2009

The Archives

Elsewhere Jest
Roundup
07.05.09 | Permalink | 13 Comments

Jacket Copy, the LA Times literary organ, interviewed Matthew Baldwin. The Story Behind Infinite Summer. The Valve, meanwhile, finds the project “a little morbid“. Unbeknownst to us, Infinite Summer was mentioned on television at some point. Mark Flannigan, the Contemporary Literature Guide of About.com, is on-board. Says Whitney of Feet on Polished Floor: “Reading David […]
Summaries
Infinite Summery – Week 2
07.04.09 | Permalink | 37 Comments

Milestone Reached: Page 147 (14%) Chapters Read: Chapter Beginning Page Synopsis YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT 85 Tiny Ewell travels to the Enfield Marine VA Hospital Complex via cab. A list of people gathered in the living room of the medical attaché house watching the Entertainment. 30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT […]
Guests
Michael Pietsch: Editing Infinite Jest
07.03.09 | Permalink | 20 Comments

Michael Pietsch is Executive Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown and Company, and was David Foster Wallace’s editor. He adapted the following from “Editing Wallace,” a Q&A with Rick Moody, published in Sonora Review 55, May 2009. In April 1992 I received on submission from David Wallace’s agent, Bonnie Nadell, around 150 pages of […]
Avery Edison
Not the Best Student
07.02.09 | Permalink | 22 Comments

The figure of Death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators’ eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of […]
Kevin Guilfoile
Through All The Dead Ends And Bad Scenes
07.01.09 | Permalink | 51 Comments

There is this thing they do on the first day of medical school orientation to help the students understand what to expect. They gather all the first-years into an auditorium and the dean or whoever comes out and he says to them, “Turn and look at the person on your left. Now turn and look […]
Eden M. Kennedy
Breathing Into a Paper Bag
06.30.09 | Permalink | 78 Comments

I’m so far behind where I’m supposed to be and I’m trying not to panic, though that didn’t work out too well last night at 9:00 p.m. Me: I can’t do this! I have nothing to say! I’m an underqualified blogging hack with no literary grasp, or scope, and this was all just a horrible […]
Matthew Baldwin
Dead Sea Diving
06.29.09 | Permalink | 50 Comments

Fun fact I learned from the last book I read: the Dead Sea, with a salt concentration of 32%, is so saline that it practically precludes swimming. You can dive in (though heaven forbid you do so without hermetically-sealed goggles), but the density of the water will pop you back to the surface like a […]