Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: the Macho of the Dork, in which Wallace fans may read the author’s favorite chapter, “David Foster Wallace: the Dork Lord of American Letters.” Her next book, Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman, is coming out in September. She lives in Los Angeles, can be contacted at dorkismo@gmail.com, and is on Twitter as @mariabustillos.
My first post to wallace-l, the mailing list dedicated to David Foster Wallace, is dated 6th July 2001. I had finished Infinite Jest only the week before, and spent the following days obsessively trolling the Internet for clues to the mysteries that remained. wallace-l was quite obviously home to a ton of devoted, knowledgeable Wallace fans, and I hoped that, through these sages, I would be able to unlock the novel’s secrets without having to read and study it more closely. Which didn’t happen at all! Instead I wound up studying the novel for years on end, and having the time of my life.
Though eager to tap the wisdom of the wallace-l membership, I was shy to post at first, intimidated by their intimacy as well as their erudition. But on that day, Marcus Gray had asked the list about the likely value of a set of signed Rushdie proofs he’d acquired somehow. I’d been an avocational bookseller for some years, so I told Marcus what I could about his Rushdie proofs, and concluded with the following:
I just signed onto this list yesterday; finished Infinite Jest last week and am still kind of boggled, like I could tie a handkerchief around my head and start moaning "my braim hurts." Anyway, I hope you guys can all supply really concise Cliff's Notes-style answers to my many questions, so I don't have to read the damn thing again right away ....
And so it began.
Right after my post on that day in July, Marco Carbone weighed in on Warp Records and their influence on Kid A; Darcy James Argue (yes, that Darcy James Argue) quoted Woody Allen and gave some guy stick for dissing, on principle, music that was rapidly composed; Hillary Brown took up cudgels on behalf of Salman Rushdie (“funny doesn’t equal baby food”); Stephen Schenkenberg described Sigur Ros’s live show as a “caught-in-the-most-wonderful-snowglobe-ever experience” and praised Wallace’s obviously-firsthand grasp of tennis lingo; and Steve McPherson lamented his inability to get hold of a copy of The Lost Scrapbook (excellent novel, btw).
All this and so very much more came within three days of my first post. Such a high level of discourse, such humor and fun, such omnivorous interest and delight in everything from Martin Amis’s teeth to the sociological function of slang; and with room, too, for the goofiest observations and the worst puns, and all leavened with the ineffable pleasure of baiting David Fleissig, who could invariably be counted on to Blackberry in with exasperated exhortations to stay on topic (as if!)
wallace-l has served as my confessional, my local pub and my support group (the latter, especially, after 9/11 and the 2004 elections.) There have been scraps and little list-dramas (there always are!) but for me it has always been fun, always interesting.
The wildest episode of all came when Thomas Harris recommended a novel called The Last Western by Thomas Klise to the list. It sounded great, so when I came across a copy I snapped it right up, and reported back in March of 2002 that it bore all sorts of strange resemblances to Infinite Jest:
there is Herman Felder, the drug-addicted genius filmmaker, engineer and camera inventor whose apocalyptic work ("Cowboys and Indians") tells the story of the human condition (along more martial lines, maybe, than does the film 'Infinite Jest') in a stupendous, world-altering work of art whose creation proves the auteur's undoing. (Incidentally, as in IJ, the title of the book refers to the film and vice versa.)
And likewise, the story of the book and the story of the film are the same, intertwined and sometimes indistinguishable one from the other.
There is also a fruitful comparison to be made between The Servants of the Used, Abused and Utterly Screwed-up in TLW and the residents of Ennet House in IJ; the place apart (a 12th house enclosure, astrology fans), where the true business of the world takes place. And there is a very Gately-like character in the mute pilot, Truman (né Bleeder).
I was in such a panic to discuss this book with other Wallace fans that I offered my copy to anyone on the list who would care to read it, and someone took me up on this offer: one Erwin Hoesi of Klosterberg, Germany, then living in a monastery (and now a financial analyst living in London, with whom I had a many-splendored evening just a few weeks ago.)
Erwin, too, had found all sorts of weirdly evocative correspondences between The Last Western and IJ. His remarks were so completely thrilling to me that when I read about a call for papers on Wallace from the “Ball State University Project”, I thought I might throw down, though I hadn’t written anything similar in years. Perhaps a closer study of Klise would unlock all the mysteries of Infinite Jest!
So I wrote to David Foster Wallace himself for the first time, asking for his remarks on The Last Western. He wrote back, in his matey way, just a few days later. (He always wrote people back; I really don’t know of anyone whom he didn’t write back.)
Dear Ms. Bustillos,
Thank you for your very very complimentary note. I regret that I’m not going to be able to help you with your project, for the following reasons: 1. I am wholly ignorant of The Last Western—never heard of it before today* (if it turns out everyone else in the world has read it, it’ll just be one more instance of my ignoramusness); 2. I tend, to the extent that I remember IJ at all, to get all sorts of different mss. and draft and pre-edited versions of it jumbled up with whatever version of it actually came out, and so I am just about the world’s worst source of info on that book.
I’m flattered that you asked, though, and I wish you luck with your enterprise and the German ex-monk. Yrs. Truly, David F. Wallace
*Same with the “Ball State University Project,” which manages to sound at once academic, Blair Witch-ish, and prurient. I don’t think I want to know.
Imagine my total shock! My brains felt like they’d been plunged in ice water. This is what Ptolemy must have felt like when he realized his orbits weren’t perfect! I had been so certain that Wallace had so cleverly and magically transmuted half the themes in The Last Western into Infinite Jest. I dashed off a note to him that began, “You’ve never heard of The Last Western?! Do I ever feel like the biggest idiot going!” and I apologized, and went on to discuss The Blair Witch Project and a few other things, not really expecting to hear from him again. But a matter of days later, I received this (embarrassing! but so funny) postcard.

“Dear Ms. B.”, he began. He replied that he’d been terribly scared by The Blair Witch Project (as I had been) and also by the Blair Witch “fake-documentary infomercial thing,” and finally concluded:
“You should maybe go ahead and do your paper if you want—I won’t tell anybody that I’d never heard of ‘The Last Western.’ Cordially, David W.”
If I loved him before, for his work, I loved him again, so much more, even, for being like that. But I never did write the paper. Too embarrassed! Maybe I will, though, someday.
A long time later, I gave Wallace a copy of The Last Western at a reading. He was wonderfully gracious and kind. A fellow wallace-lister remembered this, and asked him a few months later if he’d read it yet; he said it was almost at the top of his “fun pile.” I often wonder if he ever got to it, and if he liked it.
The moral of the story being, please join wallace-l. The list is now moderated by the gifted Matt Bucher, a great Wallace scholar himself, who has long kept things welcoming and orderly over there. It’s a gathering of people who value intellectual curiosity, humanity, candor and humility, like a mirror of Wallace’s own qualities, and in that way is keeping something of him alive.
Couldn’t agree more about the wallace-l list. What a group! Found it long ago through the howlingfantods.com site, and was overwhelmed. I’ve quit a few times when it’s just info overload. But every time it seems like things are getting creepy or boring, someone comes out with something fascinating.
I know we’ve been keeping Infinite Summer about the book and not the man, but it’s September and I can’t stand how much I miss Dave Wallace. I’m glad Nick and Matt and others kept the ideas flowing so that we have a healthy online community. Thanks, guys. And Maria. And all like us who love reading and talking about books.
naptime writing wrote: “I know we’ve been keeping Infinite Summer about the book and not the man, but it’s September and I can’t stand how much I miss Dave Wallace.”
I’ll post this question on the list-serve too. What are we all doing on September 12?
Thought it was appropriate and funny that DFW had a endnote on the reply he sent to you:-)
That was wonderful and full of smiles. Wallace-l has been so much to me over the years (I joined sometime in the late 90s…)–full of love and intelligence and tips on good books, music, and movies, and sometimes fighting :). But we’re all family.
m2
I kinda want to know more about the monk now!
maria – whoever you are – you are making my day. also, other klise siblings and our mom, marjorie klise. (mom and dad, the late thomas s. klise, had 6 of us kids.)
dad would have loved this whole german monk thing (he spent some time in the seminary himself) and probably dfw too. who knows. glad you keep the torch alive for our father’s tome. would love to chat if you are ever in berkeley, california.
regards, m. sarah klise
Wow what an awesome surprise! Thanks for this lovely note!! I’d absolutely love to meet sometime, and talk about your dad’s incredible novel. I do get up to No. California now and again (soon, I hope, now that I might have a chance to meet you!) Warm regards, Maria.
Wow! Allow me to add my praise of your father’s novel. It is a masterpiece. There are many of us on wallace-l and elsewhere who still read The Last Western and discuss it. It is increasingly difficult to find copies of the book and any information online about your father. Thank you for commenting here.
Sarah: I came across your recent post and am thinking I need to read IJ to see what Ms. Bustillos and others see are the parallels to the Last Western. I am someone who googles your father’s novel every few months, just to see what people are saying/thinking about it. I wrote a thank you to your father back in the early 1980’s after reading the book, and got a very nice note from your mother telling me that he was no longer alive. I’ve communicated a couple of times with your sister Kate, to see whether there was any chance to get your father’s novel republished. She last mentioned a couple of years ago that the family was talking about trying to pursue republication. I know its a tough time for publishers, but has the family made any progress on that front?
Ken-
No immediate plans for repub. We shall see what the future brings. Thanks for your interest (and I continue to google TLW too – which is how I found you all.) Added thanks Matt for your kind words. Nice to chat.
Maria,
Thanks for this comparison. I am searching my shelves for my unread copy of The Last Western and it will be next.
Here’s hoping that DFW did read The Last Western–another similarity is that both he and Tom Klise were writers who hailed from central Illinois.
And hello from Peoria to all of the Klise siblings.
Thanks for the encouragement to join wallace-l. I signed up a few weeks ago, but haven’t had a chance to dive in yet.
I’m struck by the way David signed David, which is almost exactly the way I write David when I sign my name. Uncannily so. If that’s fountain pen writing, which it looks like, maybe that’s the reason (I use a FP and find myself getting a bit more flourishy than normal). No matter. I just like the way he wrote back to you. Seems like a nice guy from everything I’ve read, which is all the more reason to maintain his books in high esteem and keep his spirit alive.
Great article, Maria! Wallace-l has been such a huge part of my life since 1999. It’s worth noting that the list is actually a spin-off of pynchon-l (I have started a fledgling spinoff of bolano-l also) and the first admin of the list was Dan Schmidt. I am sure I am not alone in urging Ms. B – Write That Paper!
Thank you Maria for this lovely post and for sharing the letters he wrote to you – just wonderful. I will now go and explore Wallace-l. Infinite Summer has been my first real experience with forums/chats/etc., it’s been so great that it’s given me the confidence to go out and explore more. And I’m also going to look for The Last Western and get it on my list to read!
I love that he signed his letter “yrs. truly”
Nice post! I (Allan Wood) also joined in the late 90s (back when Bob Wake and Jeff Boscole (?) were going strong). I know we tried and failed in 2000 to get a IJ read going. I have not posted in a few years though, but still dutifully read ever digest! Also I am not reading IJ now, but hope to do an Infinite Winter read after baseball season.
Ha! Thank you, Mr. Wood. You and Bob Wake were mostly before my time, I gather, but I well remember Jeff Boscole … eccentric guy, lot of fun to talk with … I wonder if he ever got a chance to read Ernest Becker.
It’s been so awesome catching up with everybody. Thanks for the comments!!
Radiohead really are awful, awful people.