David Foster Wallace’s Sharp Letter to His Editor: “Don’t F with the Mechanics of My Piece”

in Letters, Literature | February 11th, 2014

DFWFax

Click for expand­ed ver­sion

We might imag­ine that David Fos­ter Wal­lace worked out his neu­roses pri­mar­i­ly in his volu­mi­nous fic­tion­al and crit­i­cal out­put, but as we see from a fax above to Harper’s edi­tor Joel Lovell, the painful self-con­scious­ness that drove his writ­ing man­i­fest­ed in even the most mun­dane of doc­u­ments. Wal­lace sub­mit­ted the faxed let­ter with a short essay on Kaf­ka that appeared in Harper’s in 1998. The essay itself—an account of the dif­fi­cul­ties of teach­ing the arch Czech author to Amer­i­can undergraduates—slices through com­mon­places, arriv­ing at the con­clu­sion that “the hor­rif­ic strug­gle to estab­lish a human self results in a self whose human­i­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from that hor­rif­ic strug­gle. That our end­less and impos­si­ble jour­ney toward home is in fact our home.” Reas­sur­ing stuff this ain’t, but then, nei­ther is Kaf­ka. Even amidst all of its elab­o­rate defen­sive strate­gies, Wallace’s writ­ing also expos­es the unheim­lichkeit of human embod­i­ment, and in the Kaf­ka essay, it’s a point he want­ed to make in a very par­tic­u­lar way, unmedi­at­ed by any edi­to­r­i­al inter­ven­tion.

His faxed let­ter to Lovell antic­i­pates and resists crit­i­cism and alter­nates between dis­mis­sive, self-effac­ing, and mock-threat­en­ing in his expressed desire that the Harper’s staff “not copy­ed­it this like a fresh­man essay.” He explains the con­ver­sa­tion­al style of the piece as an effort to “pro­tect me from people’s ire.” The body of the let­ter fin­ish­es with Wallace’s foot­not­ed promise to “find a way to harm you or cause you suf­fer­ing* if you fuck with the mechan­ics of this piece.” It’s clas­sic DFW: com­plete­ly idio­syn­crat­ic, a prose style induced by his “hor­rif­ic strug­gle” to estab­lish an authen­tic self. Read a tran­script below, cour­tesy of Let­ters of Note. All, of course, sic.

ATTEMPTED FAX COVER SHEET

From: David Wal­lace

To: Joel Lovell, Harper’s [redact­ed] (Office [redact­ed])

This is pret­ty much the best I can do, I think. I feel shit­ty stick­ing a lot of what you want­ed in FN’s, but I didn’t see any work to work it into the main text w/o hav­ing to rewrite whole ¶s and throw the thing’s Sty­ro­foamish weight off.

The deal is this. You’re wel­come to this for READINGS if you wish. What I’d ask is that you (or Ms. Rosen­bush, whom I respect but fear) not copy­ed­it this like a fresh­man essay. Idio­syn­cra­cies of ital, punc­tu­a­tion, and syn­tax (“stuff,” “light­bulb” as one word, “i.e.”/“e.g.” with­out com­mas after, the colon 4 words after ellipses at the end, etc.) need to be stet­ted. (A big rea­son for this is that I want to pre­serve an oral­ish, out-loud feel to the remarks so as to pro­tect me from people’s ire at stuff that isn’t expand­ed on more; for you, the big rea­son is that I’m not espe­cial­ly psy­ched to have this run at all, much less to take a blue-skyed 75-degree after­noon futz­ing with it to bring it into line with your specs, and you should feel oblig­ed and bor­der­line guilty, and I will find a way to harm you or cause you suf­fer­ing* if you fuck with the mechan­ics of this piece.

Let Me Know,

Dave Wal­lace

* (It may take years for the opor­tu­ni­ty to arise. I’m very patient. Think of me as a spi­der with a phe­nom­e­nal emo­tion­al mem­o­ry. Ask Charis.)

via F yeah, man­u­scripts!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Cre­ates Lists of His Favorite Words: “Mau­gre,” “Taran­tism,” “Ruck,” “Prima­para” & More

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

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Jack Kerouac’s On The Road Turned Into Google Driving Directions & Published as a Free eBook

in Literature, Maps | February 10th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks ago, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed for you Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road. Now we have anoth­er Ker­oua­cian map for you — a map for our times. Gre­gor Weich­brodt, a Ger­man col­lege stu­dent, took all of the geo­graph­ic stops men­tioned in On the Road, plugged them into Google Maps, and end­ed up with a 45-page man­u­al of dri­ving direc­tions, divid­ed into chap­ters par­al­lel­ing those of Ker­ouac’s orig­i­nal book. You can read the man­u­al — On the Road for 17,527 Miles– as a free ebook. Just click the image above to view it online (or click here). Like­wise, you can pur­chase a print copy on Lulu and per­haps make it the basis for your own road trip. Won­der­ing how long such a trip might take? Google Maps indi­cates that Ker­ouac’s jour­ney cov­ered some 17,527 miles and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly took some 272 hours.

Note: You can find lec­tures (1 + 2) dis­cussing the impor­tance of On the Road in Yale’s course, The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945. It appears in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via @SteveSilberman and PRI

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

500 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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Impressions of Upper Mongolia : Salvador Dalí’s Last Film About a Search for a Giant Hallucinogenic Mushroom

in Art, Film, Literature | February 6th, 2014

Sal­vador Dalí and his fel­low sur­re­al­ists owed a great debt to the wealthy, dandy­ish French writer Ray­mond Rous­sel, as much as mod­ernist poets owed the Sym­bol­ist Jules Laforgue. But like Laforgue, Rous­sel is much more often ref­er­enced than read, and he isn’t ref­er­enced often. A her­met­ic, insu­lar writer who seems to belong to a pri­vate world almost entire­ly his own, Rous­sel despaired of his lack of suc­cess and com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1933. His aes­thet­ic prog­e­ny, on the oth­er hand— Dalí, Mar­cel Duchamp, André Bre­ton—were show­men, self-pro­mot­ers and media genius­es. So it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant, in the quirki­est of ways, that Dalí chose for his final film project a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jose Montes Baquer in 1976 called Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia (“Impres­sions de la haute Mongolie”—above with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), an homage to Roussel’s self-pub­lished 1910 nov­el Impres­sions of Africa.

Rous­sel, who trav­eled wide­ly, nev­er trav­eled to Africa, and his “impres­sions” are whol­ly cre­ations of the kind of word­play that Dalí made visu­al in his paint­ing (includ­ing a can­vas with Rous­sel’s title). Like Roussel’s nov­el, Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia is a sur­re­al­ist fan­ta­sy with only the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to its osten­si­ble geo­graph­i­cal sub­ject.

The entire 50-minute adven­ture takes place, MUBI tells us, “in [Dalí’s] stu­dio-muse­um in Cadacès (Spain).” The film opens with an epi­taph for Rous­sel in Ger­man, French, and Eng­lish that lion­izes the pro­to-sur­re­al­ist as “the mon­strous mas­ter of mys­ti­cal lan­guage.” “Mys­ti­cal” is indeed the mot juste for this film. Dalí nar­rates a sto­ry about an expe­di­tion he sup­pos­ed­ly sent to the tit­u­lar region in search of a giant hal­lu­cino­genic mush­room. Fla­vor­wire describes the “qua­si-fake doc­u­men­tary” suc­cinct­ly: “…it’s every bit as trip­py as you would expect it to be. Along the way, there’s a lot of mus­tache-wag­gling, yelling at Hitler, dis­cus­sions about Out­er Mon­go­lia and Ray­mond Rous­sel, intense close-ups of insects, and oth­er eccen­tric addi­tions — like Dalí’s over­act­ing.”

For all his ease with film, and his out­sized rep­u­ta­tion in film his­to­ry, Dali only ever col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­er film­mak­ers, first Luis Buñuel, then Walt Dis­ney, and final­ly Baquer (who called him, approv­ing­ly, “an intel­lec­tu­al vam­pire”). In an inter­view, Baquer reveals that Dali chose the title and the Rous­sel ref­er­ences. He also “com­mis­sioned” the film, in a way, by hand­ing Baquer a pen that he had been uri­nat­ing on for sev­er­al weeks after “observ­ing how the uri­nals in the lux­u­ry restrooms of [the St. Reg­is Hotel] have acquired an entire range of rust colours through the inter­ac­tion of the uric acid on the pre­cious met­als.”

Baquer recounts that Dali cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly told him to “take this mag­i­cal object, work with it, and when you have an inter­est­ing result, come see me. If the result is good, we will make a film togeth­er.” The result is most cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing. A fit­ting trib­ute to Rous­sel, it recalls Trevor Winkfield’s com­ments on the world of the writer, one that “belongs entire­ly to the imag­i­na­tion. Noth­ing real intrudes; it all derives from his head. Like a fairy tale, but a believ­able one.”

Watch Part 1 up top, and the remain­ing parts on YouTube here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

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

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William S. Burroughs on Saturday Night Live, 1981

in Literature, Television | February 5th, 2014

Today marks the 100th birth­day of beat writer William S. Bur­roughs (1914–1997). Grab a bot­tle of wine … prefer­ably cheap wine … and let’s trav­el back to Novem­ber 7, 1981. That’s when Bur­roughs made his first appear­ance on Amer­i­can nation­al tele­vi­sion. And quite appro­pri­ate­ly, it was on the irrev­er­ent, late-night com­e­dy show, Sat­ur­day Night Live. As you’ll see, actress Lau­ren Hut­ton made the intro­duc­tion, set­ting up Bur­roughs to read from Naked Lunch (1959) and Nova Express (1964). The clip itself is an out­take from the open­ing scene of Bur­roughs, a 1983 doc­u­men­tary by Howard Brookn­er, which is cur­rent­ly get­ting restored.  We orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured this video back in ear­ly 2012. Since then we’ve brought you many oth­er intrigu­ing posts on Bur­roughs, whose life and art pro­vides so much to talk about. See some of our favorites below:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs’ The Dis­ci­pline of D.E.: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

“The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Read by William S. Bur­roughs and Shot by Gus Van Sant

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs’ Free Short Course on Cre­ative Read­ing

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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The Notecards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Lolita: A Look Inside the Author’s Creative Process

in Creativity, Literature | February 5th, 2014

nabokovnotes1

If you picked up The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Vladimir Nabokov’s final nov­el, you’ll have seen his dis­tinc­tive index card-based writ­ing method in action. Hav­ing died in 1977, Nabokov nev­er com­plet­ed the book, and so all Pen­guin had to pub­lish decades lat­er came to, as the sub­ti­tle indi­cates, A Nov­el in Frag­ments. These “frag­ments” he wrote on 138 cards, and the book as pub­lished includes full-col­or repro­duc­tions that you can actu­al­ly tear out and orga­nize — and re-orga­nize — for your­self, “com­plete with smudges, cross-outs, words scrawled out in Russ­ian and French (he was trilin­gual) and anno­tat­ed notes to him­self about titles of chap­ters and key points he wants to make about his char­ac­ters.” That comes from a post by Dominic Basul­to at Big Think, who high­lights cards with “a full-on dis­cus­sion of the pre­cise word that Nabokov would like to describe a female char­ac­ter (fille, in French) and how best to ren­der that word in Eng­lish, while keep­ing the con­no­ta­tions and mean­ing of the word in French.” Review­ing The Orig­i­nal of Lau­ra, Alexan­der Ther­oux describes the cards as a “portable strat­e­gy that allowed [Nabokov] to com­pose in the car while his wife drove the devot­ed lep­i­dopter­ist on but­ter­fly expe­di­tions.”

nabokovnotes2

Nabokov could thus, between thoughts of his winged objects of inter­est, use the cards for “insert­ing words, writ­ing mem­os to him­self, scrib­bling after­thoughts: ‘invent trade­name [for a med­i­cine], e.g., cephalop­i­um.’ ” They also served him ear­li­er in his career; at the Library of Con­gress’ site for its Man­u­script Divi­sion’s Nabokov col­lec­tion, you can see a cou­ple of the cards on which he wrote his best-known nov­el, 1955’s Loli­ta. Asked about his work­ing meth­ods by Her­bert Gold in the Paris Review, he described the method forth­right­ly: “The pat­tern of the thing pre­cedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the cross­word at any spot I hap­pen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the nov­el is done. My sched­ule is flex­i­ble, but I am rather par­tic­u­lar about my instru­ments: lined Bris­tol cards and well sharp­ened, not too hard, pen­cils capped with erasers.” For every craft, the prop­er tool, and Nabokov remains, frag­men­tary last book and all, one of west­ern lit­er­a­ture’s most respect­ed crafts­men of lan­guage — or, rather, lan­guages, plur­al.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a free 30 Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent Loli­ta Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Alfred Hitch­cock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Let­ters and Ideas for a Film Col­lab­o­ra­tion (1964)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Neil Gaiman Reads Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham

in K-12, Literature | February 3rd, 2014

This morn­ing, we’re serv­ing up some green eggs and ham. Or rather Neil Gaiman is. When­ev­er I think about some­one read­ing Dr. Seuss’ clas­sic chil­dren’s book, I can’t help but think back to Jesse Jack­son’s clas­sic read­ing on SNL in 1991. But who knows, maybe 20 years from now, anoth­er gen­er­a­tion might call to mind this ver­sion by the unshaven Gaiman. If the read­ing whets your appetite a bit, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries, which includes, among oth­er things, audio & video record­ings of @neilhimself read­ing his own sto­ries. We’ve got some more good Dr. Seuss mate­r­i­al below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fake Bob Dylan Sings Real Dr. Seuss

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

New Archive Show­cas­es Dr. Seuss’s Ear­ly Work as an Adver­tis­ing Illus­tra­tor and Polit­i­cal Car­toon­ist

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

in Literature, Poetry | February 3rd, 2014

WallacePoems

Some read­ers dis­cov­er David Fos­ter Wal­lace through his fic­tion, and oth­ers dis­cov­er him through his essays. (Find 30 Free Sto­ries & Essays by DFW here.) Now that the pub­lish­ing indus­try has spent more than five years putting out every­thing of the late writer’s left­over mate­r­i­al they can rea­son­ably turn into books, new DFW fans may arrive through more forms still: his inter­views, Keny­on com­mence­ment speech, phi­los­o­phy the­sis, etc.. And though he pro­duced too few of them to appear col­lect­ed between cov­ers, Wal­lace once wrote poems as well, though judg­ing by the hand­writ­ing of the two shown here, he seems to have both start­ed down and aban­doned that par­tic­u­lar lit­er­ary avenue in child­hood. Still, that very qual­i­ty — and the oppor­tu­ni­ty it holds out to see the lin­guis­tic for­ma­tion of a man lat­er regard­ed as a prose genius — makes them all the more intrigu­ing. First, we have the unti­tled poem above, a sym­pa­thet­ic paean to the labors of moth­er­hood:

My moth­er works so hard
And for bread she needs some lard.
She bakes the bread. And makes the bed.
And when she’s threw
She feels she’s dayd.

dfwviking

Sec­ond, we have ”Viking Song”, which he prob­a­bly wrote lat­er. (The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin, where the text resides, believes he was 6 or 7 when he wrote the poem.)

Vikings oh! They were so strong
Though there war­riors won’t live so long.
For a long time they rode the stormy seas.
Whether there was a great big storm or a lit­tle breeze.
There ships were made of real strong wood
As every good ship real­ly should.
If you were to see a Viking today
It’s best you go some oth­er way.
Because they’d kill you very well
And all your gold they’ll cer­tain­ly sell
For all these rea­sons stay away
From a Viking every day.

Though not what we would call mature works, these two poems still offer much of inter­est to the ded­i­cat­ed DFW exegete. “Note Wallace’s uncom­mon phras­ing in ‘so hard and for bread,’ ” writes Jus­tine Tal Gold­berg of the first. “I can’t think of a sin­gle child who would opt for this phras­ing over, say, a more sim­ple ‘so hard to make bread,’ ” a choice that demon­strates he “was already exhibit­ing the mas­ter­ful grasp of lan­guage for which he would lat­er become famous.” Alex Balk at The Awl calls “Viking Poem” “ ‘charm­ing and trag­ic,” adding that “the obvi­ous enthu­si­asm with which he wrote it makes me reflect on the joys of child­hood that we tend to for­get.” Wal­lace’s biog­ra­ph­er D.T. Max goes into more depth at the New York­er, iden­ti­fy­ing “moments in these poems that her­ald (or just acci­den­tal­ly fore­shad­ow?) the mature David’s Amer­i­can plain­song voice.” I’ve heard it assert­ed that every child has a nat­ur­al capac­i­ty for poet­ry, but the young Wal­lace, preter­nat­u­ral­ly per­cep­tive even then, must have soon real­ized that his tex­tu­al strengths resided else­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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David Foster Wallace Creates Lists of His Favorite Words: “Maugre,” “Tarantism,” “Ruck,” “Primapara” & More

in English Language, Literature, Writing | January 31st, 2014

WallaceLexicon1

Every­one I know has a list of least-favorite words. For var­i­ous rea­sons, “moist” always seems to make the top three. But per­haps it takes a writer—someone who savors the sounds, tex­tures, and his­to­ries of pecu­liar words—to com­pile a list of their most-favorites. A few I’ve placed in keep­sake box­es over the years—little cor­ru­gat­ed min­er­als that remind me of what words can do: “palaver,” “obdu­rate,” “crevasse,” “super­fe­cund”….

I could go on, but it’s cer­tain­ly not my list you’ve come for. You’re read­ing, I sus­pect, because you well know the con­sum­mate care and atten­tion David Fos­ter Wal­lace lav­ished on his prose—his rep­u­ta­tion as a smith of end­less cre­ativ­i­ty who, Alex Ross wrote in a series of McSweeney’s trib­utes, spent his time “keen­ly observ­ing, forg­ing acronyms, rean­i­mat­ing life­less OED entries, and cre­at­ing sen­tences that make us spit out our beer.”

Ross’s men­tion of the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, that ven­er­a­ble repos­i­to­ry of the vast breadth and depth of writ­ten Eng­lish (sad­ly kept behind a pay­wall), helps us appre­ci­ate Wallace’s list, which fea­tures such archa­ic adverbs as “mau­gre” (“in spite of, notwith­stand­ing”) and obscure adjec­tives as “lacinate” (“fringed”). Who has read, much less writ­ten, the Anglo-Sax­on “ruck” (“a mul­ti­tude of peo­ple mixed togeth­er”)? And while the equal­ly rock-hard, mono­syl­lab­ic “wrack” is famil­iar, I have not before encoun­tered the love­ly “prima­para” (“woman who’s preg­nant for the first time”).

WallaceList2

Anoth­er page of Wallace’s list (above—click images to enlarge) includes such trea­sures as “taran­tism,” a “dis­or­der where you have an uncon­trol­lable need to dance,” and “sci­olism,” a “pre­ten­tious air of schol­ar­ship; super­fi­cial knowl­edga­bil­i­ty.” While it is true that Wal­lace has been accused of the lat­ter, I do not think this is a com­pe­tent judg­ment. Instead, I would describe him with anoth­er of my favorite words—“amateur”—not at all, of course, in the sense of an unpaid or unskilled begin­ner, but rather, as it meant in French, a “devot­ed lover” of the Eng­lish lan­guage.

These pages come to us from Lists of Note (and the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at UT-Austin), who writes that they are “just two pages from the hun­dreds of word lists he amassed over the years.” Per­haps one day we’ll see a pub­lished edi­tion of David Fos­ter Wallace’s favorite words. For the nonce, head on over to Lists of Note to see this min­im of his lex­i­con tran­scribed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

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

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

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

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