Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace

I read Infinite Jest 14 years ago - at the height of the hype. Publication of Lipsky's book reminded me of how much I enjoyed IJ and made me want to go back to it. But before returning to IJ I read Lipsky's book. As he (Lipsky) catalogs, DFW was essentially fresh off of having written, rewritten, retyped, rewritten, retyped, etc., IJ. All the themes and the overarching objectives of writing this book were still fresh in his mind (though not so much the specifics of, say, the chronology of the Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad). Now that I'm back into IJ I appreciate the work Lipsky did to bring this to us. I would strongly recommend this (along with, "E unibus pluram: television and U.S. fiction") to anyone who's ready to continue their infinite jest (or perhaps start on the road trip that does not end). My two favorite DFW quotes from this book: [Why he prefers crazy women; and feels he's ended up with lots of crazy ones...] "Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move." "...[A]rt finds a way to take care of you.... Kind of despite itself."

David Foster Wallace was the premiere young writer when Infinite Jest debuted in the early 90s. Athletic and alternative, he was the unlikely prototype for a a writer, but his genius and humor endeared. David Lipsky had the fortune to escort Wallace on the last leg of his book tour to better know the genius. Lipsky finds a shy Midwesterner, uncomfortable with his fame, and yet still with some innocence and wonder. Wallace is candid, but careful, about topics from his early years, his writing, fame, and his future. Wallace can speak a little above my head at times, but he is still a very relatable person. This is a fascinating book to get to know a man who was really coming into his own after years of struggle with a very postmodern, complex, triumphant book. This book makes me want to tackle all of his work, and get to know the work that influenced him as well. Wallace fans will not be let down. Highly recommended.

Just finished reading this book at the beach and I had a lot of the reviewers' comments swirling in the back of my mind as I read it. First off, it is hard to give a book like this a rating at all. The transcript isn't really a crafted piece of artwork up for evaluation. Aside from Lipsky's own internal comments, the book details the road-trip exactly as it happened (apart from anything Lipsky decided to cut out). As it were, if you want to peer inside the enigma that is David Foster Wallace, this is an excellent book for you. Without giving away too much, DFW and Lipsky's interactions are at times annoying - both authors have their own distinct agendas (i.e. Lipsky probes David with typical, young journalistic questions intent upon finding out who the real DFW is. And DFW, reeling and stressed as he finishes the last leg of his book tour and, the unstable artist that he is, obsessive over the paradoxical good and bad sides of fame and media attention, often condescend's Lipsky's questions before answering them sometimes under the guise of an artificial "celebrity" self and sometimes in complete honesty). Nonetheless, this is what is so fascinating about DFW - his dual personality and divided self. Rather than portray some kind fake image as most celebrities this day-in-age do, he admits his human shortcomings and over self-consciousness. More important, his musings on the state of American culture, society, music, and politics are often - in true DFW fashion - both intellectually insightful and funny at the same time. In the Afterward section, Lipsky does a fine job detailing DFW's life, the emotional walls put up by both during the interview (as two budding young writers brandishing their egos), as well as the tragic ending to the story that we all know. All in all, if you like Lipsky, if you like DFW, then this book - "transcript" - will surly not disappoint.

Probably the biggest question that you, someone who at least must have a passing interest in David Foster Wallace to be visiting this page, would like answered about this book is: does it deliver the goods? The book is billed as a conversation between the late David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky, a Rolling Stone journalist and novelist. Is it worth reading? I would enthusiastically say yes, even if you haven't cracked Infinite Jest, or finished Consider The Lobster. It's pretty true that you can get a good sense of the sort of person Wallace is by reading his work, but the book gets across a lot of new detail and stuff I wasn't aware of. The conversation is frequently engrossing, and it covers incredibly diverse terrain, including Wallace's very complicated relationship with fame, his interesting thoughts about pop culture and the future of entertainment and books (which are actually pretty optimistic, considering the sheer tonnage of writerly sentiment about the end of civilization), as well as a lot of stuff about Infinite Jest, then brand new, and what he thought the main points of the book were, with some argumentation and elaboration with the author about them. There's a lot about Wallace's drug problems and depression in here, which cannot help but be more than a little sad. Wallace sincerely believed that people just can't ever be completely happy, that there's a restless part of us that can never be satisfied, and while that is a debatable notion I do think it turned out to be true in his case. Lipsky tactfully points out some hints of Wallace's future trajectory along the way, but one can kind of sense that despite the zeal that Wallace had for his work and for quite a bit of life, that the guy had a lot of issues and that writing never completely purged them. Still, the point of the book isn't to pity Wallace. Through the conversation, Wallace comes across as the person one would expect him to: exuberant, highly intelligent, open, introspective, incredibly silly at times, but all in all a good guy and a real iconoclast. Lipsky makes the incredibly accurate observation that he had never lost touch childhood, and that definitely comes across in the book, as he is capable both of wild-eyed wonder and great anxiety. Just a great person to hang out with for a few hours. Lipsky keeps things moving briskly, and the book is a highly addictive read. I would seriously recommend the book if you're interested in DFW, or, you know, good books.

David Lipsky followed David Foster Wallace around the midwest for five days in 1996, his tape recorder running for nearly the entire time. Alas, the ROLLING STONE article that Lipsky was interviewing Wallace for never ran...but Lipsky held onto the tapes. Now, 14 years later, the tapes have been transcribed verbatim (including many "off the record" comments) and published as this 300+ page book. It's a true feast for the David Foster Wallace fan. Lipsky and Wallace talk about writers as varied as Stephen King, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and John Updike. They sit in the front of a theater to catch the action flick BROKEN ARROW. Wallace gives a reading at a bookstore for INFINITE JEST, his recently released masterpiece, and he's ambushed with an excruciating question and answer session (his least favorite part of readings). Lipsky and Wallace talk about Wallace's rumored drug abuse (just rumors, for the most part) and depression. Of course, every word takes on new, haunting meaning through the lens of Wallace's suicide, which Lipsky addresses in the afterward. To be a fly-on-the-wall for their five-day conversation is an amazing experience. Lipsky makes minimal contributions to the text--fragmentary questions and explanations--that only give the reader the barest sense of the settings. Could the book have worked a little better as a proper biography of Wallace, with the interview cut up? That was my first thought when I started reading it. But I think that Lipsky and his editor made the right choice: ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF is an intimate portrait told mostly in Wallace's own words. It's as close to an autobiography as we'll ever get, and that's where its power comes from. It deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Wallace fan.