Thursday, July 21, 2011

DFW as a character in a novel

Willa Paskin at New York reports on a character in a new Jeffrey Eugenides novel who strongly resembles David Foster Wallace. The character in question, Leonard Baskin, is a double major (biology and philosophy) who chews tobacco and wears a bandanna. There are several more points of resemblance. Paskin notes that

the similarities are so iconically David Foster Wallace (a bandanna and chew are not common accoutrements) that Eugenides, who did not have a well-known or documented friendship with Foster Wallace, must intentionally be calling him to mind.
DFW in someone else’s fiction: I guess it was bound to happen.

Here in east-central Illinois, bandannas and chew are indeed common accouchamacallems, though they might not always be acknowledged as such.

Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)

[Like Hal Incandenza in Infinite Jest, Wallace (not Foster Wallace) dipped (not chewed) Kodiak.]

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