David Foster Wallace: excerpt from "The Soul Is Not a Smithy"

Wallace's own reading at Free Library of Philadelphia, 6/22/04

[@scouthatesrainbows]

Man that q&a was something else

[@mitchjacobs7603]

Handled well considering

[@sportsportsport]

William Spacespear. Genius.

[@WombieFerguson]

Thank you so much for the upload.

[@EstebanHernandez-cw1sl]

19:53 Incarnations of Burned Children

[@navigator3744]

I find DFW's work compelling but not because of the "least weird things " he has to say. I am interested in the most weird …

[@geraldlombardo]

Potentially Unpopular opinion: This is about consciousness.

[@nickilovesdogs8137]

All of his books are about psychology to the core of the nitty gritty and all of it is about the deep unconscious and consciousness in general.

[@MrInterestingthings]

Thanks for dloading this . DFW is Always interesting and personally as sexy as crow poet Sylvia Plath's husband Ted Hughes. There are so many types of disturbed writing now .Face It is how we get healthy if we start healthy minded ;reading comments online from Hideous Men you realize as with most contemp art people come from all kinds of non-lit and non-theoretic backgrounds . I think this is valuable .I've made the mistake of telling listeners how to hear my musical work .A grave ,limiting mistake . Let people come to art from where they are ! Whether Joyce or Nabokov even idiots can make a journey of some type just as intellectuals often don't follow what Berg or Beethoven meant . It doesn't completely matter what the creator meant . The gift is ours to use or misunderstand , lose or crave as only we can . I don't like this idea but it's ok .Classical music "srious music " is too intent on text and authorship.the universe is here science gets a lot but it relates to human sense and measurement so ultimately every fact is a lie , observing the thing is not the thing but a mind at play among the myriads . Enough !

[@ophello]

Stop typing spaces before every punctuation. Do you see anyone else typing like that?

[@samg2320]

jeez bro, after the soul crushing office story it starts with a burning baby wtf. Why is so much serious literature about pointless suffering? Artists should take care to not just dump out the darkest parts of themselves, art that does nothing but wallow in misery doesn't serve us. I haven't finished it nor do i plan to, but that is what this burning baby really seems like. real sicko shit.

[@charliee.w]

youre an idiot, listen to the work before you critique it.

[@samg2320]

@@charliee.w I did listen to it that's how I have an opinion. Btw name calling is not an effective way tom communicate.

[@candide1065]

From the way you write, you sound like some 18 year old millenial so it's no surprise that you're really fragile and over-sensitive and you just can't take sad things and suffering even though "pointless" suffering happens all over the world every day and it makes the stories realistic. But you want to live in your save space and due to your lack of awareness or even intelligence you just tell yourself that other people have a problem and write "sicko shit" and should even censor their own stories for the sake of your fragility instead of questioning yourself.