Qualche anno fa lessi Oblio (di cui ammetto di ricordare poco e nulla) e nonostante lo sbandamento da non-capisco-niente provai anche a leggere La ragazza dai capelli strani, senza però riuscirci. All'epoca, sono convinta, non ero ancora pronta per Wallace e da allora mi sono sempre tenuta alla l...
I thought this was a book of essays that simply INCLUDED the titular transcribed speech. But turns out it's a tiny (TINY!) book that contains ONLY the titular transcribed speech. Highly disappointing but I guess I would have figured it out if I'd done my homework. Still a 5-star book, but I would...
The very obvious sights in our lives are the ones that are the hardest to see. Something goes wrong and not per our will, we get mad. But, we always had a choice. Stuck in traffic? It is perfectly fine to be mad at people jumping lanes and blaming your dreary life for being stuck while you could ...
This is one of those "great" books that is just too smart for me. At the end of the day, I still crave a compelling story that hooks my heart as well as my brain. I couldn't finish this book. I am sure the story structure, characterization, and themes are all at the cutting edge of modern lite...
Just thinking about all the processes of unfolding, All the possibilities lying there unexploded, makes you want to reach in his grave and pull out his severed head (like in IJ?) and just stare into the dead, blemished eyes of a master unbored to death. Never before i'd felt this burning desire t...
Cinco estrellas a la inteligencia de DFW y una estrella por ser un recocido demasiado evidente.Mis ensayos favoritos fueron la revisión de un libro sobre Jorge Luis Borges, la crónica del US Open y el texto sobre sexo casual ("there's nothing casual about sex at all"). Todos permiten una reflexió...
I get that he was a genius but I still think he needed editing. My favorite essays were the ones about Federer and Commerce at the US Open.
Clearly not finished Four stars for one chapter in particular.
I'm bewitched by this glorious magenta cover with yellow starfish and the peculiarly flattened and shaped white font. I don't know why it is, but whenever I purchase the British edition of a book, inevitably I aesthetically prefer its differing cover artwork, layout, colour scheme, blurb text—the...
If nothing else, this book really made me think. Maybe even over-think. This book invites it. There is a lot to mull over in each of these stories, and DFW is very rarely direct about anything, preferring to leave clues along the way. I think it’s interesting that each story has its own speci...
What can I say? Another brilliant set of essays.1. Big Red Son - at the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards. An insightful and amusing look at the porn industry. For a regular civilian male, hanging out in a hotel suite with porn starlets is a tense and emotionally convolved affair. There is, first, t...
A Brief Word on the Famous Interview #20I'm here to air my total ambivalence after having read the final interview (second to last story in the collection) and not knowing what at all to make of the story. Yes, it is very well written and DFW had certainly mastered the interview style by this poi...
After finishing David Foster Wallace’s Girl With Curious Hair, I had to step back awhile before reviewing in fear I would simply come across as an overzealous cheerleader yelling ‘Give me a D!....Give me a F!...Give me a W!....’. Like a teenage romance, I was so blinded by my love for this colle...
Is Wittgenstein’s Mistress For Me?The following survey is designed to predict your strength of connection to this very distinctive book. Choose the responses that apply best to you and tally the associated points. Then compare your total with the ranges below to see the course of action recomme...
Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and...
In February 2000, "Rolling Stone" magazine sent David Foster Wallace, "NOT A POLITICAL JOURNALIST, " on the road for a week with Senator John McCain's campaign to win the Republican nomination for the Presidency. They wanted to know why McCain appealed so much to so many Americans, and particular...
Pros’ tics have always been fun to note and chart, even just e.g. on the serve. Watch the way Sampras’s lead foot rises from the heel on his toss, as if his left foot’s toes got suddenly hot. The odd Tourettic way Gerulaitis used to whip his head from side to side while bouncing the ball before h...