The Swirling Milky Way Mind

Gavin at Wordwright has a great list of articles about David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), to which I'll add just one: "Timothy McSweeney is Devasted and Lost," at McSweeney's. [No permalink yet.]

Ryan Boudinot, Martina Testa, Tom Bissell, Mac Barnett, Scott Rettberg, Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Peter Cook, Corinne Carlson, Evan Lavender-Smith, Dennis Mahoney, John Erik Riley, John Lingan, Eric Schulmiller, Jared Lipof, Evan Fleischer, Adam Hill, Matt Herlihy, Lorin Stein, Michael R. Hufford, Whitney Pastorek, and Animesh Sabnis all contribute.

From them we learn that Wallace dipped tobacco, smelled terrible, drank Diet Coke and carb milkshakes, used smiley faces for grades, trimmed cards and letters so to not waste paper, was an actual genius, was obscure and eclectic, wore wool socks with Birkenstocks and shorts or parachute pants tucked into his socks, is huge in Norway, liked postcards more than email, had read most of Chekhov, believed in the impossibility of lists, never heard from Thomas Pynchon, offered hope, and regularly took shots from undergraduate critics with humility and good cheer.