1996 audio of David Foster Wallace

The Takeaway has several audio clips from David Lipsky's 1996 road trip with David Foster Wallace which eventually ended up in book form.

Roundtable about Lipsky's DFW book

Over at New York magazine, the Vulture Reading Room is reading/reviewing David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, an almost straight-up transcript of a 5-day Rolling Stone interview with David Foster Wallace in 1996. Participating are D.T. Max (author of a forthcoming DFW biography), Sam Anderson (New York mag book critic), Laura Miller (Salon book critic), Garth Risk Hallberg (from The Millions), and me (blogger, dad, slacker).

David Foster Wallace's interviews were always show-stoppers: erudite, casual, funny, passionate, and deeply self-aware -- like he wasn't just answering the questions at hand but also interviewing himself, and his interviewer, and the entire genre of interviews. Last month, David Lipsky published essentially the Platonic ideal of the form: the book-length Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself -- a sort of DFW version of a DFW interview.

In praise of shyness

James Parker's call to the shys: be bold and embrace your shyness.

And let's not confuse shyness with modesty or humility. Charles Darwin, who was very interested in shyness, correctly diagnosed it as a form of "self-attention" -- a preoccupation with self. How do I fit in here? What do they think of me? It's not always virtuous to sit on one's personality and refuse to share it.

I don't have it in front of me right now, but I read David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself a few weeks ago (more on that in an upcoming post, I hope) and IIRC, during his sprawling conversation with David Foster Wallace, Wallace discussed the self-absorption of shyness: in unfamiliar or uncomfortable social situations, the introvert is always thinking of the me. (via fimoculous)