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Unfinished David Foster Wallace Novel To See Print

post #1 of 9
3/2/09 at 4:21pm
Thread Starter 
Here's an excerpt from the New Yorker.

It will apparently be published exactly as he left it when he took his life - meaning, I presume, that it will lack an ending. It'll have his personal notes to presumably make up for that fact.

As an admirer, I'm both happy and sad about this. I don't know how Wallace would have felt about something unfinished seeing the light of day, but I'll buy it.

ETA: Here's the New Yorker article about living up to Infinite Jest. Sort of a companion piece to the excerpt, I guess. Haven't read it yet.
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post #2 of 9
3/2/09 at 4:26pm
I'm sure he's okay with it at this point.
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post #3 of 9
3/3/09 at 1:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesse Custer View Post
As an admirer, I'm both happy and sad about this. I don't know how Wallace would have felt about something unfinished seeing the light of day, but I'll buy it.

ETA: Here's the New Yorker article about living up to Infinite Jest. Sort of a companion piece to the excerpt, I guess. Haven't read it yet.
When you read the article, you'll find that Wallace appears to have organized the material prior to his suicide in a way that indicated he wanted it to be published.
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post #4 of 9
5/29/09 at 4:04pm
I don't know if this has been mentioned in the Salvation thread (I'm seriously not poring through that thing), but all of the hullabaloo about that movie and the subsequent James Cameron call-outs in that godforsaken fucking Spike Marshall thread reminded me of the Terminator 2-related piece that Wallace wrote. Coincidentally, AVClub posted a Gateway to Geekery on DFW yesterday, and this link was in the comments.

http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/waterstone.html
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post #5 of 9
5/29/09 at 4:29pm
I've always thought that was one of his weaker pieces. While he's right about T2 being kind of a sucky movie underneath the hood, he doesn't make a very compelling case that its the fault of the FX (aka the money invested).
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post #6 of 9
5/29/09 at 5:20pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt M View Post
I've always thought that was one of his weaker pieces. While he's right about T2 being kind of a sucky movie underneath the hood, he doesn't make a very compelling case that its the fault of the FX (aka the money invested).
While his argument is brief, I'd say that he does a good job of pointing out that the FX drove the train on T2. The shift in emphasis from the 'Appoinment in Samarra'-esque story of the first film to the 'look at the metal dude melting through the bars while ignoring the basic recycling of story' approach in the second film is apparent on its own, but Wallace's suggestion that the FX were the culprit draws attention to the way that T2 appears to have inaugerated a new era of flashy set-pieces connected by thin story tissue and the notion of the Inverse Cost to Quality law, while obviously open to exceptions, is well-put and born out by many a 'blockbuster' example.
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post #7 of 9
5/29/09 at 7:00pm
But a chunk of his argument is about how Arnold didn't want to play a bad guy, and how that led to the kid-and-robot humor and ridiculous ending. And I don't think that he's persuasive in pinning that decision on the FX budget.
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post #8 of 9
9/15/10 at 3:04pm
Publication date set: April 15, 2011.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-release-date/
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post #9 of 9
9/15/10 at 3:33pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt M View Post
Publication date set: April 15, 2011.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-release-date/
Thanks, Matt. Color me excited.
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