Further Proof of the Evil Nature of D.F.W.

[Jane Grant]

Long ago, in the Year of Monistat the Vampyre (I thinks), I suggested that certain obnoxious spam-artistes and flame-Warriors of the W.A.S.T.E-land were really the evil David Foster Wallace in disguise. Nobody believed me and some even claimed that I was DFW (which made me cry into the HPLC machine at work and need to blot my teary eyes with Tampax--not used, thank God!). At the time, I suggested those cretinous individuals might be DFW because of the well known fact that this generation's Thomas Ruggles Pynchon is a very vindictive man. I offer further, if not definitive, proof of just how evil DFW really and truly is and, most of all, how he clearly is not beneath lurking among this list's mostly chivalrous participants in pursuit of his vengeful designs. This article is copied from one of the many misguided websites devoted to the Man, His Work, and His Footnotes. Enjoy!!!!!!!!Jane!!!!

The Recorder (a daily legal newspaper) 
     September 8, 1998, Tuesday

     FACT MEETS FICTION IN TRULY NOVEL DISPUTE

     Talk about art imitating life. Or law imitating art imitating life. . . . 

     Whatever you want to call it, the case of _Gompert v. Wallace_ pending before San Jose U.S.
     District Judge James Ware, has taken on a somewhat surreal quality because of what it alleges and
     who it is before.

     Katherine A. Gompert, a former professional tennis player, is suing best-selling author David
     Foster Wallace for libel because his 1997 novel _Infinite Jest_ portrays a sexually promiscuous,
     drug-abusing character with severe psychiatric problems named "Katherine A. Gompert." 

     Judge Ware, of course, was disciplined last month by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for
     creating a fiction of his own by misappropriating the life story of another, unrelated, James Ware.
     On several occasions the judge told others that he watched his brother Virgil get gunned down by
     two white racists in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. While Virgil Ware did indeed get murdered and did
     have a brother named James, the judge is not related to the family. 

     The _Gompert_ case was filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court in December, immediately
     after the book's paperback release. Wallace and the book's Boston-based publisher -- Little,
     Brown and Co. -- and its corporate parent, Time Warner Inc. of New York, had the case
     removed to federal court in January, where it was assigned to Ware. 

     In May, Ware issued an order denying a defense effort to throw the case out.

     "Plaintiff was a successful junior and college tennis player and then competed on the professional
     tour," Ware wrote. "She enjoys a good reputation and has often spoken to younger tennis players
     regarding the importance of leading a drug-free lifestyle. Plaintiffs allege that David Wallace, the
     author, purposely defamed her to satisfy his own feelings of hatred and malice towards her. Mr.
     Wallace apparently participated in the competitive junior tennis world in which plaintiff was well
     known." Wallace indeed competed on the junior circuit at the same time Gompert did. 

     Wallace, represented by Landels Ripley & Diamond partner Neil Shapiro, denies Gompert's
     assertions and claims that fiction writers have wide protection from libel claims. Not only that, the
     defendants argue, no reasonable person would think the fictional Gompert was supposed to reflect
     the real Gompert. 

     "Here the novel is set at some unstated time in the next millennium," Shapiro argues in court papers.
     "No specific years are mentioned, primarily because the setting is so futuristic that years are no
     longer numbered but rather bear the names of commercial sponsorship." 

     Shapiro also notes that the book contains the usual disclaimer. 

     That disclaimer, counters Stephen Vernon of Palo Alto's Knapp & Vernon, is anything but
     boilerplate and he considers it a "taunt" of his client.   


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