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Wallace committed suicide on Friday, at the age of 46. He might be remembered as the guy who brought footnotes back (his fiction is full of them), or the person who magnified Thomas Pynchon's reader-reaction paranoia into post-modern mega-epic. He did do those things. But Wallace was also the greatest horror novelist ever. In Infinite Jest a corporation-run unified North America of the near-future (dates have been replaced by sponsor names, such as the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar) is being decimated by a videotape so entertaining that people watch...
...book party for Infinite Jest, I sat, for a moment, next to him. He wasn't talking to anyone and seemed pretty uncomfortable for a guy who was having a party thrown for him. Years later, I reviewed his collection of short stories Oblivion, and foolishly, jealously wrote this: "David Foster Wallace writes so beautifully, is so show-offishly smart and understands the intricacies of human emotion so keenly that a reasonable person can only hope he is terribly unhappy. Which, if this collection of short stories is any indication, he is." For a far better, less embittered, summation...
...Rourke's turn in The Wrestler, also at Toronto. Except that this one is sharper, crueler, way funnier - part parody, part exposé, especially in an eight-minute take of the star in closeup, where Van Damme makes a confession of his personal and career sins, and the tough guy ends up crying. It is the finest, most scab-pulling performance I saw in Toronto, and it should earn JCVD a commercial showcase in the States...
...Ronson, a British guy who wrote a book called The Men Who Stare at Goats, which George Clooney is making into a movie. He's a documentarian, but a really good writer, too. There's a sportswriter called Michael McCambridge who wrote a really great history of the NFL called America's Game. I'd never heard of him till recently. I like Seth Mnookin, who wrote Hard News, a history of the New York Times [during the Jayson Blair...
...Donald Fagen of Steely Dan was probably the best interview. I didn't talk to Gilbert Arenas [of the NBA's Washington Wizards] that much, but he was the greatest subject. Considering I talked to that guy for a total of 12 minutes, it was probably the easiest feature I ever wrote. Of anyone I ever interviewed, Bono loved the process the most - he actually laid down on a couch like he was in a psychiatrist's office and wanted me to ask questions where he could analyze his own iconography. The person who's consistently the best interview...