Infinite Jest

I know I was going to write about writing all week, but I have to share this link to the David Foster Wallace’s papers which were just acquired by the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin. I know it’s good that these papers are now part of an estimable collection, and that researchers and scholars have access to them. But if you just look at the few examples that are shown in the release, tell me if your heart doesn’t break. What can be more private, more intimate than the notes a man jots in the margins of his books, the words he circles in a dictionary? It’s strange, but I don’t have the same feeling about diaries; I think most writers hope that someday they are found and read. It’s as if they are written for an imaginary audience even if unconsciously. But there is something different about the papers — the manic marginalia, notes scrawled on every space of an inside jacket, drafts revised within an inch of their lives — this all feels too close. When a writer leaves behind a book, he has signed off on it. But the notes he leaves in the margins are a trail of brilliant crumbs. They are a living conversation. If you have moment, look through the pages the museum has displayed.  I can’t think of anything more beautiful than a writer so deeply engaged in his work. I could weep.