Endnotes: David Foster Wallace

[malignd at aol.com]

Not that you need or want my opinion, but I agree with Rich.  I began 
IJ dutifully and ended up liking it very much.  The AA stuff is 
particularly good.  It's been over a decade, I guess, so the specifics 
fall away, but I read it with great pleasure and enthusiasm.  Footnotes 
and all.e.


-----Original Message-----
From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
To: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>
Cc: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, Feb 11, 2011 9:26 am
Subject: Re: Endnotes: David Foster Wallace


Hi Tore--You still haven't told me if you liked Valhalla Rising 
;)Anyway, yes I think IJ was the American novel of the 90's but I 
thinkhis short stories were uneven, to the brilliance of Girl with 
theCurious Hair and John Billy to the dull minimalism of 
BriefEncounters. Oblivion seemed labored to me. In some sense I am 
lookingfwd to reading The Pale King, another novel to be more 
specific.I dont think he published enough and I would say he has the 
respectwhich he deserves but would never label him as mainstreamand 
shouldnt leave out some of the great essays he wrotehe exhibited as 
much range as Pynchon (at least in IJ) and I willalways remember the 
book fondly as to time and place mid-90s postcollege angst and drug 
withdrawals, etc.richOn Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:03 PM, Tore Rye Andersen 
<torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:>> rich:>>> DFW had alot of talent but I'm 
not sure he will ever be seen as>> translating that talent into more 
than a cult figure following>> Surely DFW had more than just talent? I 
remember you calling Infinite Jest "the novel of the> 90es," and I tend 
to agree. And doesn't it take more than just talent to write the novel 
of the decade?>> As for the cult following, DFW has garnered both more 
mainstream and more academic attention these past> couple-three years 
than Pynchon. Of course this partly has to do with the suicide, but I'd 
say that the intrinsic> merit of his work also has a lot to do with 
it.>> Tore>