Conversations with David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace: A Profile

3 David Foster Wallace: A Profile William R. Katovsky/1987 From Arrival, Summer 1987. © 1987 by William R. Katovsky. Reprinted by permission. David Wallace is kneeling in the hallway, like a golfer lining up a putt. He taps a Marlboro Light on his gray cords, then lights it. Before the cigarette reaches his mouth again, one of his students, a sorority girl, tanned, chunky, with a thick mane of honey-blonde hair, approaches him. “I can’t take class Thursday,” she says. From his vantage point, he’s eyeball to crotch, so he stands up, the cigarette still several inches from his lips. “Can you say that again?” he asks. “I can’t make it on Thursday. I think I’ve come down with bronchitis.” The silver bracelets encircling both wrists jangle, clank unmusically, as she brushes her bangs off her forehead. English 210, Introduction to Writing Fiction, will start shortly. “Yeah, I’ve not been feeling too good myself,” he says. “I just got over viral pneumonia. Everyone seems to be coming down with Valley fever.” “What’s that?” “Valley fever—a fungus in the desert soil that’s airborne.” He coughs. She fidgets, uncertain. She strokes her bangs again. “Will it hurt my grade if I don’t show up for class?” He stares at her, frowning. “I’m s’posed to be at the airport real early the next day to catch a flight to Hawaii.” “Oh.” “It’s a five-in-the-morning flight.” She’s holding a jumbo plastic tumbler filled with a cola. There’s writing on one side of the cup: I’m a material girl— diamonds are a girl’s best friend. “I’m afraid I just don’t understand. You’re going to Hawaii? Talk to me 4 CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID FOSTER WALLACE inside the classroom.” The Marlboro never makes it home to his lips. He pinches it cold and tosses it into the wastebasket as he walks into the room. They talk quietly at his desk while the rest of the class straggles in. Desks are rearranged to form a semicircle. One student erases conjugations of French verbs from the blackboard. It’s mid-March and 85 degrees outside. Most of the students are dressed in shorts, T-shirts, sandals, tank-tops. Tall, pale, reed-thin, with a fledgling beard, David sports a long-sleeved red-striped Brooksgate button-down shirt and partially laced Timberland hunting boots—probably the only such pair in attendance at the University of Arizona. He reads from his green roster book. “Stephanie here?” No answer. “Stephanie hasn’t vanished? Stephanie has red hair?” No answer. “Brandon here?” No answer. “Where is everybody?” Laughter. “Cory here?” “She should be here, she was in my poly-sci class,” offers Material Girl. “Jack here?” “Here.” A murmur of relief washes through the room. “I see George’s AWOL—he’ll get shit.” Twenty students are here, and for the next hour and a half they analyze two short stories written by their classmates. David guides the undergraduate workshop like a seasoned pro, dissecting, explicating, outlining the stories ’ failings and strong points. “When you write fiction,” he explains as part of his critique of a story about a young girl, her uncle, and the evil eye, “you are telling a lie. It’s a game, but you must get the facts straight. The reader doesn’t want to be reminded that it’s a lie. It must be convincing, or the story will never take off in the reader’s mind.” Witty, engaging, thoughtful, and illuminating, David leads his charges through the brambles and thickets of literary theory. With the exception of Material Girl and George, who arrives late and is reprimanded for reading a newspaper, the students are enthralled, lively, paying rapt attention, for when it comes right down to assessing his teaching wizardry, the University of Arizona recently named the twenty-five-year-old instructor Teaching Assistant of the Year. WILLIAM R. KATOVSKY / 1987 5 Towards the end of class, he looks spent, like a race car about to run out of fuel. He fishes a toothpick from his shirt pocket and lets it droop, unmoving , from the left corner of his mouth. A bell in the hallway sputters. “I usually puke my guts out in the bathroom when class ends,” he later admits. We are in the cafeteria. “I guess I’m...