I first noticed the fake review in 2005, when one of my students unwittingly cited the review as real research. I had puzzled over it and decided that if I waited long enough, somebody (in Modernism/Modernity circles, in Wallace circles, in DeLillo circles) would come forward and take credit for something I’m sure they thought nobody would be fooled by. Time passed and I forgot about the fake review. Until recently. I’ve done some digging around and discovered that the hoax has gone unnoticed, though the review hasn’t. The review is only ever considered as serious, peer-reviewed research. For example, in addition to my embarrassed student, I’ve found the review cited in several graduate theses, with no acknowledgment that the review is fake. The troubling blindness to contextuality and intertextuality (how could any 20th century Americanist, whether modernist or postmodernist, fail to see the references to perhaps one of the most important novels of the past fifty years) — this troubling blindness on both students and their advisors’ part turns a fun fake review into something much more telling about the state of academia.

'David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and the Littlest Literary Hoax.' Via Fimoculous. (P.S. The story has an update.)

I'll admit, I'm still a little shaken up over the news of David Foster Wallace's suicide, and it's caused me to go back through my archives looking at the last few years of DFW posts.

* An early post looking forward to Oblivion, followed by my review of it, which was more dedicated to the whole parody-footnotes routine than I've ever been, before or since¹.

* My review of Everything and More, his brief history of infinity, which Cosmic Variance points out contains some evocative footnotes in light of his death.

* My review of Consider the Lobster, a review I'd now characterize as "frustrated with the slow pace of his writing." Another barb at the lack-of-timeliness of his McCain book. And I wasn't especially happy with the introduction to his Best American Essays collection, either, nor of the last story of his I read, from the New Yorker.

It's hard to think of another writer that I liked so much by whom I was so often disappointed. I don't quite know what to make of this fact yet. And understanding his suicide as a literary act—the only register in which I have access to it, having never met him—it's hard not to think of it as the final disappointment, the final shutting of the door, the final, declarative proof that I will never get the work from him I thought I wanted.

* David Foster Wallace vs. Proust.

* David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, and some other guy met on the Isle of Capri to talk about language and identity.

* David Foster Wallace on a desert island.

* Interview with The Office's John Krasinki about the film he's made of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

* n+1 wonders to what extent a follow-up to Infinite Jest is was would have even possible.

* When DFW tried to read one of his books aloud for the audiobook.

* Just an interview. But a good one.

* 'Federer as Religion Experience.' Say what you will, the man loved tennis.

* David Foster Wallace Visits the Adult Video News Awards.

* The Kenyon College speech I linked to yesterday.

* True story. As an undergraduate, my friend took a creative writing course from David Foster Wallace at Illinois State University. On the first assignment he turned in, Wallace wrote, “I swear to God if you ever turn in a piece of shit like this to me again I will flunk your ass. I shit you not.” The meaning of this anecdote is open to interpretation, but to me it suggests several things about Wallace's way of relating to others.

* And I've had this Kottke post bookmarked forever for my long-planned second trip through Infinite Jest. Having lost my way through it the first time, I'll still reread it—but not, I'm afraid, as the reader I was the first time.

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¹ or likely ever will be again