Not P but DFW: Richterish-looking sound wave

[Mike Jing]

That's what I went with originally, and I was going to reject the
suggestion out of hand due to the simple fact that I've never heard of the
artist or his work. Then I looked him up and it turns out he is sort of an
important figure in contemporary art, so I thought I'd better ask in case
it was my own personal ignorance.

Thanks for replying, Mark.


On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 2:54 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> It refers to the Richter scale....jagged sometimes earthquake-like size....
>
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 1:18 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's *Host*:
>>
>> NexGen (a Clear Channel product) displays a Richterish-looking sound wave,
>> of which all different sizes of individual bits can be highlighted and
>> erased in order to tighten the pacing and compress the sound bite.
>>
>> It was suggested by a proofreader that the Richter here refers to Gerhard
>> Richter, a German painter, and the picture of the sound wave displayed by
>> the NexGen software looks like some of his abstract paintings. I've never
>> heard of the artist before but it does sound plausible, and the word
>> "Richterish" is similar to "Picassoesque". Does anyone care to confirm or
>> refute this?
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>