David Foster Wallace Speech

    “Americans seemed no longer united so much by common beliefs as by common images: what binds us became what we stand witness to. Nobody sees this as a good change. In fact, op-cultural references have become such potent metaphors in U.S. fiction not only because of how united Americans are in our exposure to mass images but also because of our guilty indulgent psychology with respect to that exposure.  Put simply, the pop reference works so well in contemporary fiction because (1) we all recognize such a reference, and (2) we’re all a little uneasy about how we all recognize such a reference.”
    David Foster Wallace wrote this in his essay titled E UNIBUS PLURAM Television and U.S. Fiction, the second essay in this book - an essay and argument collection called A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. While I have not read all of David Foster Wallace’s books, what I have read has convinced me to tell you all to pick up one of his books and indulge your mind. Tonight, I want to share with you a little about his life and death, some reviews of his books, and finish off with another quite vivid quote.
    David Foster Wallace, born February 21, 1962 in Ithaca, New York. His father, James Donald Wallace, accepted a job in Urbana, Illinois after finishing his graduate work in philosophy at Cornell.  His mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in english composition at the University of Illinois. While living in Illinois, David Foster Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player - tennis became a subject of lots of his writing. Here a few copies of an essay - A Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley - that speaks of this very same subject.
    David Foster Wallace went on to attend his father’s alma matter - Amherst College - where he majored Summa cum laude in English and Philosophy with a focus modal logic and mathematics. Later receiving his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. His senior thesis - The Broom of the System - was bought and published as his first novel in 1987.  He didn’t intend on being a writer, he says specifically, “I discovered that I really liked creative writing (in college). For most of my college career I was supposed to go on and do math or philosophy or math which were things I was good little nerd at. It’s odd, I don’t really think myself as a writer. I think of it as an experiment that is kind of going okay right now and we’ll have to see what happens... While I was there (at the graduate writing program), a novel I did in college was bought. I think once you have something big get bought, then technically you’re a writer - I think it fulfills the criteria in the dictionary.”
    After abandoning studying philosophy at Harvard, he accepted a position in the English Department at University of Illinois where he taught a few classes and focused on writing Infinite Jest. He also has written for a number of magazines; including but not limited to Esquire, GQ, Harpers, The New Yorker and the Paris Review. In 2002, he moved to southern California to become the first Roy E. Disney Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and a Professor of English at Pomona College.
    After battling over 20 years of depression, taking various medications and even electroconvolusive therapy, did not work. David Foster Wallace ended his life by hanging him self at his home in southern California on September 12, 2008.
    On a brighter note, let’s talk about his work;
    Mark Flanagan described his work as follows, “David Foster Wallace was well-known for his stylistic experimentation, often challenging word choices, and lengthy, demanding sentence structure. Wallace’s inventiveness often seemed to be for its own sake, but it made his work addictively fun to read, like the deciphering of a particularly challenging puzzle.”
    Infinite Jest, his 1,100 page masterpiece, argues through fiction that views American society as self-obsessed, pleasure-obsessed and entertainment-obsessed. After publishing this book in 1996, David Foster Wallace was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Grant - popularly called the “genius award.” Time magazine listed this book as one of the best english written novels over the last century. “ A virtuoso display... There is generous intelligence and authentic passion on every page,” says R.Z. Sheppard of Time Magazine. Dan Cryer of Newsday wrote, “ Exhilarating, breathtaking.. The book teems with so much life and death, so much hilarity and pain, so much gusto in the face of despair that one cheers for the future of our literature.” His book Brief Interviews of Hideous Men was critically acclaimed, won the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by the editors of The Paris Reveiw, and was recently turned in to a movie.
    His life was short, but his works of literary genius will live on forever.  I have shared a little about his life and gave you some reviews of his work.  I will now leave you with one final quote by David Foster Wallace. This is from an essay he wrote about a state fair - this is specifically about the baton twirling competition.