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Home News by Category DFW Biography D. T. Max and James Wood

D. T. Max and James Wood

Update 14/12/12

Official Harvard Video via YouTube.

Times below still accurate to within 30 seconds or so.

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Update 12/12/12:

You can download an audio only mp3 version of the D.T. Max and James Wood conversation at Harvard here. (78MB)
No need to purchase anything. Scroll down and click the regular free download in the bottom right hand corner.
Removed now that official Harvard video is available.

It got the second last question from Sven, and the beginning of the responses. I believe there may have been one more question after it.

(0:00) Steve Biel - Intro
(3:10) James Wood -  Intro
(6:55) James Wood, "I don't come to him as an expert. I come to him indeed with something like periodic blindness. I reviewed Infinite Jest when it came out in The Guardian, positively, but I did not review Oblivion positively. And over the years I've been educated, I think, my blindnesses have been educated by friends and colleagues. Sven among them, Wyatt Mason would be another who have helped me, I think, to see at times where I have been wrong in, or hasty, in my readings. D. T. Max is absolutely one of those educators and please give him a warm hand of applause."
(9:20) Phillip reads IJ excerpt.
(20:30) Hannah reads from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.
(29:20) D. T. Max speaks about the bio and reads from it.
(50:25 - end) Conversation between D. T. Max and James Wood with questions at the end. Missing final question (I believe).

 

Update: Live stream of the event from December 10, 6:00pm, here.

D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace, in conversation with James Wood Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism, Harvard University.

Monday 10th December 2012.

Poster

 

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Last Updated on Friday, 14 December 2012 22:50  

Comments 

 
#1 Keith Rondinelli 2012-12-19 02:56
It's interesting to me that often when people – like the students in the video – are reading DFW aloud, that take this theatrical, exaggerated tone. Maybe it comes from hearing and preferring David's own readings and audiobooks, but I always picture the "narrator" of Wallace stories and essays as being very dry and laconic and understated. The "wacky" voice does a disservice to the writing, in my opinion. There's already enough of that in the words themselves, and, additionally, it ignores the sadness at the core of a lot of his best writing.
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#2 elle 2012-12-23 05:36
Thanks for posting the links for the Harvard and Strand talks. They were both worth it.
And Keith's comment is spot-on.
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