An excerpt from the break-up opus In 2003, The Onion ran a story titled “Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Break-Up Letter at Page 20.” I’ve seen it a million times, and it’s still funny. (So are this and this.) I showed this piece to my Wallace class this week when it came around (again) on the Wallace-l listserv, […]
A student presented an essay about NYC psychics today in Literary Journalism and American Belief, and we discussed in the workshop the actual stakes involved in pursing a psychic reading. This discussion reminded me of a memorable This American Life segment by a friend Rosie Schaap (who, after Muhammad Ali died, wrote a wonderful essay, complete with […]
A student in Literary Journalism and American Belief has been talking with me lately about a story she’s writing about Indonesian fashion designer Anniesa Hasibuan, who presented at New York Fashion Week a collection of outfits all accompanied by hijabs. Our conversations led me to send her a link to a new Michael Chabon essay, “My Son, the Prince of […]
This morning a student in Literary Journalism and American Belief sent along an essay at the Ploughshares blog that seems to bring together my two fall classes under one roof. In “The Bricklayer, the Atheist, and David Foster Wallace,” Mark Hengstler goes a long way summarizing a couple of parable-like stories the Wallace tells in over the course of […]
This week of the year tends to see two kinds of writing about David Foster Wallace, reflections on his own experience of 9/11, which he wrote about for Rolling Stone, and reminiscences from those who knew him, because this week also marks his passing (September 12, 2008). The children’s book writer Mac Barnett studied with Wallace at Pomona College, and his this […]
In Literary Journalism and American Belief this week, student writing about fast cars and religious obsession brought to mind William Giraldi’s new memoir, The Hero’s Body, which I reviewed in August for Bookforum. I was of two minds about the book, and I’d welcome any thoughts in the comments.
Today’s Literary Journalism and American Belief class went in all different directions, inspired, at the start, from an email from a student interested in reading and writing in fragments. He sent a link of some writing he admires, Now and at the Hour of Our Death, literary journalism by Susana Moreira Marques, published by Tin House Publishing. Just getting […]
Today in The Nonfiction of David Foster Wallace, we’re discussing Wallace’s “Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open,” which features as its protagonist the great Pete Sampras. A long time New Yorker, I’m proud of the way Wallace describes me in a long footnote: New Yorkers also have an amazing ability to mind their own […]
A student in Literary Journalism and American Belief sent me an email this week with a link to a story in the New York Times that wondered “Where is God on the Small Screen?.” The framing for conversation that the article contains suggests that television has had a tentative relationship with religion, despite the significance of religion in the lives […]
It’s a new semester and a new old class we’ve just embarked on, Literary Journalism and American Belief. It’s old because I’ve taught the class once before, but it’s new because the class this time has expanded a great deal. Our main text for the course is Jeff Sharlet’s Radiant Truths, which covers religious journalism from Whitman to Francine Prose. […]
