Alone, Together: The Short Works of David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was uniquely prophetic in his ability to diagnose the ills of America and where they were headed in the early 2000s. Toxic masculinity, mental illness, authenticity, empathy, and dopamine exhaustion though media are constants in his work and are best showcased through his short fiction and nonfiction. Probably best known for Infinite Jest, Wallace’s style changed substantially in the middle of his career away from the manic hyperreality of his early work into a more considered, humanistic, and philosophical approach, which is where our delve picks him up.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, published in 1999, was Wallace’s answer to winning the MacArthur “Genius” Grant and in the short stories contains perhaps the most powerful description of contemporary depression in literature. It features a throughline of the titular brief interviews by an unknown interviewer asking men about their relationships with women. They are shocking, sad, and strange. Something to do with Paying Attention is taken from his final unfinished work, The Pale King, and can be considered its central throughline narrative – in fact, Wallace considered publishing it on its own before he took his own life. Wallace became increasingly interested in boredom as a state of being and obsessed with the IRS as a microcosm of duty and that modern tedium. He went so far as to take tax prep classes at a local community college to get inspiration for the novel.

Wallace is a study in dualisms: he certainly dealt with demons throughout his life that isolated and ultimately destroyed him, yet his writing is almost wholly about connection.A fter he passed away, a number of hagiographies were written as if he was a man uniquely blessed with “truth.” Where does the writer Wallace and the narrator Wallace begin and end? In some ways, Wallace is a perfect postmodernist: Real and fake, honest and deceitful, broken and whole. He was, maybe, the most difficult to understand creature of all: human.

Required text:
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men: Stories by David Foster Wallace
Something to do with Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace
All other texts provided by instructor.

Reading schedule: (subject to change)
Week 1: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, pp. 1-70, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” (from A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again).
Week 2: Brief Interviews, pp. 70-160, “Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think” (from Consider the Lobster)
Week 3: Brief Interviews, pp. 160-234
Week 4 Brief Interviews, pp. 235-321, “Big Red Son” (from Consider the Lobster)
Week 5: Something to do with Paying Attention,pp. 1-77
Week 6: Something to do, pp. 78-136, “Backbone” from The New Yorker, “This is Water” (the 2005 Kenyon Commencement address).

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.

Liaison position
Every in-person class and seminar at Literary Arts has one liaison position. Liaisons perform specific duties for each class meeting. If you are a liaison for a class or seminar, the full amount of your tuition is covered by Literary Arts.

Apply here for the liaison position.