What turned David Foster Wallace into a cult icon? He’s more famous today than when he committed suicide 7 years ago. Stephen Burn is editing Wallace's letters. He says there are two kinds of DFW fans.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Literature
His writing explodes with manic, high-octane verbal energy, and he wrote about everything under the sun. Verbal pyrotechnics aside,Salon book critic Laura Miller says David Foster Wallace was the most important writer of his time because he was obsessed with the question of how to live authentically in a media-saturated culture of hype.
David Foster Wallace changed the landscape of American writing. His novels dissect our media-saturated culture in unflinching detail. And his essays are passed around to friends with the words, “You have to read this.” He became a literary rock star in his early thirties for his...
TIME magazine's book critic calls David Foster Wallace a literary ventriloquist who captured the spoken speech of Americans more accurately, hilariously and lovingly than any other writer.
Are we losing the ability to read difficult books? Cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf says we need to develop a "bi-literate reading brain" so that we can switch back and forth between the deep reading of print and the skimming of electronic texts.
Jonathan Gottschall's dangerous idea? Remove the padded gloves from boxers and other fighters. That will reduce the brain damage to fighters.
Can we ever know how people used to read, say, 500 years ago? Princeton historian Tony Grafton is obsessed with that question.
When she moved back to Jordan, molecular biologist Rana Dajani realized that children there didn't read for pleasure. So she started a reading program at her local mosque. Since then, her reading program has reached more than 10,000 kids in Jordan and has spread across the Middle East.
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