Irish Times interview with Bret Easton Ellis, End of the novel, end of the empire , turns to David Foster Wallace:
“Never met him. Never responded to the work. I pretty much read everything he wrote because you were kind of supposed to. He is a big deal in American letters and . . . I never really liked anything he wrote. I tried to read Infinite Jest three or four times and never cracked it. I found the stories didn’t interest me. And I am in the minority: I didn’t like the essays either. He suffers from a kind of midwestern earnestness that I found unbearable. And I don’t think it is too soon . . . but I find his earnestness very irritating. I just finished reading this long book of interviews he did and . . . you can be too smart for fiction.“The way he spoke about a lot of things is just not my school of thought. And yes, he was probably a genius. And yes, I was very moved by his death. I was very touched by his pain. I really was. It was a shock. And there was a really moving account of it by I think it was DT Max in the New Yorker . And, you know, I was in tears. But! Let’s just get real and separate the man, who I did not know, and the work.”
Bret Easton Ellis on DFW previously.
[via @writing_novels]
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