262 “Most of my own,” from a letter to David Markson, November 3, 2000.
262 “did a pretty good,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, April 26, 2001.
262 “Highlights” and “gearing up for” from a postcard to Don DeLillo, August 20, 2001.
263, 264 “It’s been a couple,” “two periods,” and “I apologize in advance,” from a letter to Michael Pietsch, October 13, 2001.
264 “There’s the whole,” from an interview with Laura Miller, in Salon.com, March 9, 1996.
264, 265 “A genre is hardening” and “vitality at all costs,” from James Wood, “Human, All Too Inhuman,” The New Republic, August 30, 2001.
265 “the traditional galleys-and-proofs,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, April 28, 2000.
265 “I struggle a great deal,” from a letter to Rich C., August 24, 2000.
267 “The students actually,” from a letter to Dale Peterson, March 2, 2001.
267 “home,” from a letter to Brad Morrow, April 31, 2001.
Chapter 8: The Pale King
268 “What kind of zip code,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, July 3, 2002.
268 “yellow snow,” from a letter to Brad Morrow, March 21, 2003.
269 “closest thing to a child,” from a letter to Brad Morrow, December 1, 2002.
270 “much less touristy or vulgar” and “pretty much hopelessly in love,” from a letter to Brad Morrow, January 6, 2003.
270 “land of 1600 SAT scores,” from a letter to Brad Morrow, April 30, 2001.
270 “We’re hiring you,” from Paul Brownfield, Literary Star Out of Limelight, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2003.
270 “I have a lottery-prize-type gig,” from an interview with Dave Eggers, The Believer, November 2003.
272 “own eccentric researching,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, April 4, 2003.
272 “enormous, pungent and extremely well-marketed,” from “Consider the Lobster,” Gourmet, August 2004.
273 “My audit group’s,” from The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011) at 387.
273 “I…did not think,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, circa November 2002.
274 “I’m doing a book about math!” from a postcard to Steven Moore, January 13, 2002.
274 “wretched math book,” from a postcard to Don DeLillo, July 3, 2002.
274 “both the math-editor,” from a postcard to Don DeLillo, September 1, 2002.
274 “The galleys for,” from a postcard to Don DeLillo, June 4, 2003.
276 “refreshingly conversational style,” from John Allen Paulos, “Electrified Paté,” American Scholar, Winter 2004.
276 “One wonders exactly whom,” from David Papineau, “Room for One More,” New York Times, November 16, 2003.
276 “mathematicians will view it,” from Rudy Rucker, “Infinite Confusion,” Science, January 16, 2004.
276 “Dr. Ragde,” from a letter to Jesse Cohen, circa early 2004.
276 “the best of the stuff,” from a letter to Michael Pietsch, October 13, 2001.
277 “unhappy, complicated, intellectualizing men,” from a letter by Michael Pietsch, November 28, 2001.
277 “I don’t feel much like an editor here,” from a letter by Michael Pietsch, October 3, 2003.
279 “only the tiniest tasting,” from Michiko Kakutani, “Life Distilled from Details, Infinite and Infinitesimal,” New York Times, June 1, 2004.
280 “forest-killing manuscript,” from Steve E. Alford, “Wordy Wallace Has New Stories,” Houston Chronicle, June 13, 2004.
280 “Wallace has the right,” Wyatt Mason, “Don’t like it? You don’t have to play,” London Review of Books, November 18, 2004.
281 “Karen is rehabbing,” and “It’s a dark time,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, July 16, 2005.
282 “No more nymphs,” from a postcard to Steven Moore, February 2, 2002.
282 “I hear Kath[y],” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, February 11, 2004.
282 “I am more and more,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, February 18, 2004.
283 “shitty motel,” from a letter to Don DeLillo, January 26, 2005.
283-84 “It’s just this” and “Basically — I empathize,” from a letter to Weston Cutter, un dated.
284 “I’m poised, ready,” from Brownfield, “Literary Star, Out of the Limelight.”
285 “You’re special,” from a letter to Evan Wright, October 17, 1999.
286 “I allow myself,” from a letter to Erica Neely, July 3, 2001.
288 “David Foster Wallace’s 1996 opus,” from Chad Harbach, “David Foster Wallace!” n+1, Issue 1, July 2004.
289 “I’m in awe,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, November 18, 2005.
289 “I too have,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, January 3, 2006.
289 “DeLillo’s thing about,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, January 29, 2006.
289 “I go back and forth,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, June 6, 2007.
290 “It’s…part-Rottweiler,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, September 26, 2006.
291 “It’s absolutely wonderful,” from a letter by Christopher Hamacher, March 7, 2006.
291 “Is it OK,” from a letter to Christopher Hamacher, February 22, 2006
291 “You’re not going,” from a letter by Christopher Hamacher, July 8, 2006.
291 “I find that although,” from a letter by Stephen Lacy to Wallace, September 5, 2005.
292 “Tax law is,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, April 22, 2007.
293 “Work is like,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, December 1, 2006.
292 “My own terror,” from an email to Deborah Treisman, January 12, 2007.
294 “revelations revelationize,” from a letter to Gerry Howard, January 16, 1986.
295 “Digital=abstract=sterile,” from a postcard to Don DeLillo, dated July 21, 2000.
295 “The individual parts,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, April 23, 2007.
295 “I am, at present,” from the Eggers interview.
296 “forgetting about writing,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, April 16, 2007.
296 “What are envied,” from an unpublished interview with Didier Jacob. Le Nouvel Observateur, August 2005 (unpublished).
296 “to put some kind,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, April 20, 2007.
296 “I could take a couple of years,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, April 20, 2007.
297 “Let me noodle hard,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, April 23, 2007.
297 “I feel a bit ‘peculiar’,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, August 4, 2007.
297 “disabling nausea/fatigue,” from an email to Jonathan Franzen, September 20, 2007.
298 “Upside: I’ve lost,” from an email to Bonnie Nadell, December 4, 2007.
298 “I got really,” from a letter to Tom Bissell, February 16, 2008.
299 “We’ll have big fun” and “I am not all right,” quoted in David Lipsky, “The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace,” Rolling Stone, October 30, 2008.
NOTES
312 “None of the men,” quoted in Lance Olsen, “Termite Art, or Wallace’s Wittgenstein,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1993.
313 “passionately interested,” from a letter to Richard Elman, circa September 23, 1985.
313 “there is nothing outside the text,” from Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) at 163.