David Foster Wallace
Version 7 – Coming Soon (as of Sept 14, 2008)
The Amherst Documents
In July I undertook a massive month-long road trip. I spent one day in Amherst combing the shelves for mentions of DFW and was not disappointed. I intended to share my finds with Wallace-l upon my return in early August, but I got a new job and things got put on the back burner.
Now, with the terrible loss of David Foster Wallace, the least I can do is for my fellow fans is get those items out to the community. So, I’ll post one item each day for the next six days. Most of these items aren’t even mentioned in the bibliography yet, so an update to that will be coming when I’m done posting these items.
Day 1 – “Mr. Costigan in May” in Clarion: Writing at Amherst from 1985
We start with the earliest mentioned uncollected piece in the bibliography (the unmentioned, uncollected pieces will come later).
Removed due to take down notice from Bonnie Nadell
Day 2 – “Inside” in The Amherst Review from 1985
Here’s a sort of new piece. Not listed in the bibliography, “Inside” is an excerpt from The Broom of the System, the first chapter, in fact. There isn’t much difference between the two versions so it was interesting to find out that it is not possible to access his creative writing thesis because it was such a rough draft of The Broom of the System.
Removed due to take down notice from Bonnie Nadell
Day 3 – “The Planet Trillaphon” in The Amherst Review from 1984
The bibliography only goes back to 1985, so to find a published piece of writing of DFW’s from 1984 (his junior year) made the trip (at least the drive from Boston to Amherst and back) worth it. And it is entirely ‘new’ in that it has never been mulled over by Wallace-l.
But a warning: This story deals with depression, suicide, and unresolved endings. There’s a lot of eerie foreshadowing going on and people might be tempted, for good or bad, to read a lot into it. But I’ll leave that up to you.
Removed due to take down notice from Bonnie Nadell
Day 4 – Wallace’s Philosophy Thesis from Amherst (1985)
There is apparently a note on file allowing anyone to access the philosophy thesis but denying access to his creative writing thesis on the basis that the creative writing thesis is an early draft of Broom of the System I was running out of time so I didn’t ask to see the note itself. Anyway, I haven’t really read this one. Philosophy is a hobby of mine, but I got a headache trying to read this on the train and haven’t taken another crack at it.
Removed due to take down notice from Bonnie Nadell
Day 5 – Wallace’s “Letters to the Editor” of the Amherst Student (and related items) – 1984
Pages 1 and 2 – a letter from Dave Hubbard in the Amherst Student – May 3, 1984
Page 3 – David Foster Wallace’s May 7, 1984 response titled “Stick It” in the same paper
Pages 4 and 5 – a letter from DFW titled “Against Extremism” in the Amherst Student – September 24, 1984
Page 6 – Dave Hubbard’s September 27, 1984 response to DFW’s letter
Page 7 – A satirical response from the Sabrina staff to Dave Hubbard’s letter in Sabrina – October 1984
Reading through the papers was really quite interesting. The campus was in the midst of all sorts of upheavals in the early/mid 80s (including going co-ed and replacing the Greek system). These letters kind of led from one to another. I spotted the last one first when I was down in the archives. That led to the September exchange in the Amherst Student and Hubbard’s September letter references the exchange the previous spring. I scanned through the earlier 84 and late 83 papers and didn’t find anything else, but my search through the Amherst Student was hardly exhaustive. It should be noted that Wallace is listed as a contributor to the October 1984 Sabrina, but it can’t be known just what his contribution to it was.
Uncollected Works of DFW
If you’re just looking for the written works of DFW that haven’t been collected in his books, your best bet is to check out Matt Hale’s page over at Howling Fantods. If you’re interested in reviews, interviews, and academic papers then read on.
The Bibliography
This is the home of the BibTex version of the the David Foster Wallace bibliography. Currently, there are over 200 entries in the bibliography, many of them including full text of the entries. The file has been tested and works with both BibDesk (Mac OS X only) and JabRef (cross-platform). However, for anyone wanting to use this bibliography for actual LaTex typesetting purposes, you’ll still get numerous warnings due to blank fields and the such. At any rate, the BibTex file is located here.
Wallace-l members can download all of the audio and pdf files to go along with the database. Not a member of wallace-l? Please see this link.
Note: HTML versions have not been updated yet…
This update is the first to include HTML versions of the bibliography. They are still a bit rough as the full text portions don’t contain proper paragraph breaks, there aren’t links to local pdfs, and some things don’t display quite the way I would like. But here they are:
Listed by where they are anthologized
Listed by the name of publication
I have added a couple of new pieces as pdfs. The can be found at:
Finally, instructions on how to read a BibTex file, future goals for the bibliography, and updates on what is included, can be read in the release notes.
Also, the less-than-perfect mp3 recordings of the David Foster Wallace/David Shields round table discussion at the University of Washington in the year ninety-something are still available: the intro, part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. I’m still waiting for a DFW fanatic with much more free time and a higher tolerance of tape hiss than myself to transcribe this thing.