So many posts about pic related, and yet all of you neglected

realistically that's a big part of why people even talk about him here or anywhere.
it was a huge move for his career.
Literature is dying and he knew it, this was pretty much the only way to cement himself into the canon before the doors were closed.
"this'll get them cracking at their desks eh what?"

I took a creative nonfiction course with him at Ponoma back in '94. We weren't allowed to show anyone our essays outside of the class for some reason. He seemed naturally intelligent, didnt need to look at any notes or textbooks or prepare for any lectures, he just knew his stuff and was super casual.

I saw him talking to a girl on campus one day. He uncharacteristically wore a Fila sweatsuit, the kind that looks like it's made from the same material as parachutes, and trainer sneakers with a matching bandana. That was his pussy hunt outfit apparently. Several times a week, same outfit, I'd see him hitting on women in it. I once saw him wearing it while carrying an identical outfit from the dry cleaners, he had like 4 sets of same Fila sweatsuit.

I asked him about it in class and he said we aren't allowed to discuss anything unrelated to class while inside class, the same way we can't show anyone outside of class our essays. A student called out "but Dostoevsky isn't in this class and last week you talked about replicating his black tea obsession to test its affects on your own writing". Wallace stared blankly at the student with dead eyes for 30 seconds in dead silence then said "you just got knocked down a full letter grade. Any other smart asses? Didn't think so." and pushed up his glasses with his index finger.

I remember telling myself this guy will either be super successful or kill himself.

he's a kurdtz kobainz now
rest in piss

>>9256326
He best friend said that his suicide was a career move. How can you get so fucking rekt.

>>9257257
Stories like these - you should be a writer

>>9257395
Harsh. He probably would have thought that was funny though.

>>9257257
>I remember telling myself this guy will either be super successful or kill himself.

Yikes, I think this might be me.

Books for this feel?

>>9258455
Dave? No, he would have laughed in a soft voice and carried the anger until he found a student to fuck his anger out on.

>>9257257
This is totally plausible. He gets angry real quick. When his gf dumped him he smashed a chair.

>>9257395
Do you have a source? I'm not being pedantic I'm just genuinely curious.

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>>9256309
>be freshman in college, first week of first semester
>only book i've ever read outside of high school was Infinite Jest, I never read any real literature. I was not aware it was regarded as such a meme book in the literary world. I genuinely thought it was the #1 greatest book ever written, and I only read like 3 books, 4 if you count that i read IJ twice.
>i would talk about it at parties with girls.
>i would bring it up in my english lit class, question why it isn't on the syllabus, i'd call out, interrupt the class. i'd go to office hours and try to bring it up to my instructor in front of the other graduate research assistants and they all just looked at me like i was insane
>no matter what the topic was in any essay, i'd connect it to IJ somehow, mainly because I viewed literature as 99% Infinite Jest and 1% people making poor attempts to create something as good (meanwhile having zero points of comparison to IJ)
>my breaking point was when i attended a seminar from some famous lit professor. he said something along the lines of Infinite Jest being good, and everyone laughed, and he smiled, as if he was sarcastic and I was really confused.
>i straight up interrupted him and asked "um why was that funny?"
>i saw a few of the grad research assistants from office hours stifling their laughter, i felt something was up
>speaker says "well it's a good book but the people who rave about it only do so because they've never read much else, like upper class white kids."
>fuming i say "that's not true at all"
>speaker says "if you rave about it, have you even read Pretentious Angst by Ernest Milton?"
>i blindly respond "of course i have, it's a classic"
>the entire room bursts into booming laughter
>i look around completely dumbfounded
>after 30 seconds of loud laughter which felt like an eternity, i'm beat red, speaker says "if you're still confused, that's neither a real book nor author, case in point."
>i storm out, switch majors the next day
>4 years later, senior year, at a bar talking to a qt3.14, she says she's an english major, i'm a marketing major, i bust her balls for not having any job security (100% taking out years of my STEM roommate busting MY balls about job security)
>her friend arrives, also an english major
>"oh i remember you, you're the Infinite Jest guy!"
>she tells her friend the story about the seminar and what i'd do in freshman lit class
>qt3.14 says "and now you're a marketing major, lecturing me about job security and commercialism. you've literally become the very thing Wallace criticizes in Infinite Jest", and they both laugh
>i storm out
>creates 2 year existential crisis i've yet to recover from

>>9259378
I enjoyed reading this, anon. Did this actually happen?

>>9258883
Why have you read so shallowly into meme history, anon?
It's Franzen's New Yorker article.