Greetings carbon-based lifeform,
This is a *special* letter, where all 7 items are dedicated to David Foster Wallace. See #1 why. In any case, all remains: sift, click, skip.
“If fighting against entertainment is even required… how does one do it?” New oner episode after almost a year and a half long hiatus. It’s my favorite episode so far - everything on level eleven.
“One of the reasons I can’t own a TV is I’ve started having this thing where I become convinced there’s something really good on another channel and that I’m missing it.” The full interview where #1 was taken from as well. An unedited long-form conversation for the German tv channel, ZDF. I watched this quite a few times over the past year. There’s always a new idea that stays with me afterwards.
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.” This is water. This is water. This is what I say to myself every time there’s a line at the grocery store. Commencement speech.
“He wants something better than he has. I want precisely what he has already.” My introduction to DFW was the 2015 film The End of the Tour. He’s played by Jason Siegel, opposite him is Jessie Eisenberg, as writer David Lipsky. It’s a wonderful little film with no greater plot than two people talking while traveling. Featuring the most joyous ending to any film.
Here’s Siegel talking about the role and Eisenberg about his.“One of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do.” The real David Lipsky wrote about DFW after his death, gathering thoughts from earlier interviews and friends + family. This is the writing that the film centers around.
“Here’s the first person to speak this language, to actually catch and write this language, which everybody’s hearing all the time.” - Still Lipsky. Interviewed about his article (#5) and his time with DFW.
“To have seen these strangers’ faces in orgasm—that most unguarded and purely neural of expressions, the one so vulnerable that for centuries you basically had to marry a person to get to see it.” DFW at work. Here, he reads his own report from the Adult Video News Expo. The porn industry’s Oscar awards.
Until another Friday soon,
Gergo