Part two in the series of David Foster Wallace Examinations is up at Culture Map Austin.
Click through to read Samantha Pitchel's piece, Infinite Files: Making sense of David Foster Wallace's manuscripts and marginalia:
“What seems to be common with Wallace scholars is people feel an emotional connection to Wallace,” Schwartzburg explains, “as opposed to an intellectual connection. Or, deeply entwined with an intellectual connection. People tend to speak to me or to the staff about the personal relationship they feel with the writer. And that’s something that’s been quite striking about how researchers are approaching their projects; even if the project is very grounded in a specific theoretical question, their experience of working with the manuscripts is very personal.” There are, too, those who believe it’s necessary to approach the collection with a sort of guarded, academic distance, to avoid the illusive promise that closeness to these primary materials equals closeness to the author himself. Because (for example) there’s no way of knowing whether notes about “DW” are self-referential or perhaps notes on the fictionalized David Wallace, who appears as a character in both “Good Old Neon” and The Pale King.
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