David Lipsky has written about some highlights of David Foster Wallace's work for LibraryThing’s State of the Thing April newsletter:
If you’ve never read DFW before, here’s a list of the highlights—and if you have opened one of his books, you probably already know it’s almost all highlights. David Wallace had the rarest gift for a writer. He made you feel smarter while and after you read him. He’s like a mental vitamin pill. And it’s not the kind of brightness that makes you feel stubby, the brightness of the kid who keeps raising a hand in class. It’s a brilliance that welcomes you, that says, “I know you noticed this, come over here and be smart with me.” Wallace was aware of this, too. He said, “What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit—to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. And if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time.” David Wallace’s work is a wake-up pill, a slug of coffee; that’s what the following stories, essays and novels stories are like.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
