A week from today (October 23, 2015) we will be reading and discussing the following works:
"The Soul is Not a Smithy"
"Good Old Neon"
http://stanford.edu/~sdmiller/octo/files/GoodOldNeon.pdf
"Don't Like it? You Don't Have to Play"
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26n22/wyatt-mason/dont-like-it-you-dont-have-to-play
Tweet at us, comment on our blog, comment on the Facebook page what your favorite parts are, your favorite quotes, or anything you want the world to know. We love discussing with other DFW fans.
Emily and I (Callie) are starting to read the pieces now in preparation for next week's meeting. We hope to talk to you guys soon!
DFW Interns
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Registration Opens Soon!
Have some spare money before the holidays roll in?
Consider signing up for the David Foster Wallace Conference way in advance. There are so many advantages:
The DFW Memorial Book, Remembering David Foster Wallace, was made at Illinois State University after DFW's memorial service in 2008. It contains remembrances written by Wallace's colleagues, students, friends, and fellow authors. It is a beautiful, thoughtful, and deeply personal series of reflections on Wallace and his very tangible impact on so many lives. It is not available for purchase anywhere, but we will be GIVING AWAY a copy to the first 25 attendees to register.
Registration opens November 1 through May 1 for the low price of:
Consider signing up for the David Foster Wallace Conference way in advance. There are so many advantages:
- Spend the money while you still have it before holidays in the winter and taxes in the spring approach
- It will be 100% ensured that you are going to the DFW Conference (Woo!)
- For the next week after, all the procrastinators in the world can register for $10 more. But space will fill up fast! Once we are at our maximum capacity, registration will close to the public and the chance of there being walk-up registration this year is slim.
- The first 25 people to register will have the chance to win Remembering David Foster Wallace.
The DFW Memorial Book, Remembering David Foster Wallace, was made at Illinois State University after DFW's memorial service in 2008. It contains remembrances written by Wallace's colleagues, students, friends, and fellow authors. It is a beautiful, thoughtful, and deeply personal series of reflections on Wallace and his very tangible impact on so many lives. It is not available for purchase anywhere, but we will be GIVING AWAY a copy to the first 25 attendees to register.
Registration opens November 1 through May 1 for the low price of:
- $85 for students, unemployed, part time, adjunct, or retired
- $100 for NTT, AP, Publishing Professional, K-12 Teachers
- $125 for TT and Tenured Faculty.
Forgot what the price includes? Feel like the price is too high? Let us explain all the benefits of this (in hind sight) low fee:
- Book Fair
- Two days of panels
- Keynote Speakers
- Two days of coffee, tea, and water
- Hot lunch buffet
- Afternoon Snack
- Workshops on Saturday
- Silent Book Auction
- Free Giveaways (bookmarks, coffee mugs, etc.)
- Potential coupons to visit DFW's favorite places in Bloomington-Normal
We hope to see your name registered soon!
DFW Interns
Friday, October 10, 2014
Endless Cycles
Here are some notes, observations, and connections that we (Carissa, Emily and Callie) made during our bi-monthly meeting where we discuss DFW's work.
"The Depressed Person"
The Depressed Person has a risk free relationship with her therapist because she pays her(the therapist) to listen to her (the depressed person) problems. [Like my inserted clarifications there? Wallace inspires me.] Her relationships are strange to say the least with everyone around her and all seem to be one-sided.
The parents.
The therapists.
The support group.
She only speaks about how her parent's divorce hurt her, but never once talked about where her parents are at in their lives now.
She realizes only after her therapist died that she knew virtually nothing about her, while the therapist knew everything there was to know about the depressed person.
Her support group, and specifically her closest friend in her support group, listen to her talk about her feelings and depression but never once reciprocate the conversation. For crying out loud, her dearest friend has a terminal illness and she does not ask (to our knowledge) how she is doing.
It is frustrating as a reader that the depressed person cannot get far enough outside of herself to recognize that her best friend is also suffering, perhaps more than she is. She is used to having a one-way relationship that she pays for (the therapist) that she does not know how to have a giving relationship and therefore cannot be a true friend to her terminally ill friend.
DFW sets up the depressed person to make us empathize with her, but at the same time we want to shake her out of her depression because things could be much worse. It feels like we are the friend on the phone that is trying to find a good place to let her know we have to leave and get on with our busy lives. Though, since we are reading the story through her extreme lens of self- consciousness, we never know if the friends are actually there for her and are indeed great friends, or if they really are as she is seeing them.
The depressed person goes through the motions of life, writing in her feeling journals, saying she does not blame her parents when she clearly does, expressing herself to her support group- but does she actually feel anything other than her own self-consciousness? Unlike recovering addicts (which we discussed are equivalent to depressed people in their addictions to something that is harmful to them) of Infinite Jest, she does not put herself into the work. She does not separate her mind and body, she does not recognize her intellectual issues as a part of the problem.
Silverblatt Interview
"The Depressed Person"
The Depressed Person has a risk free relationship with her therapist because she pays her(the therapist) to listen to her (the depressed person) problems. [Like my inserted clarifications there? Wallace inspires me.] Her relationships are strange to say the least with everyone around her and all seem to be one-sided.
The parents.
The therapists.
The support group.
She only speaks about how her parent's divorce hurt her, but never once talked about where her parents are at in their lives now.
She realizes only after her therapist died that she knew virtually nothing about her, while the therapist knew everything there was to know about the depressed person.
Her support group, and specifically her closest friend in her support group, listen to her talk about her feelings and depression but never once reciprocate the conversation. For crying out loud, her dearest friend has a terminal illness and she does not ask (to our knowledge) how she is doing.
It is frustrating as a reader that the depressed person cannot get far enough outside of herself to recognize that her best friend is also suffering, perhaps more than she is. She is used to having a one-way relationship that she pays for (the therapist) that she does not know how to have a giving relationship and therefore cannot be a true friend to her terminally ill friend.
DFW sets up the depressed person to make us empathize with her, but at the same time we want to shake her out of her depression because things could be much worse. It feels like we are the friend on the phone that is trying to find a good place to let her know we have to leave and get on with our busy lives. Though, since we are reading the story through her extreme lens of self- consciousness, we never know if the friends are actually there for her and are indeed great friends, or if they really are as she is seeing them.
The depressed person goes through the motions of life, writing in her feeling journals, saying she does not blame her parents when she clearly does, expressing herself to her support group- but does she actually feel anything other than her own self-consciousness? Unlike recovering addicts (which we discussed are equivalent to depressed people in their addictions to something that is harmful to them) of Infinite Jest, she does not put herself into the work. She does not separate her mind and body, she does not recognize her intellectual issues as a part of the problem.
Silverblatt Interview
Michael Silverblatt makes some very astute observations, the first on the idea of Infinite Jest existing in series of fractals, the idea that the
book is something that must be pieced together.
It truly reflects the way we live now, overwhelmed with unrelated pieces
of data that we must string together and find meaning in. As Silverblatt aptly noted, the structure of
the book is not difficulty for difficulty’s sake, but reflects how hard it is to
be a human.
Wallace seems to suggest that he didn't intentionally structure it in fractals, or even totally realize the book's structure until editor Michael Pietsch compared it to glass being dropped from a great height. But we wondered just how much you can trust any author on the subject of intentions and what was pre-planned for their fiction... Wallace especially. There is clearly nothing in Infinite Jest that is there by accident, a realization he appreciates from readers. So which is it? Designed purposefully, or accidentally arising as a reflection of our fragmented contemporary lives?
For now, we were content to imagine it as a little of both.
Wallace seems to suggest that he didn't intentionally structure it in fractals, or even totally realize the book's structure until editor Michael Pietsch compared it to glass being dropped from a great height. But we wondered just how much you can trust any author on the subject of intentions and what was pre-planned for their fiction... Wallace especially. There is clearly nothing in Infinite Jest that is there by accident, a realization he appreciates from readers. So which is it? Designed purposefully, or accidentally arising as a reflection of our fragmented contemporary lives?
For now, we were content to imagine it as a little of both.
First Chapter of Infinite Jest
There is so much going on in Hal’s mind in this first
chapter that it is hard to piece together the story. Thoughts and observations are constantly
thrown in (“This is not working out. It
strikes me that EXIT signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit
signs that say HE LEAVES.” p. 8) that we can’t quite understand within the
context. It is so genius and crucial
that this first chapter is narrated in first person. It is both a privilege and a sad burden to
know all the thoughts in Hal’s head while he is helpless to express them.
(Emily's notes end here... she and Carissa got rather off topic talking about the rest of IJ
because Carissa had just finished it. We
were absolutely all over the place. We
talked a lot about how you can make so many connections within the book by
reading and re-reading and re-reading, but where does that get you? It won’t get you a resolution, and by
obsessing you are participating in that endless cycle that the Entertainment
was created to avoid, but instead intensified.)
We want to know what you think. Comment below!
We want to know what you think. Comment below!
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Good Morning!
On Thursday, October 9, 2014 we will be reading pieces of David Foster Wallace.
Want to read along with us? Have any comments? Any favorite quotes from these specific pieces?
Comment on here!
Excerpt from Infinite Jest
http://www.npr.org/books/titles/137995201/infinite-jest#excerpt
"The Depressed Person"
http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-01-0059425.pdf
Interview with DFW by Michael Silverblatt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCMTHX5WHk
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