Library Program – Remembering David Foster Wallace

Wallace was an amazingly intelligent, witty and wonderful author of fiction and nonfiction who died last year at the age of 46. I’ve read a fair bit of Wallace’s writing including some of his wonderfully insightful essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, and more recently his novel Infinite Jest. I consider myself a fan of his writing, but I always feel like there is so much more to it that what I am grasping. I’m not alone: Wallace’s fiction is notoriously difficult, but its that difficulty that, in some part, established his reputation as “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years“.

This summer, a group of American authors decided to take on the difficulty of Wallace’s most famous novel together and to chronicle their reading of Infinite Jest in a blog. They invited others to join along with them and Infinite Summer was born. Clearly there is something to having the support of a group in taking on a big book, Infinite Summer has swept through the blogosphere and been written up in Newsweek, The Globe and Mail and numerous other news sources.

The program at the library – which co-incidentally is timed almost perfectly with the ending of Infinite Summer – will be presented by Dalhousie English Professor Dr. David McNeil.

Dr. McNeil is a fan of David Foster Wallace, and of Infinite Jest in particular. He’ll be here at the library to talk about Infinite Jest, and David Foster Wallace in general: to offer comments and insight into the author and his writings. If you’re also a fan of David Foster Wallace, you’re sure to find this program interesting.

Remembering David Foster Wallace
Spring Garden Rd. Memorial Public Library
Tuesday, September 15/7:00 pm