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Barack Obama recorded the audio book for his autobiography Dreams From My Father. The Boston Phoenix extracted mp3s of the cursing.Examples: "There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you" and "This shit's getting way too complicated for me". The comments at this WFMU blog post include two more.
Remember the isolated David Lee Roth vocal track for Van Halen's "Runnin' With The Devil"? Well, if you liked that, you'll love this. WHOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!
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Red Sox Content: The Boston Pops will release The Red Sox Album, which includes arrangements of "Shipping up to Boston" and "Sweet Caroline", on Opening Day, April 6. A version of John Philip Sousa's "National Game March" includes the crack of David Ortiz's bat. A series of three concerts is scheduled for May 21-22-23.
In other news, I read the long DFW piece in the New Yorker yesterday. Then I got home from work and my alumni magazine had come, and it contained some people's reminisces. I can even scan them for Allan or anyone that's that hot for more writing about DFW (there has been a lot).
ReplyDeleteOne woman took his creative writing class when he came back to teach at Amherst. She said she continually mixed up further and farther. After correcting her several times, he finally wrote in the margin where she had repeated the mistake, "I hate you".
At some point, I'm going to have actually read something he wrote.
I have heard the Obama samples. They're pretty funny.
ReplyDeleteI can even scan them for Allan or anyone that's that hot for more writing about DFW (there has been a lot).
ReplyDeleteI think Allan is reading the New Yorker piece now. He sent me a link. So far I can't bring myself to read it. The fact that he was writing another novel makes his suicide even sadder.
At some point, I'm going to have actually read something he wrote.
You might want to start with Supposedly Fun Thing, the title story and the state fair story from that collection. His nonfiction is among the best I have ever read, anywhere, ever.
Printed out the Amherst stuff on Saturday too! I get wind of everything very early, thanks to wallace-l.
ReplyDeleteHis Kenyon speech is also going to be put out as a small book. And there is a movie coming out based on Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.
Also: The McCain book from last year is a reprint of his RS piece from 2000 which is also in Consider the Lobster. No reason to buy it, then, but if I saw it dirt cheap somewhere, the completist in me would grab it.
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It makes sense, but I'm still surprised he had been working on a novel on and off for the last 11 years. We always wondering if he was, after the mammoth success of IJ. But there was only the non-fiction and smaller pieces.
I love hearing about all the mind-numbing tax classes he took as research. The quotes about the issue of boredom in the book are very interesting.
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Zen: Print this and read. It's the version of the Luxury Cruise essay that ran in Harper's. A longer version (more like what he turned in) is the title piece of A Supposedly Fun Thing...
Zen: Print this and read. It's the version of the Luxury Cruise essay that ran in Harper's. A longer version (more like what he turned in) is the title piece of A Supposedly Fun Thing...
ReplyDeleteOh nooooo!! I disagree. Read the one in the book, the unedited-by-Harpers version.
Well, I guess you got to buy the book!
ReplyDeleteP.S.: L included a small bit of the cruise essay in this wmtc post.
Thanks, you two. No DFW burnout here, I see.
ReplyDeleteI'll read that version of the essay with an eye toward getting some of his books.
Reading about him straddles that line of inspiring me to put more effort into my writing and, y'know, slightly discouraging me with that "Oh, he's such a genius" feeling. But that's a familiar issue.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have only read his nonfiction. I've tried to read Wallace's fiction but could not (which I can also say for other writers he's compared to, Pynchon and DeLillo).
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not the DFW fanatic that Allan is, by any stretch.
But. Big but. I love great essay writing, and Wallace's essays are incredible.
And I also just find his story so, so sad. He was so talented, so beloved, and so unhappy.
I'm not head over heels with all of his fiction.
ReplyDeleteIJ = Pedro 99-00, but twice I have tried (and failed) to make any headway with Broom Of The System twice and am lukewarm to the Girl With Curious Hair stories, except for Westward, which I like.
I like almost all of the stories in Hideous Men (esp. The Depressed Person and Octet) and Oblivion (Good Old Neon and Another Pioneer). I have a feeling his style matured post-Jest -- or I just like it better.
I've very excited about The Pale King, since a Washington Post story said it might also include notes and other stuff.
That Roth thing is great! It's truly like a sampler, where you can click one after the other and have a bunch playing at once, or just tap repeatedly on the same one for some awesome echoing Dave action.
ReplyDeleteBroom of the System is good, and fun, but it probably is the worst thing he's written. He doesn't really have his voice yet, but he wrote it when he was 25, and it's still very funny, touching, and sincere. It's kind of like watching somebody like Justin Upton play well in the majors at age 20.
ReplyDeleteWhen he matures, he's going to be something special.
The same goes for Curious Hair, as well. But pretty much all of Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews, Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing, and Oblivion are really great. I don't know what to expect from the upcoming unfinished novel, but I'm looking forward to see what it's like. The excerpt on the New Yorker is pretty promising, I think.
I prefer Brakhage's view of boredom to Wallace's, though.
David Lee Roth is the worst lyricist ever. Love Van Halen but seriously some of his lyrics are weird, have nothing to with the song and during half of there songs im saying WTF
ReplyDeleteWasn't it published when he was 25? Amazing. There is a section in it that is exactly like the kind of stem-winding sentences that would become his trademark; it's the story that is told between 180-194.
ReplyDeletePossibly also to be included in "The Pale King": "Good People" (New Yorker, Feb. 2007) and "The Compliance Branch" (Harper's, Feb. 2008). In 2006, he read TCB somewhere and said it was titled "untitled excerpt from something longer that isn't even close to halfway finished yet".
(I was wondering if "Mr. Squishy" is part of it, also, but that deals with advertising. Plus, "Elizabeth Klemm" wrote it!)
DFW at Harper's.
Yeah, you're right. So he wrote it when he was my age. That's fucking insane. Him and goddamned Lebron James set the bar so high.
ReplyDeleteI really like the little stories in Broom, and I like all the talk about the grandmother and Wittgenstein. The stuff about all the tourists in the desert is pretty wonderful, too.
Wasn't it published when he was 25?
ReplyDeleteHe wrote it as a senior thesis and graduated in '85. So I think it would have been written when he was 22 or 23.
I think it would have been written when he was 22 or 23
ReplyDeleteZadie Smith was 24 when "White Teeth" was published. She was 21 when the rights to the unfinished manuscript were auctioned off.
That's obscene.
DFW graduated from Amherst in 1985, so his senior theses would've been written from 1984-1985. (He wrote two, one in philosophy and one in English.) He turned 23 in Feb. 1985.
ReplyDeletethat was the funniest thing i've heard in a while. especially love the diamond dave site. thank you!
ReplyDeleteI've read bits and pieces of Wallace on and off; always love it. "The Depressed Person," "Oblivion," and the McCain piece are particular favorites. Trying to get my hands on a copy of Infinite Jest ..
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine how Brief Interviews could possibly be made into a movie.
@L-girl I do also like Pynchon, as well as Paul Auster. DeLillo not so much.
Re: Diamond Dave - A while ago I made a mash-up of Dave's isolated vocal and another by the lead singer of Smash Mouth. For your listening pleasure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMfX9fu2030&feature=channel_page
ReplyDelete