wallace-l: Coverage of DFW

[Phil Dangler]

I found this thread, with a remembrance (though I guess it was more of just
a story when it was first related) from bookslut:

"True story. As an undergraduate, my friend took a creative writing course
from David Foster Wallace at Illinois State University. On the first
assignment he turned in, Wallace wrote, "I swear to God if you ever turn in
a piece of shit like this to me again I will flunk your ass. I shit you
not." The meaning of this anecdote is open to interpretation, but to me it
suggests several things about Wallace's way of relating to others." -- from
bookslut.com.

I found this because I was reading the archives of wallace-l (this has been
my grieving process, pretty much) and found my post about a past trip to
Quabbin Reservoir (Enfield, MA is at the bottom of it now) and then searched
the archives for other Quabbin references and found the IJ quote about Hal
winding up at a "Quabbin Recovery Systems" meeting, a little factoid that I
had forgotten but sitting here in my cubicle I just had to sadly chuckle a
little the naming of it... the joke being that once Quabbin was conceived
and the waters flooded in to those little towns, nothing was going to
"recover" from it and from it and the kabillion gallons of water within it.
And all the talk on-list about what depression is like and thinking that it
really maybe it is like being at the bottom of the Quabbin.

Water. "What the hell is water?"

I have been reading all week because I am largely unable to write.
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