WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.960 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:04.380 align:middle line:84%
Did you know that as an
undergraduate at Amherst,

00:00:04.380 --> 00:00:09.150 align:middle line:84%
David Foster Wallace invented
the precursor to 5-Hour Energy?

00:00:09.150 --> 00:00:11.280 align:middle line:84%
He doubled up on
caffeine as he wrote late

00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:16.530 align:middle line:84%
into the night dipping tea
bags into cups of coffee.

00:00:16.530 --> 00:00:18.720 align:middle line:84%
Did you know that Wallace
used to call the BIC

00:00:18.720 --> 00:00:23.760 align:middle line:84%
pens with which he wrote his
first novel, orgasm pens?

00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:26.670 align:middle line:84%
Did you know Wallace
had acute arachnophobia

00:00:26.670 --> 00:00:29.130 align:middle line:84%
or that he took
obscenely long showers?

00:00:29.130 --> 00:00:31.860 align:middle line:84%
That he preferred hook shots
on the basketball court

00:00:31.860 --> 00:00:35.046 align:middle line:90%
in order to avoid contact.

00:00:35.046 --> 00:00:40.500 align:middle line:84%
DT Max's biography, Every
Love Story is a Ghost Story,

00:00:40.500 --> 00:00:44.790 align:middle line:84%
is not just a careful
compendium of DFW trivia.

00:00:44.790 --> 00:00:48.330 align:middle line:84%
These small details
are far from trivial.

00:00:48.330 --> 00:00:51.240 align:middle line:84%
Rather, they reveal the
covert and sometimes

00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:54.420 align:middle line:84%
overt resonances between
Wallace's actual life

00:00:54.420 --> 00:00:57.210 align:middle line:90%
and his literary life.

00:00:57.210 --> 00:00:59.850 align:middle line:84%
In a discussion between
DT Max and James Wood

00:00:59.850 --> 00:01:02.910 align:middle line:84%
at Harvard University,
DT Max convincingly

00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:05.280 align:middle line:84%
insisted that it
matters, or at least it

00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:09.330 align:middle line:84%
could matter, that Wallace used
a lot of windshield wiper fluid

00:01:09.330 --> 00:01:11.280 align:middle line:90%
when cleaning his window.

00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:15.570 align:middle line:84%
A fact culled from an interview
from Jonathan Franzen.

00:01:15.570 --> 00:01:19.410 align:middle line:84%
Max argues that all that wiper
fluid could suggest something

00:01:19.410 --> 00:01:21.870 align:middle line:84%
about Wallace's
maximalist personality

00:01:21.870 --> 00:01:25.860 align:middle line:84%
and also about his
need for visibility.

00:01:25.860 --> 00:01:29.970 align:middle line:84%
In these pages, DT Max does
not just give us biography,

00:01:29.970 --> 00:01:32.910 align:middle line:84%
he deftly transfigures some
of our favorite moments

00:01:32.910 --> 00:01:35.520 align:middle line:84%
of Wallace's hitherto
fiction, into what

00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:39.600 align:middle line:84%
might be more accurately
billed as auto fiction.

00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:43.200 align:middle line:84%
Avril Incandenza, for instance,
the matriarchal member

00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:46.920 align:middle line:84%
of the militant grammarians of
Massachusetts in Infinite Jest,

00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:50.610 align:middle line:84%
is a moniker for his own
mother, Sally Foster Wallace,

00:01:50.610 --> 00:01:53.790 align:middle line:84%
who used to chafe with the
signage at the supermarket.

00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:58.900 align:middle line:84%
It should read 10 items or
fewer, she told the clerks.

00:01:58.900 --> 00:02:01.000 align:middle line:84%
With the help of
hundreds of interviewees,

00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:05.350 align:middle line:84%
cum accomplices, from Ithaca,
to Champaign-Urbana, to Amherst,

00:02:05.350 --> 00:02:08.500 align:middle line:84%
to Tucson, to Cambridge, to
Syracuse, to Springfield,

00:02:08.500 --> 00:02:12.280 align:middle line:84%
to Claremont, DT Max is
relentless in his pursuit

00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:16.390 align:middle line:84%
of this loving, responsible,
and doggedly coherent narrative

00:02:16.390 --> 00:02:18.610 align:middle line:84%
about the one whom we've
affectionately dubbed

00:02:18.610 --> 00:02:22.010 align:middle line:90%
the voice of our generation.

00:02:22.010 --> 00:02:24.010 align:middle line:84%
In addition to these
hundreds of interviews,

00:02:24.010 --> 00:02:27.550 align:middle line:84%
Max also scrutinizes
Wallace's prolific archives

00:02:27.550 --> 00:02:30.790 align:middle line:84%
at the Harry Ransom Center
at the University of Texas,

00:02:30.790 --> 00:02:33.370 align:middle line:84%
where he became a
creative sifter.

00:02:33.370 --> 00:02:35.800 align:middle line:84%
Max weaves and arcs
into the biography

00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:39.880 align:middle line:84%
insightful correspondences,
both personal and professional,

00:02:39.880 --> 00:02:42.160 align:middle line:84%
as well as
undergraduate doggerel

00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:45.790 align:middle line:84%
aiming a pointing stick
at buds of genius.

00:02:45.790 --> 00:02:49.090 align:middle line:84%
Max is the proverbial fly on
the wall we hope them to be.

00:02:49.090 --> 00:02:51.250 align:middle line:84%
Despairing with Wallace
in his apartment

00:02:51.250 --> 00:02:54.520 align:middle line:84%
over Michiko Kakutani's
harsh reviews,

00:02:54.520 --> 00:02:56.770 align:middle line:84%
enduring with Wallace
multiple sessions

00:02:56.770 --> 00:03:00.220 align:middle line:84%
of electroconvulsive therapy,
prescribing with Wallace

00:03:00.220 --> 00:03:03.020 align:middle line:84%
to the 12-step method
for addiction recovery.

00:03:03.020 --> 00:03:06.010 align:middle line:84%
He is with him too in the
classroom both the student

00:03:06.010 --> 00:03:07.600 align:middle line:90%
and his teacher.

00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:11.180 align:middle line:84%
Max is intimately inside
Wallace's flickering mind,

00:03:11.180 --> 00:03:13.330 align:middle line:84%
regardless of its
spurts of illumination

00:03:13.330 --> 00:03:14.425 align:middle line:90%
or stretches of gloom.

00:03:14.425 --> 00:03:17.230 align:middle line:90%


00:03:17.230 --> 00:03:21.760 align:middle line:84%
Library Journal warns that
David Foster Wallace's 1,088

00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:25.030 align:middle line:84%
paged Infinite Jest is
not for the weak hearted

00:03:25.030 --> 00:03:27.730 align:middle line:90%
or the weak wristed.

00:03:27.730 --> 00:03:30.490 align:middle line:84%
As DT Max puts it,
to read Infinite Jest

00:03:30.490 --> 00:03:33.280 align:middle line:90%
was to accept a dare.

00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:36.010 align:middle line:84%
For me, reading Infinite
Jest felt like something I

00:03:36.010 --> 00:03:38.020 align:middle line:90%
ought to put on my CV.

00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:42.460 align:middle line:84%
Something like, I just
finished Infinite Jest.

00:03:42.460 --> 00:03:44.770 align:middle line:84%
Just imagine the caliber
of accomplishment

00:03:44.770 --> 00:03:47.530 align:middle line:84%
it must have been for David
Foster Wallace who could say,

00:03:47.530 --> 00:03:50.380 align:middle line:90%
I wrote Infinite Jest.

00:03:50.380 --> 00:03:54.760 align:middle line:84%
Max depicts Wallace striving
for artistic equilibrium

00:03:54.760 --> 00:03:58.420 align:middle line:84%
as he wrote his opus, jockeying
for the inclusion of end notes

00:03:58.420 --> 00:04:02.770 align:middle line:84%
and sheepishly asking
for deadline extensions.

00:04:02.770 --> 00:04:05.800 align:middle line:84%
For me, the most poignant
moment of the biography

00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:07.930 align:middle line:84%
is the "Westward"
chapter, in which Wallace

00:04:07.930 --> 00:04:10.510 align:middle line:90%
moves to Tucson for his MFA.

00:04:10.510 --> 00:04:12.760 align:middle line:84%
He writes to a friend
in Massachusetts

00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:15.760 align:middle line:84%
suddenly at a loss for his
characteristically maximalist

00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:17.860 align:middle line:90%
language.

00:04:17.860 --> 00:04:21.670 align:middle line:84%
Jettisoning his recursive syntax
and sounding for the first time

00:04:21.670 --> 00:04:24.460 align:middle line:84%
ever like a minimalist,
one who just got the wind

00:04:24.460 --> 00:04:31.030 align:middle line:84%
knocked out of him by Tucson the
place, the weather, the school,

00:04:31.030 --> 00:04:34.990 align:middle line:84%
the girls, the students
in the program,

00:04:34.990 --> 00:04:38.770 align:middle line:84%
the girls, the
professors, et cetera.

00:04:38.770 --> 00:04:42.370 align:middle line:84%
I will be here for the
next three years at least.

00:04:42.370 --> 00:04:44.980 align:middle line:84%
Haven't we all been so
enamored with Tucson

00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:49.430 align:middle line:84%
this place, this weather,
this school, et cetera?

00:04:49.430 --> 00:04:53.350 align:middle line:84%
In the same chapter, Max writes,
the symbolic hub of their world

00:04:53.350 --> 00:04:56.470 align:middle line:84%
was a pretty adobe building
called the Poetry Center.

00:04:56.470 --> 00:04:59.710 align:middle line:90%
Isn't it just so?

00:04:59.710 --> 00:05:01.960 align:middle line:84%
Earlier today, Max read
from his other book

00:05:01.960 --> 00:05:03.880 align:middle line:84%
for the medical
humanities series,

00:05:03.880 --> 00:05:07.090 align:middle line:84%
The Family That Couldn't
Sleep: A Medical Mystery.

00:05:07.090 --> 00:05:09.370 align:middle line:84%
When he's not touring
or vacationing,

00:05:09.370 --> 00:05:11.620 align:middle line:84%
Max is a staff writer
at The New Yorker, where

00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:15.040 align:middle line:84%
he writes about prions and
chess and film and technology

00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:16.960 align:middle line:90%
and music and food.

00:05:16.960 --> 00:05:19.690 align:middle line:84%
Please welcome to our
not so adobe anymore

00:05:19.690 --> 00:05:22.710 align:middle line:90%
Poetry Center, DT Max.