Not P but DFW: Richterish-looking sound wave

[Mike Jing]

Upon further reflection, I'm all but convinced that Gerhard Richter is
indeed the intended reference here. What's being talked about here is a
picture or waveform of a soundwave, showing its amplitude vs. time,
displayed on a computer screen by audio editing software. Although it looks
very similar to a seismogram, I find it odd to describe it as
"Richterish-looking", because although a seismogram is closely related to
the Richter scale and thus to its namesake and co-creator Charles Richter
the seismologist, it's not quite the same as the relation between an artist
and his work. For one, the seismograph/gram was not actually invented by
him, nor does it hear his name. This is where I think the use of
the name-derived adjective breaks down. It's far more likely the
"Richterish" here actually refers to an artist, in this case a painter, due
to the visual nature of the comparison. In fact, a google search of
"Richterish" yields several results that refer to Gerhard Richter the
painter.

Furthermore, Gerhardt Richter had a good deal of play in the early 2000s,
and many in art circles raved about his work. A writer like Wallace was
likely exposed to his work. And this particular essay was published in
the *Atlantic
Monthly*, whose readership may very well be more knowledgeable in such
matters than the general public. So it's not out of the realm of
possibility. Actually, I think it's quite probable, for the reasons given
above.

What do you think?


On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 2:07 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>