/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13844813]

Did David Foster Wallace ever discuss his writing routine or writing zen mode habits? I've read a lot of his stuff but have never caught an explanation of this particular subject. For a guy who held jobs, socialized, fucked a lot of women, and was generally social, his output was pretty monumental in terms of word count, especially in the 90s before settled in to middle age, got depressed, wrote depressing short story compilations, then necked himself.

[Anonymous No.13844817]

>>13844813
Did David Foster Wallace ever have sex?

[Anonymous No.13844823]

>>13844813
I think he never wrote about zen mode because he cannot even mildly meditate on everything. He always suffered with addiction on every side with stalking and that would be the part of reason why he wrote IJ.

Although I've heard that he read some books about zen, especially Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Apparently he thought it was shit but he quasi-forced to read it because his mom was fan of it?
But no source of this - maybe my mistake

[Anonymous No.13844847]

>>13844823
Didn't mean zen as literal zen, but zen as in the zone.

[Anonymous No.13844855]

>>13844813
>held jobs
Didn't wallace quit every job he ever had Really quickly (outside academia)?

[Anonymous No.13845212]

>>13844855
Didn't he work in academia from his mid 20s on?

[Anonymous No.13845878]

>>13844813
Read Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. Should be on libgen. Early on he would write two drafts longhand, revise typing two or three more drafts. And he would do this for hours at Amherst’s library. Later on, when he was up in Syracuse, he would scribble in notebooks and generally oscillated between intense research and just writing nonstop like a madman, focusing mainly on developing IJ while balancing articles for publication and cobbling excerpts or earlier pieces. And after the success of his nonfiction and IJ he was a little more self concious, his productivity decreased, and he really only buckled down when on sabbatical. Generally, he had a pisspoor diet mostly consisting of junk food, and he alnost always dipped and/or smoked and drank herbal tea.

[Anonymous No.13846114]

>>13844813
William Gass said something to the effect that what is healthy for the writer is healthy for the writing. As >>13845878 explains, Wallace did intense work to write. He did not have a process to endorse and as you could expect disparaged his own methodology, citing IIRC the number of revisions and discarded elements in the wake of anything he liked.

[Anonymous No.13846196]

he wasn't zen.
He took tons of stimulants to write the way he did.

[Anonymous No.13846294]

God, he looks so young. Almost like me. Will I look like those interview screencaps in ten years? I can feel myself aging. Withering. Rotting.

[Anonymous No.13846305]

>>13844813
Hal was just a young DFW, right

[Anonymous No.13846888]

>>13844813
>who is twenty-four years old
Is that supposed to sound impressive? It's not like he was 14 years old. 24 is not young, especially for a published writer. SAD!

[Anonymous No.13846896]

>>13846888
Let's see your catalogue

[Anonymous No.13847256]

>>13845878
If that's the DT Max one, I found it insufferable, unreadable. Didn't know he wrote so much long hand. I did skim the DT Max book and remember some stuff about Wallace mainly using a computer but it's been a while.

[Anonymous No.13848172]

>>13846294
lmao

[Anonymous No.13848190]

>>13844813