Full Disclosure: I am a huge DFW fan, so, ya know, there was very little chance I wasn't going to like this "book".
I say "book" because it's not really a book in the traditional sense, more just a 310 page interview with David Foster Wallace during the last leg of his Infinite Jest book tour in 1996. A lot of what DFW talks about, as far as certain ideas about television, technology, entertainment, addiction, America, etc, I'd already read in other interviews (the best interview I've read with is with Dalkey Archive Press), though the things DFW had to say in this interview were still very awesome.
What DFW fans will find most enjoyable, as I did anyway, is just the little things that are revealed. His odd soda drinking habit (12 cans a day), his musical tastes (infatuated with Alanis Morissette...remember, this is 1996), and a myriad of other things that won't be listed here.
Of course, the book is also incredibly sad (but also laugh out loud funny...seriously, I was reading this in bed late one night, my lady next to me sleeping, and I literally had to laugh into my pillow to keep from waking her up) because the whole time Lipsky is trying to convince DFW that all this attention and praise must feel really good and must be just the best thing ever and the whole time DFW is not on board with it at all. The book tour and all the attention is plainly painful for him most of the time because he acknowledges that all the press he's getting (such as this Rolling Stone writer following him around for five days) is more about all the hype and attention he's getting than it is about Infinite Jest. Because at that point, as DFW points out several times, there's just no way that most of these people could have even read and digested the book. Like the book tour literally started the day after publication. So if you've read any of DFW's nonfiction stuff, you can imagine how he would react to massive amounts of attention and praise...ultimately it just made him uncomfortable and sad.
Another thing that struck me was just the kind of frenzy the publishing and reading world got itself into over Infinite Jest and DFW. I was maybe 12 or 13 when Infinite Jest was published, living in Small Town New Hampshire so of course I have no recollection of any of it, it wasn't even close to being on my radar. But what Lipsky keeps pointing out to Wallace is that all this attention and adulation was unprecedented, especially for a writer as young as he was (34 at the time). Which is another thing that was crazy that I keep forgetting is that Wallace started writing Infinite Jest in like '91/'92, when he was like 29 or 30, which to me is just insane. To create this masterpiece at that age just blows me away. And to think about the stuff that was probably being written around that time, and the kind of art that was around...It just seems that much crazier. I read Infinite Jest in 2005...I can't imagine what it must have been like to read it in 1996. Ok, I'm just rambling now.
"I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from high school or college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion. And believe that civic movements or political activism are either a farce or some way to get power for the people who are in control of it. Who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else." pg.160
"I don't think I'm quite as smart, one-on-one, with people, when I'm self-conscious, and I'm really really confused. And it's why like, my dream would be for you to write this up, and then to send it to me, and I get to rewrite all my quotes to you...I know that I'm a lot more talented alone, when I've got time, than I am in the back and forth of this." pg.218-219
"I mean, I decided that I wanted to think of myself as a writer, which meant whether this [Infinite Jest:] got published or not, I was gonna write it." pg.252
"I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it's really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid...but the fact of the matter is that the job that we're here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we're not terrified all the time." pg.291-292
"...And expectations of ourselves are a very fine line. Because up to a certain point, they can be motivating, and inspiring, and can be kind of a flame thrower held to our ass, get us moving. And past that point they're toxic and paralyzing." pg.299
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