Friday Feed

Some suggestions to satisfy your reading, viewing and listening appetite throughout the weekend…

DFW | Following the suicide of David Foster Wallace—46-year-old author of, most famously the behemoth “Infinite Jest”—last September, the appreciations and recollections and tributes spilled on to the pages of just about every periodical or Web site imaginable within what seemed like only minutes, appearing for weeks and months thereafter. Wallace, his mind and work, is again—and probably always will be—the topic of much discussion. Tom Bissell writes in today’s New York Times about, mainly, Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005 (here, here and here), a speech which has now been published as a book titled “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” Bissell, in his essay “Great and Terrible Truths,” writes that probably would never have published it, but he adds that the transcription of the speech “must now rank high among the most widely read things Wallace ever wrote.” It won’t, however, be the last of Wallace’s work that will be read. In early March, the New Yorker published an excerpt of his unfinished third novel, which he began in 2000 and was one-third complete in 2007, that will be published in 2010 as “The Pale King.” The excerpt accompanied D.T. Max’s massive (and terrific) profile of Wallace—a heart-rending, illuminating portrait of the writer and the man. Even without the posthumous publication of a speech and an unfinished novel, he’s left us with much to read and digest: his books, scores of articles (check out his pieces for Harper’s Magazine and his widely praised profile of tennis magician Roger Federer for the Times’ Play Magazine), interviews, essays, and stories—to highlight but a few. Watch Wallace talk with Charlie Rose in 1997:

SUR-PRIZE | For the first time in 35 years, the Pulitzer Prize for criticism has been awarded to an art critic. Holland Cotter of the New York Times received the honor Monday for, according to the Pulitzer committee’s citation, “his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.” The last “full-time” art critic to win the Pulitzer for criticism was the late Emily Genauer of Newsday won in 1974. Read Cotter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning (and other) articles by visiting his Times Topics page.

MONA LISA & GAY TALESE | OK, I discovered this one (hold your breath!) in print. The latest issue of Vanity Fair features an excerpt of an intriguing new book, “The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection” by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. While you’re there, be sure not to miss Gay Talese reading from the new afterword of the reissued paperback of his 1981 nonfiction classic, “Thy Neighbor’s Wife”, as he “explains why the publication of the book marked the best—and worst—year of his life as a writer.” As an aside, and another recommendation, Talese’s profile of Frank Sinatra, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” published by Esquire in 1966 remains the most celebrated  (with good reason) magazine story ever printed. Here Talese chats with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta following the publication of “A Writer’s Life”.