Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace [Hardcover]

D. T. Max (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 30, 2012

The first biography of the most influential writer of his generation, David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his era, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

Since his untimely death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become more than the quintessential writer for his time—he has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age.  In the end, as Max shows us, what is most interesting about Wallace is not just what he wrote but how he taught us all to live. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes, this portrait of an extraordinarily gifted writer is as fresh as news, as intimate as a love note, as painful as a goodbye.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Visit Amazon's books blog, Omnivoracious.com, to read an exclusive essay from D.T. Max: "5 Things You Didn't Know About David Foster Wallace - But Should."

From Booklist

*Starred Review* As endlessly interpretable writer David Foster Wallace’s first biographer, New Yorker staff writer Max seeks to be foundational. His straight-ahead approach corrals the commotion of Wallace’s struggle with his epic artistic visions, substance abuse, and severe depression into an involving, fast-flowing narrative rich in facts and free of speculation. So seamless is Max’s reportage that one loses sight of how many sources he consulted to fully chronicle young Illinoisan Wallace’s inherited passions for language and philosophy, spectacular academic achievements, self-medication with pot and alcohol, chaotic relationships, teaching gigs, and sustaining alliances with his agent, editors, guiding light Don DeLillo, and friend Jonathan Franzen. Max presents meticulous coverage of off-the-charts-smart Wallace’s literary intentions and innovations, from his impressive early first book, The Broom of the System (1987), to his nonfiction escapades to the bludgeoning demands of his masterpiece, Infinite Jest (1996), and The Pale King (2011), the brilliant novel this MacArthur fellow left unfinished when he committed suicide, in 2008, at age 46, at which point this biography abruptly concludes. Max’s thorough account of Wallace’s breakdowns, stints in psychiatric institutions and a halfway house, and profound reliance on support groups reveals the conviction and risks inherent in Wallace’s mission to write with integrity, humor, sincerity, and artistic incandescence and to make “the head throb heartlike.” --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (August 30, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670025925
• ISBN-13: 978-0670025923
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Tenderly wrought, with integrity and authenticity September 12, 2012

By switterbug TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

All my adult reading life, I waited for a young contemporary writer to transport me to the prose-rich playgrounds of Nabokov and Pynchon. ADA and GRAVITY'S RAINBOW were my torches, but they were, arguably, emotionally sterile. When I read INFINITE JEST ten years ago, I knew I had finally found an author who, besides giving words an elastic, carbonated buoyancy, was a vigorously palpable storyteller, altogether tragic and heartbreaking.

I remember the exact moment when I heard that Wallace took his life (as I suspect did everyone who is reading this book, who read DFW before his death). It was like a brother or best friend had died. He was my rock star--my John Lennon, Peter Gabriel, and Bob Dylan all rolled up into literature. He wasn't yesterday's insurgent Kurt Cobain, he was today's voice--the insurrectionist of the insurrection, the anti-ironist and seeker of exigent summits.

D.T. Max evinces respect, compassion, and objectivity toward this now lionized author he has never met, in his biography assembled from the contributions of friends, family, lovers, AA comrades, colleagues, fellow writers, and epistolary confidants.

"Fiction is what it's like to be a f*****g human being," Wallace said, and Max shows us the utter turbulence of this writer's life, a man who lived inveterately with the howling fantods (a phrase from his mother, the grammarian, used potently in INFINITE JEST).

David was a depressed, addicted, chaotic genius, a man who felt that he never lived up to his lofty ambitions as a writer or a person. He was both fascinated and repulsed by the TV culture and how media hijacks and propagandizes public and private minds--his constant themes in his essays, short stories, and of course, IJ....

As many know, he was hospitalized several times for breakdowns and overdoses, and struggled with pervasive suicidal ideation. Max does a virtuous job of giving the reader a candid view of the complex nature of DFW; the generously endowed writer was often a captious, violent, and tormented soul. He was also a passionate, outstanding teacher, and a patron to his companions in AA. Moreover, he was an enthusiastic dog lover, especially drawn to dogs with an abusive past.

The parts of the book that describe Wallace's years writing INFINITE JEST were not just revealing, but like a fourth wall nakedly exposed. Max captures the line between author and material with authenticity and revelation. It is almost surreal, as Max brought me back to the narrative of IJ while manifesting Wallace's actual art and pain of writing it. I don't want to spoil it for readers by dropping tidbits of information--reading about it is thrilling and gripping, the most page-turning part of the book.

The letters Wallace wrote to Franzen, DeLillo, Costello, and his editor, Michael Pietsch, at Little, Brown, and Company, (and many others), will prickle the skin of any DFW aficionado. He was self-conscious, and self-conscious about being self-conscious, and communicated that in his letters.

"I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am...self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests...but then I countenance the fact here at least here I am worrying about it; so then I feel better about myself...but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to imagined Others...I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am--so where does that put me."

This book is a valuable companion to David Lipsky's journalistic book, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF, a biography of Lipsky's five days spent with Wallace on his IJ book tour. It is hard to compare them, as Lipsky's is an echo and interpretation of his actual time with DFW, and this book is compiled from sources outside of the biographer. Both have poignant insight into the ephemeral but perennial figure of Wallace.

I award four stars, rather than five, although the quality of writing and extensive research is first-rate (despite being almost devoid of familial testimony, and despite errors that I think are typesetting errors, not copy-editing errors). It's personal. Something is missing, some essence that cannot be filled by a biographer, or hasn't yet-- the unnameable, soulful reflectiveness that I ache for. The closest way to that is through the Harry Ransom Center, which is fortunately only a few miles from my home, which houses David Foster Wallace's entire archive at hand. You can feel the pages while you read what he wrote, with just a slip of a glove separating you from his words.

There is something about Wallace fans--it is as if we are all in the same karass, isn't it? But Wallace wanted to relate to us on a cosmic scale, not like an exclusive club, yet he appeals to only select (not elite, but select) readers. If you become a lover of Wallace's work, you feel almost mystically connected to all other lovers of his oeuvre, and however fantastical a presumption, we also feel connected to Wallace, the person. It is apparent that D.T. Max understands this, and that he is bonded to Wallace, also. That is why (I think) he wrote this bio, about the ghost of David, who keeps on penetrating our literary dreams. Read more ›

45 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, Hard to put down. September 4, 2012

By Heather

Format:Hardcover

I found this biography to be compelling, well written and meticulously researched by D.T. Max. There are so many intimate details about David Foster Wallace's life that it was like reading personal journals. I thought that the author remained for the most part nonjudgemental and objective.
There were two areas that I found not clearly explained or explored. One was Wallace's relationship with his Mother. The second was Wallace's relationship with the writer Mary Karr. The level of rage allegedly exhibited by Wallace towards Mary Karr despite the fact that he is clean, sober and on antidepressants is baffling to me. Did he really try to throw Mary Karr out of a moving vehicle? It is one bit of information that without a police report and witnesses I felt could have been left out of the story.
The biography is well paced. Although I knew at the beginning that David Foster Wallace would commit suicide, I did not know what event(s) would push him over the edge. Without giving away the final scenes of the book, it was not what I expected.
Writers, people in recovery, people familiar with severe depression and those who have admired David Foster Wallace's work, including countless students he taught over the years will glean much insight from this biography. Wallace's wisdom grew with his sobriety. One cannot help but like him and feel great compassion towards him. It made me wish I had known him and had the opportunity to take one of his courses.
This is one of the best biographies I have ever read.
Note to D.T. Max: In your footnotes, Chapter 5, 26. It should read "Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink." We alcoholics could never stop with just one.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Workmanlike First Biography of Tragic Author of "Infinite Jest." October 21, 2012

By Douglas McIntyre

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

D.T. Max has written the first full length biography of the talented and tragically doomed writer, David Foster Wallace. The book fills in a lot of biographical data, the gypsy-like path Wallace took across the country from his New England birth, middle-west childhood, back to New England for college, Arizona for graduate work, and ultimately Pomona, California where he met his sad end.

What's missing is any insight into the most important relationships in Wallace's life, his complex love/hate with his mother, sister and father, a man who comes off as distant, but possibly because Max has almost nothing to say about him. Max describes a happy and functional family and then reverses course in a paragraph, without explaining how this happy family was torn apart by divorce, with Wallace's mother moving out of the house for a year.

This may be the result of limited access to the Wallace family, but it leaves a lot of material for a future biographer.

"Every Love Story is a Ghost Story" is loaded with pedantic discussions of modernism and post-modernism and other arcane academic pursuits. What this reader wanted was more flesh and blood living. It reads more like journalism than biography.

As a fan of DFW I appreciate Max's effort to tell his story but suspect a more insightful biography awaits us.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Bio That Delivers (w/ 2 small objections) December 10, 2012

By Mrs. Wendell

Format:Hardcover

Biographies of famous people aspire to insightfulness. They often end up becoming workmanlike as the story catches up to information we already know. That's not a criticism. It's probably a necessity for cradle to the grave bios. Walter Isaacson's great "Steve Jobs" bio starts with a blast of fresh information and settles into a march of familiar products: behind-the-scenes with the ipod, itunes, the iphone, the ipad, etc. "Every Story" is workmanlike too, and a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff works well, especially to fans of Infinite Jest and those familiar with Wallace's cagey and fabulist interview persona. Surprising to me was how autobiographical IJ is--something I probably sensed (but naively discounted because Wallace said it wasn't so) and can now confirm. He didn't just create the rehab experience from dropping in on a few Boston AA meetings, as he suggested in interviews. He lived it. Much of Max's biography, to its credit, is unflinching. Wallace could be callous toward women, did insane things for them, slept with an underage girl, supposedly bought a gun to kill one infatuation's husband, tried to kill himself many times, hit rock bottom many times, threw snowballs at kids (when he was a kid), was sometimes a bully and vindictive toward students. One thing that softens the experience of reading about Wallace I think is that we know where we're heading--clinical depression and suicide. We're braced for the worst. And we certainly get it. I have two complaints, or "issues," with Max's biography.... Neither has to do with the overwrought analysis of certain of Wallace's works--as some reviewers chided--Max is a smart guy and wants to stretch his legs; nothing wrong with that, especially when his subject is a preternatural literary legend; or with the speedy treatment of the end (with one tawdry exception), which others have complained about--things fell apart for Wallace pretty quickly and tragically just as he was entering the happiest phase of his life; Max didn't need to overdramatize; the abruptness seems oddly right. No, my two complaints are at best pedestrian and at worst low brow. No. 1: Where are the pictures? Every biography I've ever seen has a picture section (or sections) inserted in different glossy-like paper somewhere around the middle. (I'm not including memoirs, like Hitch-22, which is a different genre). Even Team Of Rivals had pictures! Here, not one. Near the end there's this great description of a picture Wallace and his wife used to announce their marriage showing Wallace jumping in the air and clicking his heals. It sounds charming and unlikely. Would've been nice to have seen. No. 2: Wallace wrote a lot of letters in his life, including multiple suicide notes. Is it too lugubrious to say I'd like to read them--and especially the one that turned out to be true? I'd like to know what the most fabled writer of his generation had to say about why he did it. Was it rambling gibberish? Did the master grammarian have typos in his suicide note? Is it too personal? Yes--but still I'm curious. Read more ›