Every Thanksgiving, the rest of America puts a turkey in the oven and sprinkles marshmallows over sweet potatoes. They sleep in late, watch football. Or so I would imagine.
David Foster Wallace is not here. In the absence of a physical body there is an idea, that of two Davids. It’s brought to life by biographer D.T. Max and author Jeffrey Eugenides, sitting in front of a rapt audience in the James Stewart Theater. The concept of two Davids—the sincere, troubled one and the manipulative, self-aggrandizing one—is one that the real men onstage constantly return to.
for L. When you left me here to rot aboveground—preferring a disintegration undersoil, solo—they did not publish the story in the paper, this being in poor taste, your being far too young to die, the Star-Ledger style guide answering the … Read More
So he was not a god; so you slept tightly and still sweet; so all the ribbons came unfastened from your wall, descending to the rug like serpents freed;
Gabrielle Hamilton is looking at me like she’s deciding if I’m worthy of her hawk-like gaze. Her restaurant is called “Prune” and is lauded by restaurant critics but also by my mother, who sent me pictures of her meal there last year when I had typhoid and was on a steady diet of white rice and bananas. I cried with envy.
I am to have this gold when you die. To buy ink for poems crumpled on the carpet purchased with your cancer. You’ll make nothing as a writer. But my materials are cheap. Each verse I write about you merely … Read More
The way it came to me was in a letter. I think a lot of people got them, but I don’t know. It was from Dean Rapelye or maybe Malkiel, and it said something like “you are one of the particularly outstanding students admitted” and to “please consider coming to Princeton.”
