Yes­ter­day, of course, marked the 13th anniver­sary of the hor­ri­ble attacks on the Twin Tow­ers and the Pen­ta­gon. Today marks the 6th anniver­sary of David Fos­ter Wallace’s death by sui­cide. The two events are relat­ed not only by prox­im­i­ty, and not because they are com­pa­ra­ble tragedies, but because Wallace’s work, in par­tic­u­lar his 1993 essay “E Unibus Plu­ram: Tele­vi­sion and U.S. Fic­tion,” has become such a touch­stone for the dis­course of “post-irony” or “the new sin­cer­i­ty” since 9/11, when Van­i­ty Fair edi­tor Gray­don Carter and oth­ers pro­claimed the “end of irony.” But the cul­tur­al con­scious­ness has shift­ed mea­sur­ably since those heady days of fer­vent affir­ma­tion. In a recon­sid­er­a­tion of Wal­lace on irony, Bradley War­shauer writes, “he wasn’t wrong—but he is obso­lete.” Our nation­al discourse—as much as it can be defined in broad terms—may have, some argue, swung fur­ther toward sin­cer­i­ty and sen­ti­men­tal rev­er­ence than Wal­lace would have liked. And he may have been much more an iro­nist than he liked to believe.

Wal­lace, writes War­shauer, was “a wannabe sen­ti­men­tal­ist who was too absurd­ly tal­ent­ed and prob­a­bly too obsessed with the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of fic­tion to be the sort of ‘anti-rebel’ that he him­self talked about.” While he may have roman­ti­cized the high-mind­ed fig­ure who “stands for” things in uncom­pli­cat­ed ways, Wal­lace him­self was com­pli­cat­ed, prick­ly, and just too hyper-aware—of him­self and others—to be seduced by easy sen­ti­ment, what Som­er­set Maugh­am called “unearned emo­tion.” While his work pulls us still toward deep­er lev­els of analy­sis, toward con­tem­pla­tion and cri­tique, toward seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tions of val­ue, it does not do so by eschew­ing irony. In the descrip­tive force of his prose are the eva­sions, par­ries, asides, cir­cum­lo­cu­tions, and jar­ring­ly odd jux­ta­po­si­tions of the iro­nist, the satirist, and—what might be the same thing—the moral­ist. “The inher­ent contradiction”—the irony, if you will—of Wallace’s stance, Washauer argues, cit­ing 1999’s Brief Inter­views With Hideous Men, is that he him­self “was addict­ed to iron­ic detach­ment.” But, of course, it’s not so sim­ple as that.

Today we bring you sev­er­al read­ings by David Fos­ter Wal­lace of his own work. We begin at the top with “Death is Not the End” from Brief Inter­views, that col­lec­tion of “weird metafic­tion” that couch­es raw and painful con­fes­sions in lay­ers of irony. Below it, from that same col­lec­tion, we have “Sui­cide as a Sort of Present,” a piece that, in hind­sight, offers its own poten­tial mor­bid­ly iron­ic read­ings. Just above, hear Wal­lace read the short sto­ry “Incar­na­tions of Burned Chil­dren” from the 2005 col­lec­tion Obliv­ion, full of sto­ries Wyatt Mason described as “tight­ly withhold[ing]… hid­ing on high shelves the keys that unlock their trea­sures.” Replete with tiny mech­a­nisms that can take many care­ful read­ings to parse, these sto­ries are fine-art stud­ies in iron­ic lan­guage and sit­u­a­tions.

One may class David Fos­ter Wal­lace as a mas­ter iro­nist, despite his crit­i­cal stance against its overuse, but this reduces the full range of his mas­tery to one mode among so many. His work embraced the voice of irony and the voice of sin­cer­i­ty as equal­ly valid rhetor­i­cal means, alter­nat­ing between the two in what A.O. Scott once called a “feed­back loop.” “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s,” the essay Wal­lace reads above from 2005’s essay col­lec­tion Con­sid­er the Lob­ster, is a piece he wrote just days after 9/11. Writ­ten quick­ly as a com­mis­sion from Rolling Stone, the essay records his tren­chant obser­va­tions of the reac­tions in Bloom­ing­ton, Illi­nois between Sep­tem­ber 11–13. It’s a piece that show­cas­es the ten­sion between Wallace’s sin­cere desire for imme­di­a­cy and his almost uncon­trol­lable impulse to amused detach­ment. And hear­ing Wal­lace com­mem­o­rate the trag­ic events we remem­bered yes­ter­day high­lights the sad irony of memo­ri­al­iz­ing his own death today.

You can hear many more of David Fos­ter Wallace’s read­ings and inter­views at the David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project, and be sure to stop by our siz­able col­lec­tion, 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Read Two Poems David Fos­ter Wal­lace Wrote Dur­ing His Ele­men­tary School Days

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

George Bernard Shaw once called Mark Twain “the Amer­i­can Voltaire,” and like the inspired French satirist, Twain seems to have some­thing to say to every age, from his own to ours. But if Twain is Voltaire, to whom do we com­pare Bill Mur­ray? Only pos­ter­i­ty can prop­er­ly assess Murray’s con­sid­er­able impact on our cul­ture, but his cur­rent role as everyone’s favorite pleas­ant sur­prise will sure­ly fig­ure large­ly in his his­tor­i­cal por­trait. Of Murray’s many ran­dom acts of kind­ness—which include “pop­ping in on ran­dom karaoke nights, or doing dish­es at oth­er people’s house par­ties, or crash­ing wed­ding pho­to shoots”—he has also tak­en to sur­pris­ing us with read­ings from Amer­i­can lit­er­ary greats: from Cole Porter, to Wal­lace Stevens, to Emi­ly Dick­in­son.

Just above see Mur­ray read an excerpt from Amer­i­can great Mark Twain’s The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn. Murray’s appear­ance at the 1996 Barnes & Noble event appar­ent­ly came as a sur­prise to the audience—and to him­self. The excerpt he reads might also sur­prise many read­ers of Twain’s clas­sic, who prob­a­bly won’t find it in their copies of the nov­el. These pas­sages were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Life on the Mis­sis­sip­pi but reinserted—“correctly, I guess,” Mur­ray shrugs—into Huck Finn in Ran­dom House’s 1996 repub­li­ca­tion of the nov­el, mar­ket­ed as “the only com­pre­hen­sive edi­tion.” (Read a pub­li­ca­tion his­to­ry and sum­ma­ry of the changes in this brief, unsym­pa­thet­ic review of the re-edit­ed text.)

1996 was an inter­est­ing year for Twain’s nov­el. Long at the cen­ter of debates over racial sen­si­tiv­i­ty in pub­lic edu­ca­tion, and banned many times over, the book fig­ured promi­nent­ly that year in a tense but fruit­ful meet­ing between par­ents and teach­ers in Cher­ry Hill, New Jer­sey. These dis­cus­sions pro­duced a new cur­ric­u­lar approach that PBS out­lines in its teach­ing guide “Huck Finn in Con­text,” which offers a vari­ety of respons­es to the thorny ped­a­gogy of “the ‘n’ word,” racial stereo­typ­ing, and read­ing satire. Beyond the issue of deroga­to­ry lan­guage, there also arose that year a pugna­cious chal­lenge to the book’s place in the Amer­i­can lit­er­ary canon from nov­el­ist Jane Smi­ley. Smiley’s polemic prompt­ed a lengthy rebut­tal in The New York Times from Twain schol­ar Justin Kaplan.

Revis­it­ing these debates reminds us of just how much we can take for grant­ed a lit­er­ary work’s social and cul­tur­al val­ue. Smi­ley reminds us of the breadth of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture by women writ­ers that was pushed aside by crit­ics to give male writ­ers like Twain, Melville, and Poe pride of place. The var­i­ous con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the novel’s place in the class­room should remind us—as Toni Mor­ri­son has explained in depth—that racial­ized lan­guage does not strike all read­ers equal­ly, and that this is a prob­lem to be dis­cussed open­ly, not ignored or banned out of sight. And Murray’s excel­lent dra­mat­ic read­ing of these re-insert­ed pas­sages should remind us, over all, of the first rea­son we care about Huck Finn—not because of its polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness or incor­rect­ness, but because of its rich­ness of char­ac­ter and dia­logue.

After Murray’s read­ing above, New York Times writer Brent Sta­ples intro­duces a dis­tin­guished pan­el of Shel­by Foote, William Sty­ron, Roy Blount, Jr., and Justin Kaplan. The five go on to dis­cuss the “lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance” of the nov­el, con­fronting the con­tro­ver­sies head-on. I think it’s a shame Jane Smi­ley wasn’t invit­ed, or chose not to appear. In any case, you might be tempt­ed to bolt after Bill Mur­ray, but stick around for the writ­ers. You won’t be dis­ap­point­ed.

You can find copies of Huck Finn in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Great Poet­ry by Bil­ly Collins, Cole Porter, and Sarah Man­gu­so

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness