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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 24, 2008

CAAF: Morning coffee

September 24, 2008 by cfrye

David Foster Wallace appreciations, remembrances and re-prints abound right now. A few addenda you may have missed: The syllabus to a Literary Interpretations class he taught at Pomona (via Book Bench; via Crooked House); the text to the commencement address he gave at Kenyon College in 2005 (if you’re at all interested in DFW you’ve probably already read this one but it merits a re-read); and an old interview he gave to Amherst College’s alumni magazine, where he talks about his five-draft method.
If you didn’t catch it at the time, I also urge you to go read author Erin Hogan’s fine piece on Wallace, which appeared in this space last Friday. Erin notes that DFW didn’t use footnotes to appear clever but “because they are the closest approximations in a literary form to the mass of nonlinear parenthetical thoughts that is the monkey brain of all of us doing its job,” an observation that made my monkey brain cough up these two footnoted thoughts:
1. It was strange, wasn’t it, how the layout of “The Host” in The Atlantic, in which the footnotes were color-coded and looked like molecular globules floating on the page, was an almost too-literal progression of this idea of diagramming thought on paper.
2. I’ve always thought DFW cold-mugged Wittgenstein’s Mistress for parts of Infinite Jest, particularly David Markson’s technique of having a character’s (seemingly) abandoned thoughts re-surface as non sequiturs in later pages. Very rhythmic, like a swimmer surfacing then disappearing then resurfacing again. If it hasn’t already been done, someone should write a paper on that.

TT: Almanac

September 24, 2008 by Terry Teachout

Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes

Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.


George Herbert, “The Church-Porch”

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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