senseless are the things that create unhappiness in today’s people.</p> <p><em>1. To be continued </em></p> <p><em>(Source of image: By Steve Rhodes - originally posted to Flickr as David Foster Wallace, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4788606)</em></p> </html>
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