David Foster Wallace's Demons, Death, and Triumphs

We are talking about David Foster Wallace's life today! I will be breaking down the major parts of David Foster Wallace's biography and talking about their impact on his life. Wallace struggled with addiction, womanizing, massive creative blocks, overbearing parents, mental health issues, and pressure to become great.

[@enriccoc7794]

I first learned about DFW a few years ago on a youtube channel that was philosophy themed and featured old TV clips of interviews. I assumed he was a philosopher and learned a few tidbits about him. I only dug deeper a couple of months ago, read some of his nonfiction essays and learned his story and I was kind of surprised that he was a 90's fiction writer roughly equated with Brett Easton Ellis. It's really a bizzarre life story that lead everyone to put a lot of pressure on him - a mythology rose out of him and I think you articulated it well that he's a good writer but not at the level he was built up to. something about him must not only intrigue me but everyone else, some deeper truth we are sensing but can't directly point to.

[@WriteConscious]

Thanks!

[@lordbunbury]

“Not at the level he was built up to”? What does an author need to do more than write ‘Infinite Jest’? Or what do you mean?

[@LivingInTheKaliYogurt]

Found your channel because I'm rereading Infinite Jest for the 1st time since college. This is read #5 in my life. The last time I read it was for a college class taught by a then-colleague of DFW. Hitting very different this time bc 1) I'm older w/ a lot more life lived now 2) this time I'm reading the novel of a dead man who's personal character flaws and mental illness issues are more widely known & in more detail and 3) I can confirm now in a way I only suspected the first 3 times I read this that a lot of IJ is veiled autobiography with different characters representing different fragments of DFW's very fractured & obsessive, albeit brilliant, psyche (Orin is sex addict/womanizer DFW for example) 4) I relate way more now to many of the themes of the book and the ways we are all flawed, damaged & addicted to things we use to distract us from pain & loneliness. (Thankfully, I don't share some of his more extreme flaws like the stalking thing.) This was a great video, and your bookshelf is impressive. You've got a new subscriber. Great work.

[@WriteConscious]

Thanks for the great insights! Love them. I've also enjoyed rereading this now that I'm older!

[@Snarflelocker]

Amazing to see your progression. I started with your most recent videos, and this one helps me understand that good quality can be achieved without perfection. i especially appreciate that you don't edit out stutters or verbal missteps. it makes you much more relatable, and i love your content.

[@shaneharrington3655]

Infinite Jest, for me, was somehow both worth the effort and not worth the effort to read. It was such a slog and I felt relatively nonplussed after turning the last page, but it was somehow worth it too. I’m very interested in DFWs life tho and thoughts around that book, another great vid here ✌🏻 PS I still gotta read all his other stuff

[@WriteConscious]

Ayeee, lets go! We will do an episode on Wallace soon

[@shaneharrington3655]

@@WriteConscious Fuck yeah, down.

[@lordbunbury]

Just line for line there is so much in Infinite Jest. Just the pleasure of the individual sentences alone makes it worth it. I mean, you could open IJ on any page and there will be at least one sentence that is worth it.

[@jamescareyyatesIII]

Love your down-to-Earth, non-academic analysis. Keep up the good work. Whst do you think of Harry Crews, one of my faves?

[@WriteConscious]

Liked "Feast of Snakes" but won't probably return for awhile. Having put in hundreds of hours researching Cormac's southern works I am kinda done with the south lol

[@jamescareyyatesIII]

@@WriteConscious I'm southern. Flannery is my all-time favorite writer and Wiseblood is my favorite novel. Are there good Yankee writers? Never heard of one.

[@TGBahr]

I knew a guy once who reminds me a little bit of Wallace. It seems that the great need for outside validation, high intelligence, womanizing and a great scorn for the less intelligent and less disirable but more successful seems to be the common thread with these two characters.

[@WriteConscious]

Yes, I've known some also. Not the most trustworthy characters lol

[@ZiggaRats]

You mentioned Jeffers. Not a huge poetry guy, but I love Jeffers. To me he's the most like Cormac. The end of Tamar is so brutal, I love it! I've always been a big reader, but I've fallen off recently. Your channel has inspired me to get back into it. Thank you for that!

[@WriteConscious]

Thank you! Hope the journey has been going well

[@user-cq5sg9cb4t]

Heidegger and DFW are put in the same category of degeneracy as Hemingway and Hunter S? Dafuq😂 The hell did they do?😅

[@WriteConscious]

Heidegger was a nazi who reported his mentors and friends and DFW stalked, harassed, and planned to kill Mary Karr's husband lol. Those behaviors were somewhat typical of his many relationships. He also was a womanizer/addict.

[@user-cq5sg9cb4t]

​@@WriteConsciousWell, he was certainly unhinged at times, obviously tormented, but that's just one of many dimensions of his personality. In my view, anyone who could come up with the "This is Water" speech is very far from being a degenerate, at least at heart.

[@jamescareyyatesIII]

I don't think any of DFW's novels are successful. His mental illness was too great for sustained work. His Little Expressionless Creatures short story, which was published in the Paris Review and is how I discovered him is fucking brilliant and why we all, my generation, thought DFW was the next Pynchon. The best thing he ever wrote was the cruise ship piece, which I reread every year.

[@WriteConscious]

Infinite Jest, Broom, and even The Pale King have some very successful parts. But parts don't make up the whole!

[@ThomasMayer123-f8f]

I dont like how you call them degenerates

[@crud420]

womp womp