%% This BibTeX bibliography file was created using BibDesk. %% http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/ %% Created for Ryan Niman at 2007-04-05 14:34:08 -0700 %% Saved with string encoding Unicode (UTF-8) @inbook{Wallace:2007uq, Author = {Wallace, David Foster}, Collectedin = {Bibliography}, Date-Added = {2007-04-05 13:58:36 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:07:35 -0700}, Editor = {Zane, J. Peder}, Publisher = {W. W. Norton}, Title = {The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books}, Url = {http://toptenbooks.net/blog/2007/03/is-david-foster-wallace-serious.html}, Year = {2007}, Abstract = {The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis 2. The Stand - Stephen King 3. Red Dragon - Thomas Harris 4. The Thin Red Line - James Jones 5. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong 6. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris 7. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein 8. Fuzz - Ed McBain 9. Alligator - Shelley Katz 10. The Sum of All Fears - Tom Clancy}} @article{Wallace:2000qy2, Author = {Wallace, David Foster}, Date-Added = {2007-04-05 13:15:43 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Journal = {Lannan Readings & Conversations}, Local-Url = {file://localhost/Users/rcniman/Documents/Projects/DFW%20Bibliography/Papers/Wallace-Lannan_Dec62000_Reading.mp3}, Month = {Dec 6}, Title = {Reading}, Year = {2000}, Annote = {Consisted of 4 pieces: * Part of a story about a boy who tries to touch every spot on his body with his lips * Part of a story about a boy who is so generous and thoughtful that people hate him * Another part of the first story about the boy who tries to touch every spot on his body * Incarnations of Burned Children (in its entirety)}} @article{Wallace:2007lr, Author = {Wallace, David Foster}, Collectedin = {Bibliography}, Date-Added = {2007-03-29 20:11:25 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Journal = {The New Yorker}, Local-Url = {file://localhost/Users/rcniman/Documents/Projects/DFW%20Bibliography/Papers/Wallace-Good_People.pdf}, Month = {February 5}, Pages = {4}, Title = {Good People}, Year = {2007}} @misc{Ragde:2003fj, Author = {Ragde, Prabhakar}, Date-Added = {2007-03-26 20:34:15 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Howpublished = {pdf distributed to Wallace-L}, Title = {Enmerrata}, Year = {2003}, Annote = {Notes on the math in Everything and More by a Wallace-L list member}} @misc{Niman:2007vn, Author = {Niman, Ryan}, Date-Added = {2007-03-26 20:29:43 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:33:15 -0700}, Title = {Release Notes}, Year = {2007}, Annote = {Release Notes Version 6 - Updated 4/5/07 What's New: 0.6 - 4/5/07 * Added full text to annote field of DFW's Letter to the Editor in Harper's Magazine * Added mp3 audio of the Bookworm interview with John D'Agata (has DFW reading the excerpt about baton twirlers at the fair) * Added mp3 of 5/15/97 Bookworm interview * Added mp3 of 8/3/00 Bookworm interview * Added mp3 of 4/11/96 Bookworm interview * Added mp3 of 3/2/06 Bookworm interview * Added mp3 of interview by John O'Brien from Lannan Readings & Conversations * Created separate entry and added mp3 to DFW reading from Lannan Readings & Conversations * Updated notes on the other audio interviews/readings for links that aren't working (Metamorphosis: A New Kafka, The Jester Holds Court, Bookworm interview from 99) * Updated Eyeshot entry - is a duplicate link to Bookworm interview (should probably get rid of this entry and roll info into the Bookworm entry at a later date) * Added entry and pdf of Good People (thanks to Matt) * Belated thanks to Matt and George - almost everything from the last update was thanks to them * Added full pdf of The David Foster Wallace Reader (will separate out pages of other pieces, such as Solomon Silverfish, and add them to their corresponding entries (and with pages rotated the proper direction) for the next edition) and listed the table of contents under the 'abstract' field * Confirmed identity of Asset as BI #40 in The New Yorker (thanks to Humberto on wallace-l) * Added entry for The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books and Wallace's list (included in the abstract field) * Added month of Letter to the Editor in Harper's Magazine (thanks to Bill on wallace-l) * Added the short bio of DFW from the Voices of the Xiled book to the entry for the book Girl With Curious Hair in the annote field (note: Was the story Girl With Curious Hair not published anyplace prior to appearing in book form?) (thanks to Paul de Guzman on wallace-l back in 2005) * Added note about DeLillo's correspondences with Wallace and Franzen regarding Underworld to To-Do list (thanks to Marcel on wallace-l in 2005) * Updated To-Do list 0.5 - 3/27/07 * Added entries and transcripts for two Charlie Rose interviews * Removed duplicate entries for Up! Simba and Rabit Resurrected * Added entry and pdf for Enmerrata (notes on the math in Everything and More) * Added and entry for the release notes (makes it easier to keep track of these updates as I go) * Added The Weasel, Twelve Monkies, and the Shrub to the Anthologized Pieces entry * Added pdf of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Paris Review) * Added pdf of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Harper's Magazine) * Added pdf of Borges: Writer on the Couch * Added pdf of Federer as Religious Experience * Added pdf of Peoria(4) * Added pdf of Peoria(9) * Added pdf of Quo Vadis * Added pdf of Rabbit Resurrected * Added new pdf of The Fifth Column - this is the COMPLETE novel including all the original pieces published across several issues * Added entry and pdf to the collected and abridged version of The Fifth Column * Added pdf of Up! Simba * Added full text to annote field of F/X Port, Democracy and Commerce, Matters of Sense and Opacity, Laughing with Kafka, Rabbit Resurrected, The Flexicon, Exploring Inner Space, Presley as Paradigm, and The Horror of Pretentiousness * Changed external webarchive of Chivalry to full text in abstract field 0.4 - 3/25/07 * Added pdfs of the entire Fifth Column, Feodor's Guide, Chivalry, and The Flexicon * Completely updated the `CollectedIn' field * Added a To-Do list * Combined duplicate entries * Started a Notes on the Bibliography entry * Added text of Minnesota Daily interview * Added text of Mischief interview * Added text and pdf Oregon Voice interview * Added text of Kultur interview * Added text of Four Writers Sitting Around Talking from Oregon Live * Added text to ``Literary Star, out of the limelight'' from L.A. Times * Updated ``Anthologized Pieces'' entry based on wallace-l feedback (Thanks!) * Added entry and text for Dave Egger's intro to Infinite Jest * Updated entry and added online (just the intro) text of Book Magazine interview * Added entry and text to ``A Whiz Kid and His Wacky First Novel'' from the Wall Street Journal in 1987 (thanks to Ky{\"o}sti - I didn't even know this existed) * Also, thanks for Ky{\"o}sti for the idea of trolling archive.org for the interviews. * Added Hammer Museum author reading and mp3 file * Still need text of Bookwire interview (not on Archive.org) * Still need text to Publisher's Weekly interview (not on Archive.org) 0.3 - 12/18/06 * Has it been that long? Yuck * Created and included pdf versions of ``Passion: Digitally'' and ``The Fifth Column---A Novel: Week Eleven'' * Added ``Federer as Religious Experience'', including text * Added and completed (to the best of my knowledge and up to this point) an entry called ``Anthologized Pieces'' that tracks where his works have been collected * Updated the ``Missing Pieces'' entry * Various other corrections and additions that I can't remember from over the past year 0.2 - 10/29/05 * Added Believer inverview, Oblivion: You Won't Find it Here by Kristin Kearns (including full text), AVN's Response to Neither Adult Nor Entertainment (full text taken from Howling Fantods), and Borges and the 60s Groove by Edwin Williamson (including full text) * Added full text of `Borges': Writer on the Couch Review * Added the (probably bootlegged) pdf of Consider the Lobster to the collection of texts * Added table of contents for all books except ASFT (my dad has my copy at the moment) * Added a tag `Collectedin' to all entries to show where a piece has been collected - either one of DFW's books or the DFW Reader. By the number of pieces with blank entries, I think it is safe to say there is enough material out there for a DFW Reader 2{\ldots}once we collect some of the more obscure pieces that haven't (to my knowledge) been found * Added book info from copyright page of Consider the Lobster (thanks to someone on wallace-l * Fixed line ending problem * Separated the .bib file from the .zip file of the texts * Fixed a bunch of random typos (plenty more where that came from) and added various other tidbits here and there 0.1 - 10/19/05 Everything. Basically, this bibliography includes: * Every entry in the Howling Fantods Bibliography (www.thehowlingfantods.com) * Every interview and audio recording linked from Howling Fantods * Every thesis/essay on the Howling Fantods * Significant articles and scholarly works found through Expanded Academic and Proquest * Every DFW-related thesis/dissertation found on Proquest * Full text for every story/essay/etc. that was easily obtainable - EXCEPT for some of the Howling Fantods theses. I figured I'd contact the authors before including them * Everything included in the DFW Reader * Items mentioned on Wallace-L * A few pieces I have found }} @article{Rose:1997fk, Author = {Rose, Charlie}, Date-Added = {2007-03-26 20:17:06 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Journal = {The Charlie Rose Show}, Month = {March 27}, Title = {Interview}, Year = {1997}, Abstract = {The Charlie Rose Show March 27, 1997 PBS ROSE: The style of David Foster Wallace defies description. In an age where the novel is constantly being threatened by the allure of technological advancement, he put it back on the map with his mammoth work, "Infinite Jest." When he is not writing novels of extraordinary length, he is out chronicling America for publications like Harper's, Esquire and Premiere. "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is a collection of the pieces he has written on everything from the genius of David Lynch to tennis to the horrors of a cruise ship. I am pleased to have him back on this broadcast. Your Dad is a professor of philosophy. DFW: Yeah. ROSE: He was a protege of George Will's father, who also taught same school, same department. DFW: Uh-huh. ROSE: And considered him -- DFW: Well -- ROSE: -- as an influence -- [crosstalk] DFW: Dad's been at the University of Illinois since the early '60s and when Dad first came, Fred Will, who's now I think in his 70s, was, you know, maybe in his 40s or 50s and was a guy of major stature and he was nice to Dad. And I think most junior academics, this is what happens is, you know, you find -- you find older people in the department whose intellectual approach is congenial to you and who are nice to you and you kind of become friends with him. I was a philosophy major in college, but my -- my areas of interest were mathematical logic and semantics and stuff, which my dad thinks is kind of gibberish, so it's very weird. In a certain way, I'm following in Dad's footsteps, but I'm also doing the required, you know, thumbing the nose at the father thing. And the stuff -- the stuff that I was doing was really more math than it was philosophy and I don't know whether I would have taught. If you're good enough at that, they just kind of put you in a think tank and let you write on yellow paper. There's a thing at Princeton where they've hired -- they're supposedly professors. They don't teach any classes. They just sit and, you know, devise proofs. ROSE: But I don't think everybody should have to teach, do you? DFW: I heartily agree with you. ROSE: Yeah. I mean, I would hope we're getting away from that sort of -- or -- and then, likewise, you hope that you can get away from this notion of "publish or perish," too. DFW: Yeah. Oh, boy. Don't even get me started on teaching. Teaching, you learn an enormous amount. The clich{\'e} turns out to be true. The teacher learns a lot more than the students. You do for about two or three years and then the curve falls off sharply and most -- most of the older teachers that I know, except for a very few geniuses, are extremely bored with teaching and are not very interested in their students and they're going through the motions and it's -- there's a weird schizophrenia about higher education because people are hired to teach and to teach college students who are preparing to enter the field themselves, yet on the other hand, very often they're judged and given or denied tenure based on their own work. And I think administrators believe that the two are compatible. They're really not. They're entirely different. And the more time and energy spent on teaching, which is extraordinarily hard to do well, the less time spent sort of on your own work. I'm in a good position because I was hired -- I mean, I didn't have much teaching experience. I was hired because, you know, I write a lot and publish stuff and that's really all they care about. And I hadn't had much teaching experience and so you learn a lot right at the beginning. But I'm coming up on -- this is my fourth year and I'm already realizing -- ROSE: So you're kind of burned out and bottomed out and plateaued. DFW: No, I think -- no, I think what's the -- I think I've developed an esthetic or I've developed a position and I'm now -- I find myself saying this year the same thing I said last year and -- and it's a little bit horrifying. I got very lucky and got a grant, so I can take next year off as an unpaid leave and I don't really have to confront the decision. ROSE: And so what will you do with that year? DFW: I will -- if past -- if past experience holds true, I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing. ROSE: Worrying about not writing? DFW: Yeah. ROSE: Not worrying about what to write. DFW: Right. Yeah. Worrying about not writing. [unintelligible] ROSE: Yeah. Respect means a lot to you, sort of a sense that "I'm taken seriously and respected for my work." DFW: You can read this in my face? ROSE: Yeah. I can read it in terms of what's been written about you and what you've said. DFW: Well, show me somebody who doesn't like to be respected. I guess there was a certain -- there's a certain amount of ambivalence about, say, the reception that "Infinite Jest" got because, you know, every writer dreams of having a lot of attention. ROSE: You bet. DFW: But the fact of the matter is this is a long, difficult book and a lot of the attention began coming at a time when I -- I mean, I can do elementary arithmetic. A lot of people hadn't had time to read the book yet. So the stuff about me or interesting rumors that developed about the book and all that stuff getting attention -- I found that -- I didn't like that very much just because I wanted people to write -- to read the book. I'm sorry that I'm essentially stuttering. ROSE: No, you're not. You're doing just fine. DFW: So other than that, I mean, I -- you know, I don't think I'm more hungrey for respect than the average person. ROSE: Let me ask about this book, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which is one of the pieces in here. I want to talk about David Lynch, who after I read your piece in Esquire -- was it Esquire? No, Premier. Premier. I interviewed David Lynch. You never got to interview David Lynch. DFW: Well, I said from the outset it's the reason they let me on the set of all the other journalists, because I was the only one who said he did not, in fact -- ROSE: Why? DFW: -- want to interview David Lynch. ROSE: Why did you want to go observe David Lynch? DFW: I found -- you mean why did I not want to interview him or why did I -- ROSE: No, but -- well, why was David Lynch interesting to you as a subject of a magazine piece? DFW: I -- for me, the number of -- the number of film directors who are truly interesting as artists is very, very small and Lynch was one of them for me. I've been interested in Lynch's films for a long time and actually, in grad school -- I think there's a thing about this in the essay. "Blue Velvet" came at a time for me when I reallyl needed to see it and it helped me a lot in my own work. And then it -- after that, I went and, you know, found "Eraserhead" and had sort of followed this guy's career and I find him -- I find him instructive and useful to think about. For whatever that's worth. ROSE: Did you like the movie "Lost Hightway"? DFW: I have not seen the movie "Lost Highway." I've seen the rough cut of "Lost Highway" or scenes. They let me go in and sit in what I believe to be David Lynch's personal chair -- ROSE: Yeah. And you sat there and -- DFW: -- and looked at on the little -- on the little monitor and see -- which was the thrill of my life. But I've been on this tour and even though I'm in big cities, I have not yet gotten to see it. And I'm kind of terrified because there's a big part of the essay that talks about what the movie's about and if, indeed, the movie is nothing like that, I'm going to look -- ROSE: Yeah. When he was here, I asked him about what was "Lynchian" and I took that right out of your piece. DFW: And I'm sure he just looked at you and blinked slowly. ROSE: Well, he didn't have a great answer because I don't think he thinks that way. He obviously doesn't think that way. DFW: There was -- I mean, yeah, there's a part in the essay that kind of does this academic "Let's unpack the idea of Lynchian and what Lynchian means is something about the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal," and then it gives a series of scenarios about what -- what is and what isn't Lynchian. Jeffrey Dahmer was borderline Lynchian. ROSE: Borderline? DFW: Well, the refrigerator. And actually, what was Lynchian was having the actual food products next to the disembodied bits of the corpse. I guess the big one is, you know, a regular domestic murder is not Lynchian. But if the man -- if the police come to the scene and see the man standing over the body and the woman -- let's see, the woman's '50s bouffant is undisturbed and the man and the cops have this conversation about the fact that the man killed the woman because she persistently refused to buy, say, for instance, Jif peanut butter rather than Skippy, and how very, very important that is, and if the cops found themselves somehow agreeing that there were major differences between the brands and that a wife who didn't recognize those differences was deficient in her wifely duties, that would be Lynchian -- this weird -- this weird confluence of very dark, surreal, violent stuff and absolute, almost Norman Rockwell, banal, American stuff, which is terrain he's been working for quite a while -- I mean, at least since -- at least since "Blue Velvet." ROSE: You think the failure of "Dune" was good for his career. DFW: I -- ROSE: Because it made him understand a system that he didn't want to be part of. DFW: What happened to Lynch with "Dune" -- and now, I'm getting a lot of this from my research, which was published stuff. It's not like, you know, Mr. Lynch and I had coffee and he told me this stuff. But Lynch's career for a while had a kind of Richard Rodriguez arc to it. "Eraserhead," like "El Mariachi" -- ROSE: Yeah, right. DFW: -- this enormous -- enormously cool independent film, and it attracts the attention of people with money. The first one is Mel Brooks and Brooks hires him to do "The Elephant Man." And "The Elephant Man" is a fantastic, fantastic film and it's lighting and atmospherics, nothing else. So anyway, because of that, you know, DeLaurentis hires him to do "Dune" and now this is -- "Dune," at the time, is equivalent to what, like, "Twister" or "The Rock" would be now. It's this enormous -- this is -- this is a "product" and there's all this money at stake. And "Dune" itself, the novel, I don't know if people read it anymore, but it's a trememdously complicated science fiction novel. Anyway, Lynch -- so you don't need an hour-long narrative of this, but Lynch does the thing and doesn't do it all that well, but what really happens is the money men come in and they cut, like, I think 35 minutes out of the movie and it renders the movie incoherent. I mean, literally incoherent. And it was a huge flop and I think Lynch ate the flop and decided that what he wanted to do is he wanted to, you know, rule over small films, rather than serve large corporate ones. I mean, he was really one of the first -- we see a lot of them now, the -- you know, Cinemax and Fine Line directors, these kind of independents who are doing stuff a little out of the mainstream, but still getting national distribution. As far as I can tell, Lunch really -- Lynch really pioneered that ground. He was really the first one to be doing small, eccentric films that got a very wide release, "Blue Velvet" being the best example. And this may be entirely false. I mean, I'm not a film scholar. ROSE: But you like movies. DFW: I do like movies. ROSE: A lot. DFW: Front row. ROSE: Okay. Me, too. "The English Patient." DFW: You're seriously asking me for my view on "The English Patient"? ROSE: I am. Of course. DFW: I thought "The English Patient" was an extremely well-done, slick, commercial movie. I thought it was beautifully lit. I thought, you know, the desert looks like a body. I mean, it's got an erotic -- ROSE: It was David Lean-ian for you. DFW: I thought it was like David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" in some ways. I felt the story -- I felt the story was somewhat predictable and some of the -- some of the sentimental stuff at the end seemed to me like stuff I've seen 250 times before. But in all fairness, and in all respect to Michael Ondaatje, I felt the same way about the book, which I actually really like Ondaatje's poetry. He's got a book called "A Few Tricks I Can Do With a Knife" that's really good. I didn't think "The English Patient" was his best book. ROSE: But it's a good book. DFW: It's a -- it's an outstanding book. ROSE: Yeah. And the film is interesting in that it's not the book. DFW: That is -- ROSE: And he recognizes -- DFW: -- difficult to argue with. ROSE: Well, no, no. But that's not it. I don't mean to make a simple point, but it is a perfect example of where somebody makes a film that's every bit as good as the book. DFW: Yeah. It's a -- [crosstalk] ROSE: -- not doing the book. DFW: A "Godfather" thing. ROSE: Yeah. A "Godfather" thing. DFW: Yeah. ROSE: Yeah. DFW: Absolutely. ROSE: How about "Shine"? I'm going to go down three, David. DFW: This is -- a lot of this is going to get cut out, right? ROSE: Perhaps. But I'll make the decision as to what's cut out. DFW: It's funny. This -- I mean, I'm totally intimidated. I'm sitting next to the guy in the Green Room and, you know, not saying a word. Then the minute he leaves, I start haranguing his publicist. The thing that interested me about "Shine" was I thought -- I mean, besides being a manual for how to build a mentally ill child -- I mean, all the early -- early adult stuff -- I thought it was absolutely incredible up until the end, and then I just thought -- the causes of the dysfunction and the symptoms of the dysfunction are unpacked with such complexity and such care. And the ending, charming though Lynn Redgrave is, just the move from the time he becomes ahit in the bar to the time Lynn Redgrave meets him to the time she consults an astrology chart to marry him, to, you know, his very moving "Mr. Holland's Opus"-like -- ROSE: Right. Right. DFW: -- performance at the end -- it's terrific, but it happens at about 10 times the speed that all the other stuff did. So the thing I was asking the publicist is: "Did the money guys or the studio guys make him wrap the ending" -- ROSE: And they said no. In fact, it was his script. DFW: They got a little bristly. The got a little bristly. ROSE: But why would -- DFW: And I am not trying to bust on "Shine," which -- ROSE: I know you're not but, I mean, what we're trying to do here is just understand you by talking about things other than your work. And we'll come back to -- DFW: Unfortunately, most of the things that are leaving my mouth seem to be mean. ROSE: What? DFW: Most of the things that are leaving my mouth seem to be mean. ROSE: Well, we'll get to that. DFW: Okay. ROSE: Now, here -- why wouldn't you talk to Scott Hicks in the Green Room? DFW: Because -- ROSE: Because what? DFW: Well, because he's -- ROSE: I mean, you're a big-deal writer. DFW: Well, it -- I don't know. I think of myself as the schmuck in the Green Room. ROSE: Well, you may be the schmuck in the Green Room, too -- [crosstalk] But why wouldn't you turn to him -- I mean, did you have no curiosity to turn to him and ask the filmmaker the question that you were curious about? DFW: I think if I had known him or he was my friend -- ROSE: Yeah. DFW: -- I would have been comfortable. Just doing it out of -- I think part of it is going to readings -- you do a reading at a book store -- ROSE: Yeah. Right. DFW: -- and then afterwards there's usually a Q&A -- ROSE: Right. DFW: -- which it's very difficult to get out of. I've tried all kinds of things. And many of the questions have this kind of belligerence about them. You know, "Did you think that this ending was weak?" And part of you kind of goes, "Well, why don't you and I go have supper and we'll talk about this. You don't just come at somebody with a question like that." What -- what I was trying to do is -- I don't know anything about filmmaking from the perspective of making a film. What I know is watching them, as a movie fan. I mean, Pauline Kael is sort of my idol this way. She was -- she was the fan. She was the consumer and her authority came from that. I wanted -- I felt as if the ending of "Shine" had been mucked with, either to get the time down or the guy said -- you know, the producer said, "This is kind of -- we need a more upbeat ending." And I was curious to know whether that was true and it turns out no. It turns out Hicks -- apparently the story got really happy really fast in real life and that's the way it happened. ROSE: Can you imagine yourself writing a screenplay? Have you tried? DFW: No, I haven't tried. I've talked a couple times -- my best friend writes mysteries and he and I have talked about doing a screenplay. I think -- I think I would have a very difficult time writing something that's a product that other people would mess with. And the amount of money that's at stake in movies and the amount of -- the dispersal of responsibility for the thing -- I mean, the director, the actors, the producer -- in order to do -- writing is very difficult for me and it takes a lot of time and energy. And once I've done it, it's my thing. I can't imagine putting in the time and energy to do a good screenplay -- I mean, something like what David Webb Peoples can do. He's a screenwriter I think is really, really superb. ROSE: What's he written? DFW: He's written "Blade Runner" and he wrote "Unforgiven," the Clint Eastwood Western which -- ROSE: Did you like it? DFW: I thought -- "Unforgiven"? ROSE: Yeah. DFW: I thought "Unforgiven" is the first really smart Western since, I don't know, early Peckinpah. ROSE: I do, too. I loved it. DFW: What's interesting is I don't know a single female who likes the film. It's very odd. I talk to all these people -- ROSE: It's interesting you say that. DFW: -- about "Unforgiven" -- ROSE: It's interesting you say that because -- DFW: -- and females think, "Western? It stinks." And if you can get them to watch it, it's not a Western at all. I mean, it's a moral drama. It's -- you know, it's Henry James, basically. But it's very odd. ROSE: My girlfriend and I -- Amanda hates the film and it's the one film that I just have a wider difference with her than any other film that we've seen together. DFW: Yeah. If I were going to try to do something, I'd want to do something like that. But that was also an enormous success story -- luck story. David Webb Peoples -- reclusive, weird screenwriter -- I don't know much about him. This script had been shopped around for years and finally Clint Eastwood bought it and Clint Eastwood's got enough juice to go, "Okay, I'll star in it so they'll make it." This was a weird Western. This is very cerebral for a Western and I think the only way that it could have got made was if a, you know, star director, you know, was willing to do it. And the thing about it is, I think for every script like that that gets made, there've got to be, you know, hundreds of these really intelligent, cool scripts -- ROSE: Absolutely, that there's not somebody that comes along who has the power to get it made. DFW: Right. Or else it gets worked on by the rewrite guys, you know, and John Gregory Dunne's got that whole book, "Monster" -- ROSE: "Monster," yeah. DFW: -- about, you know, their working on the Jessica Savitch story, which became, you know, what was it -- ROSE: "Up Close and" something -- DFW: -- "Up Close and Personal," which was -- ROSE: Michele Pfeiffer. DFW: -- a film so bad it doesn't even have charm. You know, some things are so bad that they're enjoyable. This was worse than that. ROSE: I know. It was. It was. How about writing essays? I did an interview the other night, not on television, but -- with Alfred Kazin. I mean, the kind of thing that he does -- does that appeal to you, in a sense? DFW: I think of myself as a fiction writer and I'm not even a particularly experienced fiction writer, so a lot -- like, a lot of the essays in this book, if there's a schtick, the schtick is, "Oh, gosh, look at me, not a journalist, who's been sent to do all these journalistic things." ROSE: Yeah, but I mean, as some critic wrote about you, you have two things that are -- that most journalists wish they had. One is a great -- you have a great memory for the phrase, the delivered phrase -- DFW: Yeah. ROSE: And you also have a great power of observation for the moment. DFW: Oh -- ROSE: You'd agree with that? DFW: I would agree with that and the things -- the things in this book that most people like are the sensuous or experiential essays, which is basically an enormous eyeball floating around something, reporting what it sees. ROSE: Yeah. DFW: When you're talking about Kazin, you're talking about something different, which is, you know, the art essay, the belles lettres -- ROSE: Right. Exactly. DFW: -- essay. I think there are one, maybe a couple like that in there, but I -- I have this problem of thinking that I haven't made myself clear or that the argument hasn't been sufficiently hammered home, so I will make the same point five, six, seven times. And I did -- the "E Unibus Plurum" thing in there is an argumentative essay that I did six or seven years ago and I just gave up after that because it seems as if, to make the argument truly persuasive requires 500, 600 pages and nobody wants to read it. ROSE: Yeah. Talking about style -- what's the -- what are the footnotes about? I mean, is that just simply -- DFW: The -- in "Infinite Jest," the end notes are very intentional and they're in there for certain structural reasons and -- well, you don't need to hear about it. It's sort of embarrassing to read this book. You could almost chart when the essays were written because the first couple don't have any. But the footnotes get very, very addictive. ROSE: Right. DFW: I mean, it's almost like having a second voice in your head. ROSE: But where does it come from? I mean, I'm now on page 981 of "Infinite Jest" and the footnotes run, notes and errata, run to page -- you may know the answer to this, but there are 200 -- DFW: Yes, but the reader doesn't experience it in that way because the end note tags are -- ROSE: Three-oh-four -- DFW: -- in the text. ROSE: Three hundred and four footnotes, sir. DFW: There are -- there are quite a few. Not -- some of them are very short. Some of them are only one line long. It is a way -- no, see, this is -- ROSE: This is what? DFW: Well, I'm just going to look pretentious talking about this. ROSE: Why -- quit worrying about how you're going to look and just be! DFW: I have got news for you. Coming on a television show stimulates your "What am I going to look like?" gland like no other experience. You may now be such a veteran that you're, like -- you don't notice anymore. ROSE: Yeah. DFW: You confront your own vanity when you think about going on TV. So I'm -- no apologies, but just -- that's an explanation. The -- the footnotes in the -- there's a way that -- there's a way, it seems to me, that reality's fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about writing one of those, writing about that reality, is that text is very linear and it's very unified and you -- I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for ways to fracture the text that aren't totally disoriented. I mean, you can -- you know, you can take the lines and jumble them up and that's nicely fractured, but nobody -- nobody's going to read it, right? So you've got -- there's got to be some interplay between how difficult you make it for the reader and how seductive it is for the reader so the reader's willing to do it. The end notes were, for me, a useful compromise, although there were a lot more when I delivered the manuscript. And one of the things that the editor did for me was had me pare the end notes down to really the absolutely essential. ROSE: Who's your editor? DFW: His name is Michael Pietsch -- ROSE: Yeah. DFW: -- spelled P-I-E-T-S-C-H, not like the fruit -- senior editor at Little Brown and a fine individual. ROSE: What did it do to you -- Newsweek -- "Truly remarkable. What weird fun 'Infinite Jest' is to read." The New York Times -- "Uproarious. It shows off Wallace as one of the big talents of his generation, a writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything." That's the way I feel about you. I mean, I -- I'm a little bit -- I mean, I hear a brain at work there -- sort of -- where do you want it to go? What is it -- DFW: I think not exploding would be a nice start. That kind of stuff -- I'm -- I dissociate very well -- ROSE: Yeah. DFW: -- and it's a useful talent. Writing for publication is a very weird thing because part of you -- part of you is a nerd and you want to sit in libraries, you don't want to be bothered and you're very shy. And another part of you is the worst ham of all time. "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me." And you have fantasies about writing something that makes everybody drop to one knee, you know, like Al Jolson or something. We -- of course, you never get it as much as that part wants, but to get a little bit of it is just -- is very, very strange because very often, for me -- I didn't read a whole lot of the reviews, but a lot of the positive ones seemed to me to misunderstand the book. I wanted it to be extraordinarily sad and not particularly post-modern or jumbled up or fractured and most of the people -- the reviewers who really liked it seemed to like it because it was funny or it was erudite or it was interestingly fractured, so -- ROSE: What does "post-modern" mean in literature? DFW: No, no, no, no. "After modernism" is what it means. ROSE: Okay. [crosstalk] DFW: -- what it means. It's a very useful catch-all term because you say it and we all nod soberly, as if we know what we're talking about -- ROSE: As if we know what it means -- DFW: -- and in fact we don't. There are certain -- what I mean by post-modern, I'm talking about maybe the black humorists who came along in the 1960s, the post-Nabokovians. I'm talking about Pynchon and Barthelme and Barth. ROSE: Yeah. DFW: DeLillo in the early '70s, Coover. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot. Let me see -- ROSE: But that's the camp you put yourself in. DFW: I think -- [crosstalk] I think that's the camp that interested me when I was a student. The problem is, I think post-modernism has, to a large extent, run its course. The biggest thing for me about -- that was interesting about post-modernism is that it was the first text that was highly self-conscious, self-conscious of itself as text, self-conscious of the writer as persona, self-conscious about the effects that narrative had on readers and the fact that the readers probably knew that. It was the first generation of writers who'd actually read a lot of criticism -- ROSE: Yeah. DFW: -- and there was a certain schizophrenia about it. It was very useful, it seems to me, because the culture -- this was a real beaker of acid in the face of the culture, the culture at the time that this came out. This was before, you know, the youth rebellion in the '60s. It was very staid and very conservative and very Alfred Kazin-ish. And the problem, though, is that a lot of the schticks of post-modernism -- irony, cynicism, irreverence -- are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself, right? Burger King now sells hamburgers with "You gotta break the rules," right? So I'm -- I don't really consider myself a post-modernist. I don't consider myself much of anything, but I know that that's the tradition that excited me when I was starting to write. ROSE: Paul -- DFW: Is that anything like an answer to your question? ROSE: It is. I mean -- Paul Cezanne, the painter, always felt that he had -- I mean, up until the end of his life, until he created "The Bathers" in, like, 1907, always felt like he had to create a big painting, a big painting both in terms of size, but in terms of a great piece of work, you know? Do you think about that? DFW: Well, see, it's -- a book is a different kind of object than a painting. A painting, however big it is, is taken in all at once. Size is an entirely different component of it. For a book, a big book means the reader is going to have to spend a long time reading it, which means your burden of proof goes up, right? Big books -- big books are more challenging. They're more intimidating. So, you know, if you're talking about "Infinite Jest," I have a problem with length and it's one reason why I'm grateful to have found a really good editor. "Infinite Jest" did not start out to be this long. It started out to be a fractured, multiple narrative with a number of main characters and it became -- perhaps I was just in denial that this was going to require great length. And at a certain point, it became clear that it was going to be very long. ROSE: All right. DFW: Feminists are always saying this. Feminists are saying white males say, "Okay, I'm going to sit down and write this enormous book and impose my phallus on the consciousness of the world." ROSE: And you say? DFW: I -- I -- if that was going on, it was going on on a level of awareness I do not want to have access to. ROSE: Do you still play tennis? DFW: I do play tennis. I no longer play competitively. ROSE: You played as a junior. DFW: I was -- ROSE: And you were competitive and good. DFW: I was good. I was not even very good. I was between good and very good. I was good on a regional level. And one of the things about writing the piece about Michael Joyce, who was hundredth in the world and junior champion, is I really had to -- had to realize that there were a lot of levels beyond the level that I was on. That -- that essay, for me, which I know you haven't asked me about and now I'll tell you about, is -- ended up -- it's very weird and I'm surprised that Esquire even bought it. It ended up being way more autobiographical than it did -- it was supposed to. It was supposed to start out as a profile of this tennis player. ROSE: But it was about you. DFW: Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of these, I think, end up being about me. ROSE: I think so, too. DFW: As a couple reviewers have pointed out. ROSE: But -- and then, therefore, back to David Lynch. How is that about you? DFW: I'm trying to think of a way so that this will have anything to do with what we've talked about before. Imagine you're a hyper-educated avant garde-ist in grad school learning to write. ROSE: Right. DFW: The screen gets all fuzzy now as the viewer's invited to imagine this. Coming out of an avant garde tradition, I get to this grad school and at the grad school, turns out all the teachers are realists. They're not at all interested in post-modern avant garde stuff. Now, there's an interesting delusion going on here -- so they don't like my stuff. I believe that it's not because my stuff isn't good, but because they just don't happen to like this kind of esthetic. In fact, known to them but unknown to me, the stuff was bad, was indeed bad. So in the middle of all this, hating the teachers, but hating them for exactly the wrong reason -- this was spring of 1986 -- I remember -- I remember who I went to see the movie with -- "Blue Velvet" comes out. "Blue Velvet" comes out. "Blue Velvet" is a type of surrealism -- it may have some -- it may have debts. There's a debt to Hitchcock somewhere. But it is an entirely new and original kind of surrealism. It no more comes out of a previous tradition or the post-modern thing. It is completely David Lynch. And I don't know how well you or your viewers would remember the film, but there are some very odd -- there's a moment when a guy named "the yellow man" is shot in an apartment and then Jeffrey, the main character, runs into the apartment and the guy's dead, but he's still standing there. And there's no explanation. You know, he's just standing there. And it is -- it's almost classically French -- Francophilistically surreal, and yet it seems absolutely true and absolutely appropriate. And there was this -- I know I'm taking a long time to answer your question. There was this way in which I all of a sudden realized that the point of being post-modern or being avant garde or whatever wasn't to follow in a certain kind of tradition, that all that stuff is B.S. imposed by critics and camp followers afterwards, that what the really great artists do -- and it sounds very trite to say it out loud, but what the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves. They've got their own vision, their own way of fracturing reality, and that if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings. And this is what "Blue Velvet" did for me. I'm not suggesting it would do it for any other viewer, but I -- Lynch very much helped snap me out of a kind of adolescent delusion that I was in about what sort of avant garde art could be. And it's very odd because film and books are very different media. But I remember -- I remember going with two poets and one other student fiction writer to go see this and then all of us going to the coffee shop afterwards and just, you know, slapping ourselves on the forehead. And it was this truly epiphantic experience. ROSE: Now -- that's right. I -- you feel the same way when you see "Lost Highway," too. DFW: I hope so because -- ROSE: Same thing, and you walk out and you say, "I have no idea. It just was an experience." And it was an experience inside of David Lynch's head. DFW: What's weird about Lynch, though -- ROSE: And that's what it is. I didn't get any message. I don't -- DFW: Did you see -- did you see "Wild at Heart"? ROSE: No. DFW: That was -- ROSE: Yeah, I did see it. I did see it. DFW: See, I don't think "Wild at Heart" -- ROSE: This was Laura Dern and -- DFW: -- is good at all. ROSE: -- and -- DFW: Yeah. Yeah. Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage and -- ROSE: Right. Right. DFW: -- they were great performances. ROSE: Was Willem Dafoe in that? DFW: Willem Dafoe was in that -- ROSE: Right. DFW: -- with black stumps for teeth. ROSE: Right. Right. DFW: I mean, there's all kinds of -- and it's set up exactly the same way and yet it falls flat. There was some magic that "Blue Velvet" had and I think it has to do with the hoary old concept of a well-developed central character, who is Jeffrey, Kyle MacLachlan, whereas in "Wild at Heart" -- "Wild at Heart" is a weird, inter-textual allusion to "Fugitive Kind" with Marlon Brando and this Italian actress. ROSE: Yeah. Yeah. DFW: And there's all these arch sort of -- but there weren't really any characters in it and -- so I don't know. The interesting thing about Lynch is, is it going to be absolutely great or is it going to be cringeingly horrible? And I ended up really rooting for "Lost Highway." Get ready for Robert Blake in this movie. I don't know whether you've seen this movie. ROSE: Oh, he's fantastic. He's fantastic. DFW: The movie does -- ROSE: He's fantastic. DFW: This movie does for Blake what "Blue Velvet" did for Dennis Hopper, who, if you remember, was in oblivion before this movie. ROSE: Yeah. Yeah. DFW: And now, all of a sudden, you know, he could do Coke commercials if he wanted. ROSE: I don't know whether it'll do that for Robert Blake, but -- you mean Dennis could? DFW: Yeah. ROSE: Dennis could do Coke commercial. DFW: Yeah. ROSE Yeah. He could. DFW: Yeah. ROSE: I mean, he -- DFW: But I -- my memory of Robert Blake is, you know, "That's the name of that tune," in "Baretta" or something and now, all of a sudden, they've got him made up like Max Schreck in "Nosferatu." ROSE: We're way over time. Let me ask one last question. You have gone through -- your personal life is kind of bent to hell and back. Yes? DFW: No, I don't think any more than most people my age. ROSE: Oh, come on. DFW: Well, most of the people I -- [crosstalk] ROSE: I mean, do you look at that as simply sort of passing through the valley and coming out -- I mean, come on. DFW: I think -- I mean, I -- I think I got -- I got some attention for some work that didn't really deserve it at an age when I had a hard time hardling it. And it wasn't a whole lot of attention, but it seemed like a whole lot to, you know, a library weenie from the lower level of Frost Library at Amherst College and I had a hard time with it. And I was lucky enough so that there was something left of my life when it was over. Whatever that means. If you wanted something, like, really exciting or sexy, there isn't much. I just got really -- [crosstalk] ROSE: Well, but you -- I mean, it was drugs and you were suicidal and the whole nine yards, yes? DFW: Yeah. Here's why I'm embarrassed talking about it, not because -- ROSE: I want to know why. DFW: Not because I'm personally ashamed of it, because everybody talks about it. I mean, it sounds like -- ROSE: In other words, everybody -- DFW: It sounds -- ROSE: Everybody talks about it for themselves or everybody talks about you? DFW: No, everybody talks -- it sounds like some kind of Hollywood thing to do. "Oh, he's out of rehab and -- " ROSE: No, I -- DFW: "--back in action." ROSE: -- didn't say anything about rehab. DFW: This -- this was -- ROSE: No, I said something about the course that took you from Amherst College to -- back to Illinois. DFW: I did -- I did some recreational drugs. I didn't have the -- I didn't have the stomach to drink very much and I didn't have the nervous system to do anything very hard. Yeah, I did some drugs. I didn't do as many drugs as most of the people I know my age. What it turned out was I just don't have the nervous system to handle it. That wasn't the problem. The problem was I started out, I think, wanting to be a writer and wanting to get some attention and I got it really quick and -- ROSE: By writing. DFW: -- and realized it didn't make me happy at all, in which case, "Hmm. Why am I writing?" You know, "What's the purpose of this?" And I don't think it's substantively different from the sort of thing -- you know, somebody who wants to be a really successful cost accountant, right, and be a partner of his accounting firm and achieves that at 50 and goes into something like a depression. "The brass ring I've been chasing does not make everything okay." So that's why I'm embarrassed to talk about it. It's just not particularly interesting. It's -- what it is, is very, very average. ROSE: Yeah. Do you see yourself chasing a brass ring now? DFW: I -- this is what's very interesting is I -- there's part of me that wants to get attention and respect. It doesn't really make very much difference to me because I learned in my 20s that it just doesn't change anything and that whatever you get paid attention for is never the stuff that you think is important about yourself anyway. So a lot of my problem right now is I don't really have a brass ring and I'm kind of open to suggestions about what -- what one chases that -- there are real abstract ideas about, you know, what art can be and the redemptive quality of art and, you know, kindness to animals and, you know, all the cliches that we can invoke. But it's -- I -- the people who most interest me now are the people -- are people who are older and who have sort of been through a mid-life crisis. They tend to get weird because the normal incentives for getting out of bed don't tend to apply anymore. I have not found any satisfactory new ones, but I'm also not getting ready to, you know, jump off a building or anything. ROSE: Well, that's good news. David Foster Wallace -- "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," essays and arguments by the author of "Infinite Jest." Thank you. DFW: Thank you. ROSE: Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time. ANNOUNCER: Charlie Rose is made possible by a grant from USA Networks as part of our continuing commitment to innovative television. Through USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel, we provide original entertainment to America and the world. Additional funding provided by Rosalind P. Waller. To order Charlie Rose program transcripts for $7 each and video cassettes for $29.95 each, call 1-800-ALL-NEWS, or write to HyperScribe as 1535 Grant Street, Denver, CO, 80203. Please indicate show date and guest. For Charlie Rose news, guest lists and your comments and suggestions, visit our web site at www.charlieroseshow.com Copyright 1997 Rose Communications. }} @article{Rose:1996lr, Author = {Rose, Charlie}, Date-Added = {2007-03-26 20:14:29 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Journal = {The Charlie Rose Show}, Month = {May 17}, Title = {Interview}, Year = {1996}, Abstract = {CHARLIE ROSE Transcript #1641 May 17, 1996 CHARLIE ROSE , Host: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, reflects on Bob Dole. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD, (D), CT: There are a lot of us here who are truly saddened with the thought that on June 10th or 11th, Bob Dole will no longer be a colleague of ours. It's someone moving out of the neighborhood. It's a co-worker you've spent, in my case, 16 years with here. And while we obviously have our differences, there are far more things we have in common. And I deeply mean this. I will miss him very, very much. CHARLIE ROSE : And two savvy reporters, E.J. DIONNE of The Washington Post and TODD PURDUM of The New York Times reflect on Bill Clinton. E.J. DIONNE, ``The Washington Post'': I just wonder if running against the Republicans between now and November is enough. At a certain point, I think this campaign is going to turn back to ``What is the next president'' -- and he will be the next president in the next term -- ``going to do for us?'' And I think he's going to have to be more specific. TODD PURDUM, ``The New York Times'': Well, in terms of intelligence quotient -- however you measure that -- that he has to be among the two or three most intelligent presidents of the 20th century with the other possibilities-- CHARLIE ROSE : And how do you measure that and what makes you think that's right? TODD PURDUM: --being Woodrow Wilson and-- the fluidity of his mind, the quickness of his mind, his willingness to sort of read, the depth of his-- of his reading, the diversity of subjects in which he's conversant, his ability to pick up things-- CHARLIE ROSE : And three novelists look at novels as we approach the end of the century. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Author: What drew me into writing was mostly memories of really fun rainy afternoons spent with a book. It was a kind of a-- it was a kind of a relationship. JONATHAN FRANZEN, Author: People who read books, who seriously read books, who read a lot of books, nowadays, it's, like, a priori not of the mainstream. CHARLIE ROSE : Politics and writing when we continue. A Democratic Senator Reflects on Bob Dole CHARLIE ROSE : This was a momentous week in Washington. Bob Dole's dramatic resignation from the Senate Wednesday riveted the national press. The announcement took even Washington insiders by surprise. Republican Senator John McCain, a friend and counselor to Senator Dole, predicted the reinvigorated Dole campaign will be -- quote -- ``the biggest fight of President Clinton's political life.'' Joining me now from the United States Senate, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut. He is chairman of the Democratic National Committee and I'm pleased to have him back on this program. Welcome back. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD, (D), CT: Thank you, Charlie. Nice to be with you. CHARLIE ROSE : What do you think of this strategy by Senator Dole? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Well, first of all, let me share a personal observation here. And I-- anyone who's a part of a relatively small group of people that's at work or neighborhoods will appreciate what I'm about to say, that whatever else may have been the motivations here, there are a lot of us here who are truly saddened with the thought that on June 10th or 11th, Bob Dole will no longer be a colleague of ours. It's someone moving out of the neighborhood. It's a co-worker you've spent, in my case, 16 years with here. And while we obviously have our differences, there are far more things we have in common. And I deeply mean this. I will miss him very, very much. On a personal level I will miss him very much and I don't-- [unintelligible] I'm not unique in that regard. I think, across party lines here, almost any Senator sitting here, I think, would share a similar sentiment. CHARLIE ROSE : What is it about him that causes you and others to say that, without raising any question of the obvious difference on policy matters, but he clearly was a man of the Senate. You are now man of the Senate. But it's more than that. It seems that Senator Dole and the people in that institution-- there was a kind of something that resulted in some sense of great admiration for him. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Well, it's-- it's like any-- you know, 10 percent of our-- of our dealings with each other -- maybe a bit more than that, in this case, but not much more -- are on policy and politics and 50, 60, 70 percent of our relationship are on personal things. I mean, a handshake. ``I'll be at that event for you.'' I don't know how many groups of constituents over 16 years that I've had down from Connecticut and I've said to Bob Dole, ``Could you come on over and say hello to these people and give me a half an hour?'' And he'd come and spend an hour. How do I explain that to someone? They'd say, ``Well, you never vote alike.'' And then you-- that walk back, that subway ride on the car between the office buildings, that late night on the floor when you sit down and just start talking and I'd hear stories about Russell, Kansas, or he'd talk about knowing my father, who he served with here or other Senators that he had remembered or people in public life. I went and talked-- he was the first person I talked to when President Clinton asked me if I'd be the national chairman of the Democratic Party. And you'd say, ``Why do you run to talk to Bob Dole?'' Well, Bob Dole was a Senator in 1972 when Richard Nixon asked him, as a sitting Senator, to be the chairman of the Republican National Committee. And so I went to Bob and said, ``Tell me about this. Is this a good idea, a bad idea? What are the things I ought to watch out for? What are the things I ought to do?'' And he gave me his advice and counsel, talked to me repeatedly, would ask how I was doing, things to watch out for. I can't explain that, I suppose. I'm talking more about it with you, Charlie, than I have with anybody else in the last few days. So when I say these things about going to-- I miss-- I'm missing him already and he hasn't even left. But the notion, somehow, that on June 12th I'm going to walk on the floor of the United States Senate and Bob Dole is not going to be there is-- is very difficult for me to accept right now. CHARLIE ROSE : And you can understand why there were tears in his eyes when he left. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: I feel the emotion now, talking about it. And so it's on that level. Now, having-- having said all of that, I also-- now I've got to-- I sit back and say, ``Well, why is he doing this?'' and-- and-- CHARLIE ROSE : Because he wants to beat the brains out-- beat the-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Absolutely. This is not-- CHARLIE ROSE : --brains out of your guy. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Absolutely. As I said the other day, this is-- this wasn't a death in the family. This-- Bob Dole is not ill. Those are normal circumstances when we see someone get up and say, ``I have to leave. I'm sorry.'' And we all feel terribly bad about it. Bob is a very good politician. He didn't get where he did over the years by being a bad one. And he has looked around, and his advisers have, and said, ``Look, get as far away from this place as you can. This Congress is a disaster. Every time you get your picture taken with Newt Gingrich, you lose two points. You're not going to lose a lot.'' There are only 22 days or so left of the legislative session here, when you take away the 4th of July, Memorial Day. We're out all of August. We're back for about a week after Labor Day. ``This is not missing six months, it's missing about 20 days, and you're not going to want to be here. Look, even if you lose on November 6th, do you really want to come back here on November 7th and be a Senator for the next two years and maybe have to face a challenge from Trent Lott over your majority leader position? So if your plan is, one way or the other, you've had enough, do it now.'' So on a personal level, on a political level, he wants to get as much distance between himself and this agenda that's been a disaster for the country and the personalities associated with it. And so he did the intelligent thing, and that is he said, ``I'm taking a hike. I'm getting out of here. I'm changing my clothes. I'm taking off my tie. I'm going to Rockford, Illinois. I'm not going to go to Washington.'' And I understand all of that. Having said all of that, and understanding it all -- and he'd disagree with my analysis, here -- I'm still going to miss him very much. CHARLIE ROSE : Is it-- one last moment about the nature of the man. I've been told by a number of Senators and people who've worked at the Senate that probably, if the Senate voted on who they thought would make a good president, Bob Dole -- in the Senate -- would get more votes than anyone else. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Well, I don't know if he'd-- he'd do very well. I mean, that's a tough question. There are a lot of people who I think could fill the bill. If you could-- if the issue were strictly appointing somebody, there are a lot of people people would say ought to be appointed. The problem is with that question, is we don't appoint and there's something about having to go through the process and winning the support of the American people that is a very important ingredient about being a good president and you've got to get elected. The qualification is to be elected to it and meet the obvious Constitutional requirements. So there's a great respect for Bob as a leader. He's a great legislator and-- and there's a lot of-- a lot been written over the years about whether or not good legislators make good chief executive officers or whether a good chief executive officer would necessarily make a good legislator. I watch a lot of former governors here, some former mayors, and they have a difficult time when they first come to the Senate. When they've been sort of king of the hill and all of a sudden they're one of-- CHARLIE ROSE : They're not in control. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: --they're one of 99 others and they're co-equals, that can be hard. And you know, John Kennedy was the only president, along with Warren Harding, who ever went directly from the Senate to the presidency. So it's not a natural place to move from. CHARLIE ROSE : Senator McCain said the Clinton White House was confident that the president could win reelection by simply keeping Washington in gridlock. ``Today the president learned that he's in the biggest fight of his political life.'' You think Senator McCain is right on target? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Well, it's-- it's certainly-- whether it's the largest of his life, I-- only history will tell us that. We can look back on November 6th or whenever and draw a better conclusion about that. I think that's more rhetoric, probably, than anything else. It certainly is going to be a major battle, I think a very close race. We look-- the president's doing very well right now in the polls, but if he were sitting in this chair, Charlie, he'd be the first one to tell you that this race will tighten up, it'll be very close. He has a great deal of respect for Bob Dole. He has a good sense about himself. He knows-- the president knows the country well. So he anticipates this to be a very, very tough race. Whether or not it's the toughest race of his political life, we'll let history make judgments like that. CHARLIE ROSE : Are Democrats, and are you encouraging Democrats to run against Gingrich and to make this a kind of run against the Congress? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Well, it's-- in a sense, that's certainly a major part of it, but I don't think you can win elections by just what you're against. I'd be-- I would tell you, having been through seven elections myself, that constituencies, whether they be a state or the country, certainly are motivated by things they don't want to see happen, but they also want to know what you're for, where you're going to take them, what you'd really like to see happen, your values and so forth. So that's an important element And clearly, because Mr. Gingrich and Bob Dole are the co-architects of this ``Contract with America,'' and clearly, as you see by every survey, almost in every state in the country, there has been a wholesale rejection of this agenda, where you have significant cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, crime and so forth-- these are matters that people are concerned with. And the fact that this leadership in the past 40 months has moved or tried to move the country in that direction is certainly going to be something we're going to remind people of: what Mr. Gingrich and company would have done but for the veto pen of this president and people in the Senate who were able to slow this agenda down, what would have happened in education, what Medicare would look like today, what our environmental laws would look like. Had they had a president and a filibuster-proof United States Senate, they would have gotten their way completely and this would be a very different country, in our view, and we're going to tell the American-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. But is that-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: --people that story. CHARLIE ROSE : --a vision to say, ``But for us there would have been more cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. But for us they would have done more to education and the environment''? Is that a vision of-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: You can't build-- CHARLIE ROSE : --America or is that simply saying, you know, ``We-- we stand there not because we have a positive view of the country, but because we stand there to say no on your behalf''? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: No, I-- I was responding to your question. I said-- you-- ``Is that going to be a part of it?'' The answer is yes, it'll certainly be a part of it. Is it the whole story? I hope not, because if it is, then I don't think you necessarily win support. I think you then, in addition to pointing out the difficulties that could have been there, you have to quickly point out that this president is committed to balancing this budget within seven years and has laid out a program to do so and, in fact, has cut the deficit in half. Remember, Bill Clinton arrived in town in January of 1993. He was never a Congressman, never a Senator. He's been here 40 months. Contrast that, with all due respect, to the majority leader, who's been here 36 years. When Bill Clinton arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he's given a $4 trillion debt, $3 trillion have been accumulated in the last 12 years. And in 40 months, he takes the annual deficit from $300 billion down to $144 billion. That's four consecutive years of deficit reduction. We've seen employment go up by 8.5 million jobs in this nation. We have seen inflation rates come down. The combination, the ``misery index,'' is the lowest it's been in 28 years. We're going to talk about accomplishments and then take that further and say, ``In the 19-- in the 21st century, as we hope this president can lead us over the next four years, these are the things we want to do to improve opportunities for people in education, to expand job opportunities, to create more growth in this country so that there'll be more work for people in this nation, to see to it that we can do a better job in the environment''-- CHARLIE ROSE : Let me-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: --``and do a better job on international relations.'' Those are the things we've got to talk about positively. CHARLIE ROSE : Let me-- I've got about a minute on the satellite. Let me ask you-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Sorry. CHARLIE ROSE : --two quick questions. Will you take control of the Senate in 1996, in your judgment? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: I think we have a good chance. I'll be close. It's-- right now, we're three seats short, but we're in a lot better position than I would have imagined a few years ago. We're competitive in states like Virginia and Wyoming and South Dakota and Oregon and-- CHARLIE ROSE : And how close to taking control-- Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: --the Carolinas-- CHARLIE ROSE : --of the Senate-- I mean, the House, back? Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: I think pretty good, as well, there. We've got some very good candidates. We're matching up very well. I'm just reluctant to-- I saw that Speaker Gingrich predicted all sorts of numbers and gains. I can't do that for you today. Twenty-five weeks is a long time. But I would tell you this. We're in a very, very good position to regain the House and the Senate, but it's going to be very close. CHARLIE ROSE : I thank you, Senator Dodd. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Thank you. CHARLIE ROSE : It's a pleasure to have you on the broadcast, as always. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Thank you. CHARLIE ROSE : Thanks for joining us on this Friday afternoon. Sen. CHRISTOPHER DODD: Thank you. CHARLIE ROSE : We'll be right back. We'll talk about the president with TODD PURDUM, who wrote this piece, and E.J. DIONNE, who writes a column for The Washington Post. Back in a moment. Two Journalists Reflect on Bill Clinton CHARLIE ROSE : We'll continue our look at the White House and the Congress and Bob Dole and President Clinton. TODD PURDUM covers the White House for The New York Times. He's written the cover story for this Sunday's New York Times magazine, ``Facets of Clinton.'' E.J. DIONNE has been on this program before. He's a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. We're pleased to have both of them here now to continue our conversation about the politics of 1996. Let me first turn to Bob Dole. E.J., does this work? Does this make Dole -- the decision to leave the Senate -- a more effective campaigner? Does it make him a more effective candidate? Does it make him a tougher challenger? E.J. DIONNE, ``The Washington Post'': Well, there was a headline in my paper this week that said this move was ``desperate and wise'' and I think that's exactly right. I think he had to get out of there. Clinton is about to lose his best ally, who's Tom Daschle, who tied the Senate in knots, made it impossible for Dole to get anywhere, and so he has to pursue this new strategy. The question is, ``Does it work?'' And I don't think we've seen yet whether-- how well it's going to work because a lot depends on whether Dole has enough to say to change some of the subjects of this campaign. Right now, most of the subjects, whether it's minimum wage or Medicare or Medicaid, help the Democrats. CHARLIE ROSE : Todd? TODD PURDUM, ``The New York Times'': I think that's very true and, you know, the moment of his taking leave was so dramatic and emotional, but it seemed to be emotional because he was leaving his life's work and the thing that he cared most about of all. And as E.J. pointed out, this won't solve the problem of Bob Dole articulating a sort of over-arching rationale for his campaign. He still has to find a way to do that more cogently, more effectively, with the same kind of oomph he did the other day, when he made this dramatic announcement, so-- CHARLIE ROSE : But people are saying it clearly gives him an opportunity for the American people to take a second look at him because the first look was not working very well, as he stood in the well of the Senate, being cornered by Tom Daschle. TODD PURDUM: Absolutely. E.J. DIONNE: If any time you do something that surprises the press, we immediately are inclined to say, ``This is a brilliant move'' and we give somebody a lot of attention. Dole got all that attention the last couple of days. I think the catch is he's really got to do two contradictory things at the same time. I think he's got to figure out how to defend the record of the last year and a half because if he leaves it undefended, the Democrats are going to keep going to town on it. At the same time he does that, he's got to try to slip away from that record a little bit, slip away from Newt Gingrich and kind of suggest new themes and tell us what he's going to do as president. I think those things are hard to do at the same time, but he's got to do them. CHARLIE ROSE : Is it too simple to say that this race will either be a referendum on the Congress and Speaker Gingrich or a referendum on the president and, one way or the other, which referendum it is may very well determine who wins? TODD PURDUM: It's possible. I think the White House wouldn't be unhappy to have it be a referendum on the Republican Congress, obviously. CHARLIE ROSE : Of course. Yeah. TODD PURDUM: But Dick Morris, the president's strategist, is also quite confident and saying that he wants this period -- and he's seen it for the last six months and he sees it for the next two or three months until the conventions -- as being a time to win the referendum on Bill Clinton. And the president's strategists' view is if they can win that essential referendum on making it worth reelecting the president, bringing up his approval levels, so that the public says he hasn't been such a bad guy, he's made some achievements, maybe they were misunderstood, underappreciated, not connected as well as they should have been, then they think that it'll be a comparatively easier task to go head to head with Bob Dole. And, you know, so I-- I think that's fair to say. CHARLIE ROSE : Does he-- E.J. DIONNE: The Republicans-- oh, I'm sorry, Charlie. CHARLIE ROSE : No, go ahead. You go ahead. E.J. DIONNE: The Republicans could get themselves out of this a little bit by adjourning the Congress early and there's talk around town that they might just do that, in that if they get out of here, the whole focus of the news moves away from the Congress and back toward the presidential campaign. President Clinton has still got to be here, so the focus of Washington news is on him. And that's one way they might start pulling themselves out of this morass. CHARLIE ROSE : Are we essentially a conservative, a moderate or a progressive country? E.J. DIONNE: Oh, I'm-- as you know, Charlie, I'm on the record as saying we're a progressive country. I mean, I think we are a country that has an instinctive mistrust of government at the abstract level that keeps turning around and asks government to help us out and do things, whether it's in medical care or in job training or now we're talking about what can government do about corporate down-sizing, if anything. And so I think the-- running purely against government doesn't work, but it's still very hard for somebody to tell people ``The government's going to help you'' because people are very skeptical of that sentence. CHARLIE ROSE : But if we are essentially progressive-- I would always-- I assumed, had grown to assume, that we were essentially a conservative country. Your book asked me-- forced me to ask some questions. You then make this point about progressivism, and if we are essentially progressive, Clinton is in a good place. Todd makes this point in his article. ``If Clinton had a central conviction-- has a central conviction, his supporters say it is his belief in the power of government to encourage social progress, a faith born of his first-hand observation of the federal Civil Rights revolution. I mean, is that, in essence, the core of Bill Clinton, a belief in government? TODD PURDUM: Well, I think he's had to slice it very carefully because I think he does believe, as E.J. says, and as the president likes to say now, he thinks we're moving into a new era that poses the greatest challenges since the progressive era of a century ago, when society moved from farm to factory, and now we're moving from the industrial age to the information age. And I think he would argue that government has to find new, more efficient, more effective ways to do things. The tasks aren't the same, but there are still many tasks that only government can do on behalf of-- of the citizenry. But I do think there's much to say on our antecedents about how we are essentially a conservative country. The framers set up a system that was deliberately prone if not to gridlock, at least to very deliberate and slow motion, as we've seen what happens when there is divided party. We don't have a parliamentary system in which a government falls in a sudden vote in a matter of, you know, three weeks' time and you have the other people come in and a prime minister leaves. So I think he has to balance a fundamental growing distaste for government with what E.J. correctly says is the public's continued desire to have all the fruits of government action that only sort of collective action can provide. CHARLIE ROSE : And you also make the point that he has always played situational political. TODD PURDUM: He's always-- ever since his whole life, ever since he came back from Oxford and Yale and Georgetown and had to get elected in a state that was, you know, by many national standards poor and backward and conservative and suspicious of-- although it must be said, with Orville Faubus, too, there was always a big sort of populist streak in the state-- but anyway-- [crosstalk] CHARLIE ROSE : E.J., go ahead. E.J. DIONNE: I think Todd's point in that piece is exactly right and I think-- about Clinton finally, in his gut, believing in government's power to do good things, and I think once you start sort of taking the layers off, yeah, he'll say the era of big government is over, and in about five minutes, he'll start listing for you the things he would like government to do. And he will say, ``Of course, we want to do them in a new and different way.'' He will-- you know, and I think he means that. But at heart, he'd really like the government to take on a lot of problems. TODD PURDUM: Everything from tax credits for companies that, you know, are trying to down-size or have worker retraining to incremental piecemeal steps to expand health insurance coverage in the kind of limited ways that are under discussion now in the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill in Congress, or by opening the federal insurance pool to private sector workers, all sorts of means and methodologies to get to fundamentally-- E.J. DIONNE: Health care is a perfect metaphor for both situational politics and his underlying commitment. It failed the last time, when he did it the big way, so now the situation-- he looks at the situation and says, ``Okay, we got to do it piecemeal, piece by piece, these little changes,'' but he's still trying to do it. CHARLIE ROSE : Incremental is key now. Here's what I don't quite understand. And you bring this out, Todd, in a number of different ways. You talk about flying back from the anti-terrorism summit. The president is on his plane and he-- some kind of plane this Air Force 1 must be. I want to show our audience a picture of-- [crosstalk] This is the president at his desk on the plane. Look at that. PANELIST: [off-camera] People can see why Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich wanted to sit in the front, you know? I mean-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah, that's why they wanted to sit in the front! Yeah. Exactly. They're back there in-- in coach, at the back of the plane. You say that Bill Clinton stops on this flight back, ``sinks to a squat on my carry-on computer case and starts to talk once more, and talk on and on and on and on for two more hours. His restless, self-revealing ramble is stunning in its breadth, its energy, its originality, its length. He rolls around the universe like a pinball in a machine. He critiques movies and noodles over the possibilities of the 21st century. When he suggests, in awe, human beings may routinely live beyond 100 years, he unspools a seamless string of insightful stories about the political problems and physical quirks of a half a dozen world leaders and frets about the casual cruelties of the information age.'' You know him, have seen him up close. Help me understand him and help this audience understand who this guy is and where do all these contradictions come from. TODD PURDUM: Well, Charlie, if only I could. You know, I've just spent about 9,000 words in our Sunday magazine trying to do that and I-- I wish-- I'd be fraudulent if I said I thought I really understood the president. And I think one of the things that's remarkable about him and remarkable about his ability to sort of keep going as a politician when others would have counted him out, is that he is very complex. He's not simple. There's nothing easy about him. He's a very big guy. He's physically big, much bigger than he seems on T.V. He's big in his person, sort of big in his soul, big in his heart, big in his flaws sometimes. And, you know, he's-- much has been written about how he's the product of this very complicated upbringing. His father died before he was even born. His stepfather was an alcoholic. He had a lot of turmoil in his family life and he was the eldest son who learned how to cope from a very early age and who is persuaded that if he could only get to know people, shake their hands, look into their eyes, he could win them over. And it certainly worked for him and it continues to work for him in hand-to-hand campaigning. CHARLIE ROSE : What is it that makes you say ``Therein appears the paradox of Bill Clinton. One of the biggest, most talented, articulate and intelligent, open, colorful characters ever to inhabit the Oval Office''? I mean, how do you measure that? What-- what does he say, do, smell like, that makes you say that? TODD PURDUM: Well, it's-- obviously, that's a sort of a subjective judgment. It's complicated to say and we've had what, 42 presidents now, so that's in some ways a sort of bold pronunciamento, I guess, to say, because there have been some-- CHARLIE ROSE : Well, and also-- yeah. TODD PURDUM: There have been some pretty big ones, but-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. TODD PURDUM: --if one thinks of the recent era of the 20th century, in which there were some pretty big characters -- Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, obviously Richard Nixon, in his own way, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman -- there have also been a number of fairly pallid presidents-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. TODD PURDUM: --over time and I think it's just-- CHARLIE ROSE : But are you putting him in that category with Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson-- TODD PURDUM: Well, I-- CHARLIE ROSE : --in terms of the hugeness of his abilities and his intelligence and his personality and his color? TODD PURDUM: I think there's almost no doubt that, in terms of intelligence quotient -- however you measure that -- that he has to be among the two or three most intelligent presidents of the 20th century with the other possibilities-- CHARLIE ROSE : And how do you measure that and what makes you think that's right? TODD PURDUM: --being Woodrow Wilson and-- the fluidity of his mind, the quickness of his mind, his willingness to sort of read, the depth of his-- of his reading, the diversity of subjects in which he's conversant, his ability to pick up things. I mean, E.J.'s spent a lot of time with him, too, in the-- CHARLIE ROSE : Well, I'm coming to E.J., so-- TODD PURDUM: But my only point would be-- CHARLIE ROSE : --hold on a minute. TODD PURDUM: --that you can't say definitively or even tentatively much about his presumptive greatness until there's some perspective on his presidency and I think, you know, there's-- that will have to be argued out. But I think he has sort of won the argument that he's a big character, entitled to rank with some of the bigger characters who's ever-- who have ever been there, just by the sheer sort of breadth of his-- of the stuff I talked about in that discussion on the plane. CHARLIE ROSE : Pick that up, E.J. E.J. DIONNE: Yeah. I would defend Todd's thesis this way. You've had a lot of presidents who were real smart and were policy wonks, but they haven't had his appetites for-- all kinds of appetites, including for affection and relating to people and other such things. You've had a lot of people-- presidents with big appetites, but they haven't had this, you know, what we call ``policy wonk'' side, this intellectual nimbleness. He puts all this together. The real question, I think, is what's he going to do with all this? In other words, that he has these abilities. You haven't seen it yet in performance. The first two years were very disappointing, I think to him as much as anybody. The second two years he's been entirely reactive to the Republican Congress, which has served him very well politically. The question is what's going to happen if he wins again? Can he use all these skills that I think Todd is right in ascribing to him to get something done and to shape the country. And that, I think, is going to determine whether he is Teddy Roosevelt or FDR or a president like that. CHARLIE ROSE : If Rush Limbaugh, bless his soul, was sitting here at this table, he would say, ``There they go, one guy from The New York Times, one guy from The Washington Post. They are somehow enamored, snowed,'' to use an expression that Bill Clinton and I would understand, ``by the notion of this president, his brains and all of that. Somehow he has been able to win them over to his largeness.'' E.J. DIONNE: I'd say three things. First of all, both our newspapers should not be blamed for us. CHARLIE ROSE : Okay, but I just want-- E.J. DIONNE: Second thing is, my-- CHARLIE ROSE : --to identify as to where you come from, what part of the establishment. E.J. DIONNE: The second thing I'd say is my wife once said that if all Americans could meet Bill Clinton, his popularity would stand at 70 percent. There is something winning about him. A Republican I know said he watched him do Cal Ripken's, you know, record-breaking game on ESPN for three innings and decided no one's ever going to beat this guy. So there is that quality to him and that I think most people who are objective about him say he's got these big qualities. That's very different from deciding what kind of president he is and it's very different, also, from how do you judge somebody with these large appetites? The whole point of all these Republican attacks is to say his appetites are too large. So I think you can say some of the things we've said and come to the political conclusions that Rush Limbaugh would come to. TODD PURDUM: I mean, my-- my only point in the piece was to say that some of the very bigness of his appetites and talents are things that get him into trouble when he goes too far and goes over the edge. And in my own-- I don't want to say ``defense,'' but it was made clear to me today that the president, for example, was not at all enamored of-- CHARLIE ROSE : Was not enthralled with your piece. TODD PURDUM: No, and-- CHARLIE ROSE : Well, what did they say? Just give us a sense of what-- this piece now-- people have been able to see it because the magazine comes out early and gives people like me an opportunity to read it and decide if I want to do a program and other things. What did the White House say to you? TODD PURDUM: Well-- CHARLIE ROSE : What don't they like? TODD PURDUM: Well, I don't-- I don't know in detail and, obviously, you know, the president hasn't called me up to discuss it and I wouldn't expect that he would. But it's been revealing to me. The reaction to this piece has been the Rorschach test, much like the president. People have warned me, my colleagues, that I should be prepared for the fact that people will think it was too sympathetic. Others have warned me that I should be prepared for the fact that it will seem devastating. So I think it depends on what people think about Bill Clinton and the people who like him will probably read about the parts that they like and admire and take that away and the people who dislike him will read it and say, ``Oh, there he goes again,'' you know? E.J. DIONNE: I mean, that's one of the amazing things about Bill Clinton is that whenever you write something about him, you get the most extraordinary response. He has-- CHARLIE ROSE : People are not neutral. E.J. DIONNE: Right. And, I mean, he has the most extraordinary-- a pretty large group of people who really can't stand him and a small but some-- growing group who really get down your throat if you say anything critical of him. He's become, as Ronald Reagan was, in a sense, a polarizing figure like that. CHARLIE ROSE : Well, let me just quote again from the piece, as I am doing perhaps too much, but-- PANELIST: [off-camera] It's a good piece. CHARLIE ROSE : --``Therein lies the paradox,'' I said-- and you go on to say that, ``In a real sense, his strengths are his weaknesses, his enthusiasms are his undoing. And most of the traits that make him appealing can make him appalling in the flash of an eye.'' Quote-- `` `It's almost impossible not to be charmed by him and it's almost impossible not to be disappointed by him,' says one long-time aide.'' Why are they disappointed, Todd? TODD PURDUM: Well, because of what E.J. talked about, because, you know, when people have big appetites and big energy, they get out of control sometimes. And, I mean, the president, particularly in his first two years, when he had an expansive agenda, he won-- he had a 43 percent victory margin and 115 percent agenda and he came in and the gulf between those two things was very hard to bridge. And E.J. makes the point that the Democrats on Capitol Hill have been supporting him now in tying Senator Dole in knots, but when the Democrats were running Congress, they were giving him no end of grief. ``Don't send us this. Don't do that. Repeal the assault weapons ban. It'll be terribly troublesome for us,'' and so forth. So he-- he has been the victim of his own ambitions, his own energies and his own enthusiasms. And he wanted to do so many things, he got a little bit over-- he himself says he bit off too much. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. He's remarkably self-analytical, it seems to me, both in terms of David Broder and explaining what happened to health care, and in terms of this piece and in terms of things that E.J. has written about him. There is, obviously, a mind at work that understands how to look at where he's been and where he's going. TODD PURDUM: Well, especially when it comes to politics. I mean, I'm not sure he spends so much time being self-aware, in the sense of how he comes across, or he may not be so self-aware in sort of a psychological sense. But in a political sense, he's incredibly self-analytical. He knows what he's-- E.J. DIONNE: Yeah. No, and on that point about disappointing, I think that Bill Clinton seems to be capable of unbelievably warm friendships, but he can also cut people loose. I mean, if you had Lani Guinier on this program, to pick one example of a number of people, they would say, you know, he can turn around, if he decides it makes sense for him to turn around. And that also, I think, for some people, has been a source of disappointment. CHARLIE ROSE : What's happened to result in this amazing turnaround from his approval ratings, so that he seems to have moved into this place where he looks presidential, in terms of just an appearance thing-- he walks with the presence of leadership now. He has that quality now. And secondly, there seems to be an approval, 53 percent in the latest poll by NBC and The Wall Street Journal, registered voters by 52 percent to 40 percent approve the job that the president is doing. By 53 to 38, they approve of his handling of the economy. What's happened to give him this change in his relationship with the American public? E.J. DIONNE: Well, I think he should take Air Force 1, give it to Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and all the freshman Republicans and say, ``Take a month's vacation. I owe you a huge debt,'' because I think he used the Republican agenda to do three things. First, he made the Republicans look extreme, which suddenly allowed him to look more centrist, which is what he'd always wanted to do. But the issues that he fought on were old Democratic issues-- Medicare, Medicaid, education-- CHARLIE ROSE : Minimum wage. E.J. DIONNE: --minimum wage. And so that rallied the most ardent Democrats, so he pulled a real jujitsu move, looking more centrist and rallying the base at the same time. And then the third piece of it is by standing up to them at all, he helped erase, at least a little bit, this image that he didn't stand for something. And so I think he owes them a debt on all these counts. TODD PURDUM: And the fourth piece is that-- or the fourth and fifth and sixth-- whatever-- he really did, I think, learn in office. He really has become more presidential, in the sense that he is more careful not to step on his own message, careful to stick to his guns, careful to make one overriding point a week instead of seven points a day or, you know, talk to the press-- I mean, I can't argue that he shouldn't talk to the press more. I wish he would talk even more than he does. But he's been very much more careful about keeping his priorities straight and saying-- you know, sticking to the thing he's most concerned about. CHARLIE ROSE : What is it that his handlers are so fearful of that they will not allow you to report on the conversation that took place on Air Force One and other times in which he has been very relaxed and has been able to span over a series of subjects over a period of time? TODD PURDUM: Well, I think part of it is, they fear -- and I understand some of their fear because there is a lot of this at work in the modern press -- the ``gotcha'' syndrome, the search for a daily headline, the take out of context, quick hit, sort of he says he has to lead the country out of a funk, and so everybody focuses on that and forgets that he made the comment in the context of saying he thinks the country is poised on endless possibilities and has so much going for it and people may be more anxious than they should be and all of that. And that gets lost in translation. I think it's also just that they know that he's capable, in an extended conversation, of, again, because of this enormous energy, these enormous enthusiasms, going off the reservation a little bit, you know? I mean, saying something he would wish, with sober second thought, he hadn't said, trying to hard to be liked, trying too hard to please somebody, being just a little too enthusiastic. And I think they know that that jumps up and bites him sometimes. CHARLIE ROSE : What's the relationship with the First Lady today? And I mean by that, in terms of her influence, advice, positioning within whatever advice he gets within the White House? TODD PURDUM: Well, you know, it's one of the great speculations, in a sense. I mean, we can't know for sure. We're not there when they talk and it's not right for us to be there when they talk. But one can only assume, based on all the evidence we hear, that, you know, she remains his most influential adviser in many ways, as indeed most, you know, long-married couples are with each other and-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah, they say that Elizabeth Dole had a significant influence on getting her husband to make the decision to leave the Senate. TODD PURDUM: You know, I think the First Lady knew that the public was uncomfortable seeing her exercise a more overtly policy adviser role, but-- but I don't think she's changed, really, her fundamental involvement in his life. E.J. DIONNE: No, I think that's right and I think she is a person who's very political, loves politics, has always been involved in making political decisions. I cannot imagine that, just because the polls changed and she had to get out of the public spotlight, it's fundamentally changed her role inside. But as Todd said, we're not there, so we don't exactly know, but that's my sense from what everybody says. CHARLIE ROSE : Will she be an issue in the campaign? E.J. DIONNE: Doubtless she will be an issue in the campaign, but she'll be a huge asset, too, and, you know, she got about something like thousands of people to come out in New Hampshire on a freezing day this winter, when you wouldn't expect that they would do it. And she-- she draws enormous audiences, enormous support from core Democratic supporters that they-- she goes to address. Her book's been on The New York Times best-seller list for 17 weeks this coming Sunday. She's a pretty big asset, in a lot of ways. [crosstalk] CHARLIE ROSE : What do either of you define or divine that he might want to do, if he wins reelection, in a second term? E.J. DIONNE: I think that's the heart of the darkness in that he's given some indications-- I went in to do one of those interviews that he's giving out now and that was my interest. And you get a sense he wants to do a little more on health care. He wants-- he may want to do a little on pensions. But he's been very cautious, maybe too cautious, in trying to explain what he'd do with a second term. And I think there's real division in the White House over how expansive he should be about that, that they think, number one, things are going okay now, why blow it? Number two, if you dare look at all expansive, people will jump down your throat and say ``You're going to give us big government.'' I just wonder if running against the Republicans between now and November is enough. At a certain point, I think this campaign is going to turn back to, ``What is the next president'' -- and he will be the next president in the next term -- ``going to do for us?'' And I think he's going to have to be more specific. CHARLIE ROSE : Well, it reminds me of the Reagan campaign in-- PANELIST: [off-camera] In '84? CHARLIE ROSE : --in '84, in which it was ``morning in America'' and nobody understood what the referendum was to do in the second term. E.J. DIONNE: And there wasn't that much that happened in that second term, it's worth remembering. TODD PURDUM: Iran-contra for one. CHARLIE ROSE : Which is one of the worries. TODD PURDUM: But I think the Clinton White House would settle for the Reagan victory margin. CHARLIE ROSE : We've-- this article-- ``What kind of Democrat''-- again, we seem not to know the answer to that, but TODD PURDUM has written an interesting profile of this president called ``Facets of Clinton.'' E.J. DIONNE continues to write a column from Washington and I am pleased to have both of you on this broadcast. Thank you very much. E.J. DIONNE: Thank you, Charlie. TODD PURDUM: Thank you. CHARLIE ROSE : When we come back, four young-- three young novelists talk about the role of the novel and where it stands in American literary life today. Stay with us. Three Novelists Reflect on the Modern Novel CHARLIE ROSE : A generation ago, a new book by a fiction writer was anticipated with the kind of excitement and buzz that is not seen anymore. In the age of Internet, information and images, many publishers doubt the younger generation reads very much. Who and what are the future of American fiction? Joining me, DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, whose 1,000-page novel, Infinite Jest, has become the season's most talked-about book; JONATHAN FRANZEN-- his latest book is Strong Motion; and MARK LEYNER, author of Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog. Great to have all of you here and the reason we have convened you here is to talk about that very subject. Mark, let me begin with you. I mean, what's happening to fiction, do you think, and its appeal to young people today? I don't know who young people, where the division is, but-- MARK LEYNER, Author: I don't know. I don't know. In a way-- CHARLIE ROSE : Is there an audience, do you think? I mean, is it growing? Is it decreasing? Is it impacted by all these things we talk about? MARK LEYNER: You know, honestly, it's something I never think about as a writer. I-- there's an image I have of Bobby Fischer-- you know, the chess player-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yes. MARK LEYNER: --when he was a kid-- 16, 15. And he's in his room every night, listening to WABC on some little transistor, playing through all the chess games of history, you know, obsessively. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: I don't think, at that point, he cared about how popular chess was or who was interested-- CHARLIE ROSE : No. MARK LEYNER: --in it or not. It was just-- CHARLIE ROSE : I couldn't agree more. MARK LEYNER: --his obsession, his compulsion, what he did. He knew at that point. And that's pretty much how I feel about it. You know, I'm not-- I didn't sign on as a sociologist or a professor or-- I mean, this is what I do. I write these books and I'm loyal-- I mean, I'm grateful for whatever loyal readers I have. I'm privileged by it and sort of write for that readership. So generally, I don't get the sense, when I go out there-- if I go out on a book tour, for instance-- this is just, you know-- my empirical evidence is that there seems to be a lot of interest in books out there. CHARLIE ROSE : Notwithstanding all the distractions, not withstanding the Internet and all that, notwithstanding the technology that plays out there? MARK LEYNER: I think not withstanding the distractions. I don't-- I don't think additional media supplant other media. I think they crowd it. I think they sort of impact on the kinds of readers we have. But I'm not certain that there are less readers and I'm not certain that there are less enthusiastic readers and I'm certain that there are more readers out there for me that haven't read my books. So I guess once I exhaust them, then I'll worry about it. CHARLIE ROSE : Does any of these questions we're talking about influence the way-- how you write and the way you write and-- I mean, because your style is unique and different? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, Author:: Well, I was just listening to what Mark said. In a-- you know, in a way I agree. If you think about that stuff, like the size of the audience and how much it will appeal to a reader, you go nuts fairly quickly. PANELIST: [off-camera] Yes. Yes. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: But on the other hand, I think that-- I think where Mark and I differ a little bit is-- is I think, in a weird way, the condition sort of commercially for fiction has-- bears a little bit on the esthetics of writing right now because at least-- at least the generation that I think of myself as part of was raised on television, which means that at least I was raised to view television as more or less my main kind of artistic snorkel to the universe. And I think television, which is a commercial art that's a lot of fun, that requires very little of the recipient of the art, I think affects-- affects what people are looking for in various kinds of art and I think can make the sort of fiction which-- if I can lump a bit, I think all three of us do stuff that's at least harder than average, weird, requires some work to read. What's interesting to me is the very phenomenon that perhaps demographically cuts into our audience is a big part of sort of what's going on in the country that I think fiction writers are trying to capture in some way. CHARLIE ROSE : Okay, what's that? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Oh, boy. I hope this is a four-hour segment. [crosstalk] CHARLIE ROSE : Well, okay, it is. Go. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: As-- as-- CHARLIE ROSE : Reduced by three hours and 45 minutes. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Yeah. I guess, as far as I can see, fiction for me, as-- mostly as a reader, is a very weird, double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be difficult and it can be redemptive and morally instructive and all the good stuff we learned in school. On the other hand, it's supposed to be fun. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: It is a lot of fun. And what-- what drew me into writing was mostly really fun rainy afternoons spent with a book. It was a kind of a-- it was a kind of a relationship. CHARLIE ROSE : Now, why did that draw you into writing? Because, I mean, the love of the book make you want to make those-- make them, be a part of the-- DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Well, I think-- see, this gets real abstract. I think part of the fun for me was being part of some kind of exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff that we normally can't talk about. Like, we're sure not going to be able to talk about this stuff here, you know? The thing that-- the thing that interests me in a lot of the stuff I think that I do has to do with I think a lot-- commercial entertainment, its efficiency, its sheer-- its sheer ability to deliver pleasure in large doses changes people's-- changes people's relationship to art and entertainment. It changes what an audience is looking for. I would argue is changes us in deeper ways than that and that some of the ways that commercial culture and commercial entertainment affects human beings is one of the things that I sort of think serious or arty fiction ought to be doing right now. JONATHAN FRANZEN, Author: And it cuts in in a different way, too, because I think 50 years ago, somebody setting out to write a scene at a precinct house, basically, you know, would go to a precinct house and feel that pretty much anything they had to say about it would be fresh and interesting. And now if I sit down to write about-- I won't-- I basically won't write about a precinct house because I see so many of them on T.V. They do such a slick job. I'm completely captivated by that. And so that's in my head, whether I want it to be in my head or not. PANELIST: [off-camera] And in your reader's head. JONATHAN FRANZEN: And in my reader's head, as well. And so I-- you know, I consider myself my own reader and so I kind of consult my entertainment habits. To say that I don't think about an audience is both true and not true because I think about myself as an audience. And that audience is one that has had its expectations regarding all kinds of narrative art profoundly changed by what's happened in the last 50 years. MARK LEYNER: You know, I think it's a-- it's a tough audience. I mean, if we can make a monolith out of this audience we're talking about, for the sake of discussion, a young audience raised on television is used to receiving its entertainment in these kinetic bursts and it's tough to sway people like that a book, to reading a book. I mean, if you go to public places now-- first of all, I think one of the terrible things that's happening-- I mean, I watch a lot of T.V. myself. I-- you know, I don't think it's evil in any sense, but I do think compulsory viewing of television is evil. One of the last refuges in which we can read anymore are these-- [crosstalk] CHARLIE ROSE : And it's only between 9:00 and 12:30, too. PANELIST: [off-camera] Exactly. PANELIST: [off-camera] You know. CHARLIE ROSE : It could be worse. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: A brutal regime. PANELIST: [off-camera] We have these-- CHARLIE ROSE : Dictatorial, I'd say. MARK LEYNER: Now what was I going to say? CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: These-- these sorts of interstitial zones where people read-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: --like waiting for planes, waiting for things-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: You know, that's sort of the last refuge of peace and quiet. Well, it's no longer because now you go to an airport and they have televisions there. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: So-- PANELIST: [off-camera] Check-out lines. MARK LEYNER: These are-- now we're dealing with people who almost never experience any sort of down time in their life from electronic media. But I think-- one of the things I've always tried to do is accept that as a given, that this is a pretty tough crowd I'm dealing with and that I have to come up with the kind of work that's able to somehow compete with that. You know, there's-- in-- Beaudelaire wrote this great little preface to Flowers of Evil where he said, ``Hypocrite reader, my brother''-- I mean, I-- I have the same kind of feeling where I have realized pragmatically that I have to bond with people-- I have to somehow devote my work to people that may not be such great readers anymore. JONATHAN FRANZEN: But that sounds as if you're almost saying the opposite of what you started out saying. It sounds like you're molding your fiction very much to the kind of readership you expect. Whereas if-- MARK LEYNER: No, I wouldn't say ``molding.'' I think you have to be aware and realistic and pragmatic about who's reading you work because-- I mean. I mean, I'm not going to say you-- you know, you don't have to. JONATHAN FRANZEN: Thank you, Mark. MARK LEYNER: But I-- you know, my relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. I mean, I really-- one of the-- one of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers and-- you know, and the work is-- is hopefully funny. PANELIST: [off-camera] Right. MARK LEYNER: In order to do that, you have to know who they are. I mean, you have to have some notion of how they're taking in this information and what they're used to, to play off it, in some way. So it's not a matter of molding your work necessarily, but you have to know, sort of, who the patient is you're dealing with-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah, but-- MARK LEYNER: --as a doctor. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah, but didn't you say, in a sense, without [unintelligible] point, I heard this same thing. When we were talking about in the beginning the Bobby Fischer notion-- JONATHAN FRANZEN: That he was merely obsessively-- CHARLIE ROSE : Was obsessive-- JONATHAN FRANZEN: --pursuing this-- CHARLIE ROSE : --pursuing chess. He wasn't thinking about the role of chess or all those other questions. MARK LEYNER: Yeah. Yeah. CHARLIE ROSE : I mean, who was watching who. MARK LEYNER: Well, I'll make a distinction. I mean, I don't-- I don't think about-- I don't think in sociological terms about dwindling readership-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. MARK LEYNER: --and why and-- when I'm writing. CHARLIE ROSE : But you do think about-- MARK LEYNER: But I do think-- CHARLIE ROSE : --who might read my book and-- MARK LEYNER: I think about the people who do read my books. CHARLIE ROSE : --what are they demands. MARK LEYNER: Yeah. And what-- and what their habits are. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Well, because it's an act of communication. PANELIST: [off-camera] Right. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: But where the-- what makes the analogy okay, but also makes it break down, is that part of the Fischer-like obsession Mark's talking about consists of a kind of mental and emotional dance with a constructed reader that you figure has a life more or less like yours and whom, in a weird way, you're talking to, you know? Again-- again, I'm, like, totally with you about 50 percent of it. The thing about it is that delight and fun and all that stuff is definitely-- that-- that's part of what makes art magical for me, but there's another part. There's a-- there's the part-- and, see, I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a puritan or a prig, but there's this part that's-- MARK LEYNER: That's okay. Go ahead. [crosstalk] DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: No, there's this part-- there's this part that's-- that's-- that makes you feel full. There's this part that is-- that is redemptive and instructive, where when you read something, it's not just delight. You go, ``My God, that's me.'' You know, ``I've lived like that. I've felt like that. I'm not alone in the world.'' I mean, you can get-- you can get very kind of abstract in the way you talk about it. What's tricky for me is-- see, it would-- it would be one thing if everybody was absolutely delighted watching T.V. 24-7, but we have, as a culture, not only an enormous daily watching rate, but we have a tremendous cultural contempt for T.V. I mean, from Newton-- Newton Minnow's ``the vast wasteland'' has become kind of culture-wide, such that now T.V. that makes fun of T.V. is itself popular T.V. There's this way in which we who are watching a whole lot are also aware that we're missing something, that there's something else, there's something more, while at the same time, because television is really darned easy-- you sit there. You don't have to do very much. And in many ways-- CHARLIE ROSE : It's not easy to do, though. JONATHAN FRANZEN: Oh, no, no. We'd never suggest that. But, you know-- but there's-- there's also-- I mean, there's-- there's a second model you can sort of come at the audience from-- CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah. JONATHAN FRANZEN: --which-- with-- which is that people who read books, who seriously read books, who read a lot of books, nowadays, it's, like, a priori not of the mainstream. You have a weird audience who is defined, in large part, by their non-participation in mass entertainments of that kind and I think another way you can go about it is to just basically keep on doing the same old kind of book, making little subtle nods to the fact that it's now 1996 and-- DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: So what, the only people who-- JONATHAN FRANZEN: --not 1896. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: The only people who read, like serious fiction, are people who don't watch T.V.? JONATHAN FRANZEN: No, no. Thank you for drawing that out for me, Dave. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: No, if I've misheard, enlighten me. JONATHAN FRANZEN: My impression is that people who read feel-- who read a lot of books -- just seat of the pants sense -- is that they don't-- they-- they do that because they don't fit in in some way. At some point in their lives, they-- they have found solace-- they have found it necessary to engage with books because the community, the society around them is not giving them everything they need. And I think that's a-- that's a fair description of a person who continues to read challenging books that require sort of an effort of concentration. CHARLIE ROSE : Yeah, I want to ask that-- you-- especially you about that. Is-- it is that do you think that your books are known to be-- the one-- this book is known to be complicated and long, compared even to the Internet. Is it simply because that's the way you express what you have to say or is it some sense of design there? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Oh, there's some sense of design. Part of it, I think, is, for me, it's weird. I feel like I'm kind of-- if you put these two guys in a blender-- CHARLIE ROSE : What two guys? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: --I am these guys-- these guys-- these guys sitting right here. I mean, part of it-- one of the things that I want is to do something that is-- yeah, it's complicated and it's hard and it's weird, but it's also seductive enough so that you're willing to do the work to go through that. And a lot of that has to do with trying-- trying, yes, to be-- to be delightful and to have it be delightful. [crosstalk] MARK LEYNER: --if you put us in a blender. JONATHAN FRANZEN: So I'm the one who's not delightful here? Is that what you're saying? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: A very soft blender and not with sharp blades. No, I-- no. I'm just-- I-- I guess-- [crosstalk] I mean, it's not any kind of tactic or whatever, but I think, at least for-- the way I am as a writer comes very much out of what-- what I sort of want as a reader and what sort of got me off, you know, when I was reading. And a lot of it has to do with-- ``Good Lord, I'm really stretching myself. I'm really having to think and process and feel in ways I don't normally feel. And the book-- the book has motivated me to do that.'' CHARLIE ROSE : Let me ask this because we talk all around this. Is what you like to read different today than it might have been 10 years ago, what you like to read? And why? JONATHAN FRANZEN: Oh, 10 years ago, what-- [crosstalk] Yeah, Hardy boys. Exactly. [crosstalk] CHARLIE ROSE : Well, but you know what I mean. I mean, in terms of what's on the landscape today and what you want to read-- is it different than-- MARK LEYNER: I don't read-- I don't really read-- I don't read much contemporary fiction, I have to say. PANELIST: [off-camera] Yeah. CHARLIE ROSE : Why not? MARK LEYNER: You know, I'm not quite sure why not. I-- there may be some anxiety about the influence of it, in some way-- you know, just wanting-- CHARLIE ROSE : A subconscious influence on the way you write or-- MARK LEYNER: Yeah. Yeah. I-- I also love reading non-fiction and just grab it at the library every week, just books about every sort of thing. And I'm also catching up, I think, on what I should have read, you know, when I was getting high and screwing around all the time. I mean, I'm re-educating myself, to some degree. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: You might want to edit that part. CHARLIE ROSE : You what? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Might want to edit that part. MARK LEYNER: I said I'm finished with that now. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: You're recovered. MARK LEYNER: Which I found is not a bad thing to do. I mean, it's not a bad thing to read all-- to read the books we were supposed to have read in college-- CHARLIE ROSE : You read mostly, then-- MARK LEYNER: --when-- CHARLIE ROSE : But-- you don't read contemporary fiction, but-- MARK LEYNER: Not really. CHARLIE ROSE : --do you read mostly non-fiction, then? MARK LEYNER: Mostly non-fiction and then older sorts of things. CHARLIE ROSE : Mostly, you read what today? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: If I understand your question, 10 years ago I was reading a lot more avant-garde stuff and I thought it was very cool. One of my complaints right now is that because I think commercial entertainment has conditioned readers to want kind of more easy fun, I think avant-garde and art fiction has sort of relinquished the field and is now-- basically, I don't read much contemporary avant-garde stuff because it's hellaciously un-fun. A lot of really serious literary stuff-- CHARLIE ROSE : But was it hellaciously un-fun-- DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Yeah. CHARLIE ROSE : --five years ago and ten years ago? DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: Well-- well, the stuff I was reading 10 years ago was avant-garde stuff from, like, the '60s and early '70s, which-- CHARLIE ROSE : I see. DAVID FOSTER WALLACE: --as far as I can see, was kind of the heyday, at least of contemporary avant-garde stuff. But these days, a lot of it is very academic and cloistered and basically written for critics and college teachers and Ph.D. students and it's something that I-- I feel a lot more strongly about that than I do about T.V. CHARLIE ROSE : Let me-- for those-- in a sense, Jonathan, for those who say the novel is dead and, you know, the age of fiction is past, you three are witness to what or testimony to what? JONATHAN FRANZEN: Oh, I'd say we're-- we're witness to-- we're testimony to the fact that it is not dead, that people are still doing it. There's still audience for it. It might be the kind of big clout audience that Mailer and Hemingway had in the '50s-- CHARLIE ROSE : And? JONATHAN FRANZEN: And the novel dead? I think the novel-- the novel and its audience may be returning to a point before-- there was kind of a golden 100 years before T.V. and movies had fully taken over, but after universal education or nearly universal education had produced a large audience of readers. That-- the novel was the only game in 1880, 1890, 1900s. CHARLIE ROSE : Infinite Jest, DAVID FOSTER WALLACE; Strong Motion, JONATHAN FRANZEN; and MARK LEYNER's Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog-- I thank you for coming. PANELIST: [off-camera] Thank you. PANELIST: [off-camera] Thanks, Charlie. CHARLIE ROSE : My thanks to DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, to MARK LEYNER and to JONATHAN FRANZEN. On Monday we'll have two recent Pulitzer Prize winners and Senator Warren Rudman. See you then. Copyright {\'U} 1996 Thirteen/WNET. }} @incollection{Carr:2003yq, Author = {Carr, George}, Booktitle = {The David Foster Wallace Reader}, Date-Added = {2007-03-25 12:45:05 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Local-Url = {file://localhost/Users/rcniman/Documents/Projects/DFW%20Bibliography/Papers/DFW%20Reader%20-%20Intro.PDF}, Title = {Introduction: The David Foster Wallace Reader}, Year = {2003}} @proceedings{:kx, Date-Added = {2007-03-25 10:04:23 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Local-Url = {file://localhost/Users/rcniman/Documents/Projects/DFW%20Bibliography/Papers/hammer-david-foster-wallace.mp3}, Organization = {Hammer Museum}, Title = {Book Reading}, Annote = {Need to fully reference this}} @article{Niman:uq, Author = {Niman, Ryan}, Date-Added = {2007-03-24 18:33:16 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Title = {Notes on this Bibliography}, Annote = {The 'Collected In' Field: A piece may be collected in more than once place (the DFW Reader, one of DFW's books, here in the bibliography, etc.). For the 'CollectedIn' field, I list the most canonical and practical source that it has appeared collected in. Thus, it goes something like this: * DFW's published books * The DFW Reader * This bibliography The theses that appear on The Howling Fantods website are too big to include here (and I haven't tried getting permission) so they are listed as being collected on the website.}} @article{Niman:fk, Author = {Niman, Ryan}, Date-Added = {2007-03-24 17:52:41 -0700}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:33:55 -0700}, Title = {To-Do List}, Annote = {1. Pieces in BIWHM awaiting final confirmation: [1] D. F. Wallace. Yet another instance of the porousness of certain borders (xxi). Conjunctions, (28), Spring 1997. [2] D. F. Wallace. Pop quiz. spelunker flophouse, 1(4), April (? ) 1998. 2. Still need to confirm where every piece in BIWHM was first published. For example, in the front of the book there is a list of locations where the pieces were previously published. A couple are still not account for. These include: [1] Private Arts [2] Santa Monica Review 3. There are only two known pieces that we do not have in one form or another. They are: [1] D. F. Wallace. Mr. costigan in may. Clarion, 1985. [2] D. F. Wallace. Self-harm as a sort of offering. Mid-American Review, (18):2, Spring 1998. 4. Finish explaining this list of publications that George Carr posted to Wallace-L. They reference DFW, but most are likely reviews of his books, and not works by him. Still, we need to leave no stone unturned. They could be reviews BY DFW as well: [1] LA Times Book Review, Feb. 1, 1987. [2] NYT Dec. 27, 1986 [3] NYT Book Review, March 1, 1987; (This is a review of BotS - ed.) [4] NYT Book Review, November 5, 1989 [5] Tribune Books (Chicago), January 21, 1990 [6] Washington Post Book World, January 11, 1987; August 6, 1989. 5. DFW worked on the Amherst College journal Sabrina when he went there. It is unclear if any of his writing is in the Journal. See the entry "Notes on Missing Pieces" for more information on this. 6. Cross reference the tables of contents for DFW's books so that we can easily see where each piece in the collection (or novel, in the case of Infinite Jest) originally came from. 7. Continue to collect text/pdf versions of pieces - specifically those not collected in DFW's books or pieces that had substantial changes in them between published editions. A list should be compiled of what is needed. 8. Continue to collect audio recordings of interviews and readings. A list needs to be compiled. 9. Create a list of audio recordings and written interviews that are truly missing from the web, and take steps to recover them. A list needs to be compiled. 10. Run OCR on pdfs of texts that don't have full text in the bibliography. This will make all sorts of concordance-type research possible - and allow easy answers to questions like "Did Wallace say X about Updike in some interview?" 11. Research any letters to/from DeLillo/Franzen (see http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/delillo.scope.html)}} @article{Eggers:2006uq, Author = {Eggers, Dave}, Date-Added = {2007-01-15 00:39:31 -0800}, Date-Modified = {2007-04-05 14:06:07 -0700}, Journal = {L.A. Weekly}, Month = {November 14}, Title = {Jest Fest}, Url = {http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/jest-fest/14990/}, Year = {2006}, Abstract = {Jest Fest Dave Eggers on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 12:00 pm On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Little Brown is publishing a new $10 edition of Infinite Jest with a new foreward by Dave Eggers, which follows here. Skylight Books hosts a re-issue party on Sunday, November 19, at 5pm; 1919 N. Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz, (323) 660-1175 or www.skylightbooks.com In recent years, there have been a few literary dustups --- how insane is it that such a thing exists in a world at war? --- about readability in contemporary fiction. In essence, there are some people who feel that fiction should be easy to read, that it's a popular medium that should communicate on a somewhat conversational wavelength. On the other hand, there are those who feel that fiction can be challenging, generally and thematically, and even on a sentence-by-sentence basis --- that it's okay if a person needs to work a bit while reading, for the rewards can be that much greater when one's mind has been exercised and thus (presumably) expanded. Much in the way that would-be civilized debates are polarized by extreme thinkers on either side, this debate has been made to seem like an either/or proposition, that the world has room for only one kind of fiction, and that the other kind should be banned and its proponents hunted down and, why not, dismembered. But while the polarizers have been going at it, there has existed a silent legion of readers, perhaps the majority of readers of literary fiction, who don't mind a little of both. They believe, though not too vocally, that so-called difficult books can exist next to, can even rub bindings suggestively with, more welcoming fiction. These readers might actually read both kinds of fiction themselves, sometimes in the same week. There might even be --- though it's impossible to prove --- readers who find it possible enjoy Thomas Pynchon one day, and Elmore Leonard the next. Or even: readers who can have fun with Jonathan Franzen in the morning while wrestling with William Gaddis at night. David Foster Wallace has long straddled the worlds of difficult and not-as-difficult, with most readers agreeing that his essays are easier to read than his fiction, and his journalism most accessible of all. But while much of his work is challenging, his tone, in whatever form he's exploring, is rigorously unpretentious. A Wallace reader gets the impression of being in a room with a very talkative and brilliant uncle or cousin, who, just when he's about to push it too far, to try our patience with too much detail, has the good sense to throw in a good low-brow joke. Wallace, like many other writers who could be otherwise considered too smart for their own good---Bellow comes to mind---is, like Bellow, always aware of the reader, of the idea that books are essentially meant to entertain, and so almost unerringly balances his prose to suit. This had been Wallace's hallmark for years before this book, of course. He was already known as a very smart and challenging and funny and preternaturally gifted writer when Infinite Jest was released in 1996, and thereafter his reputation included all the adjectives mentioned just now, and also this one: Holy shit. No, that isn't an adjective in the strictest sense. But you get the idea. The book is 1,067 pages long and there is not one lazy sentence. The book is drum-tight and relentlessly smart and, though it does not wear its heart on its sleeve, it's deeply felt and incredibly moving. That it was written in three years by a writer under 35 is very painful to think about. So let's not think about that. The point is that it's for all these reasons---acclaimed, daunting, not-lazy, drum-tight, very funny (we didn't mention that yet but yes) --- that you picked up this book. Now the question is this: Will you actually read it? In commissioning this foreward, the publisher wanted a very brief and breezy essay that might convince a new reader of Infinite Jest that the book is approachable, effortless even --- a barrel of monkeys' worth of fun to read. Well. It's easy to agree with the former, more difficult to advocate the latter. The book is approachable, yes, because it doesn't include complex scientific or historical content, nor does it require any particular expertise or erudition. As verbose as it is, and as long as it is, it never wants to punish you for some knowledge you lack, nor does it want to send you to the dictionary every few pages. And yet, while it uses a familiar enough vocabulary, make no mistake that Infinite Jest is something other. That is, it bears little resemblance to anything before it, and comparisons to anything since are desperate and hollow. It appeared in 1996, sui generis, very different than virtually anything before it. It defied categorization, and thwarted efforts to take it apart and explain it. It's possible, with most contemporary novels, for an astute reader, if they are wont, to break it down into its parts, to take it apart as one would a car or Ikea shelving unit. That is, let's say a reader is a sort of mechanic. And let's say this particular reader-mechanic has worked on lots of books, and after a few hundred contemporary novels, the mechanic feels like he can take apart just about any book and put it back together again. That is, the mechanic recognizes the components of modern fiction, and can say, for example, I've seen this part before, so I know why it's there and what it does. And this one, too---I recognize it. This part connects to this and performs this function. This one usually goes here, and does that. All of this is familiar enough. That's no knock on the contemporary fiction that is recognizable and breakdown-able. This includes about 98 percent of the fiction we know and love. But this is not possible with Infinite Jest. This book is like a spaceship with no recognizable components, no rivets or bolts, no entry points, no way to take it apart. It is very shiny, and it has no discernible flaws. If you could somehow smash it into smaller pieces, there would certainly be no way to put it back together again. It simply is. Page by page, line by line, it is probably the strangest, most distinctive, and most involved work of fiction by an American in the last twenty years. At no time while reading Infinite Jest are you are unaware that this is a work of complete obsession, of a stretching of the mind of a young writer to the point of, we assume, near-madness. Which isn't to say it's madness in the way that Burroughs or even Fred Exley used a type of madness with which to create. Exley, like many writers of his generation and the few before it, drank to excess, and Burroughs ingested every controlled substance he could buy or borrow. But Wallace is a different sort of madman, one in full control of his tools, one who instead of teetering on the edge of this precipace or that, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, seems to be heading ever-inward, into the depths of memory and the relentless conjuring of a certain time and place in a way that evokes --- it seems so wrong to type this name but then again, so right! --- Marcel Proust. There is the same sort of obsessiveness, the same incredible precision and focus, and the same sense that the writer wanted (and arguably succeeds at) nailing the consciousness of an age. Let's talk about age, the more pedestrian meaning of the word. It's to be expected that the average age of the new Infinite Jest reader would be about 25. There are certainly many collegians among you, probably, and there may be an equal number of 30-year-olds or 50-year-olds who have for whatever reason reached a point in their lives where they have determined themselves finally ready to tackle the book, which this or that friend has urged upon them. The point is that the ave