I took this book with me everywhere. It started in Denver, late night and cross legged on my front porch. Together we found our way to a park bench, where the love affair rose to the next level. Then we travelled through Nebraska and Iowa, ending up in Galesburg, Illinois. It was here that I truly began to take my time, knowing that as soon as it ended, I would want to travel back to the beginning. As lame as it may sound to any other, I've taken this book with me everywhere since. David Foster Wallace. How you've captured me. This book is simply a transcript of an elongated interview that DFW did with David Lipsky for a Rolling Stone article in 1996. After Wallace's death in 2008, Lipsky released this book. I'm forever grateful. (How obnoxious do I sound?)
It's one thing to have a conversation with a friend or fellow reader about popular culture, about the profound effects that "art" has on us all, but another to be allowed the pleasure of the voyeuristic experience of eavesdropping on 2 separate great minds having those same discussions. Multiple times throughout this book, I found myself feeling validated. When a genius like Wallace expresses a view that you've long held, he does it better. He encapsulates it with a sagacious conclusiveness.
Much like a fawning schoolgirl, I drank this in all the more so as I remember the stuff they're talking about. These interviews took place when I was a 20 year-old flailing college student, so whether pontificating on the merits of Updike or regaling Alanis Morissette for her accessibility, I'm smitten. Then and now.
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