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There are literary heroes, and he was one. On Friday, David Foster Wallace hung himself. He was 46 years old.
From the archives:
1996: The Phoenix's Anne Marie Donahue interviewed the then 36-year-old Wallace, in town to promote Infinite Jest, which made him a literary star. "The less I'm being watched, the more I can watch, ...
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Four women from Harvard Book Store stood at the back of the Brattle Theater last night, before the crowds arrived, giggling. “I have the biggest literary crush on him,” said one, referring to the evening’s reader — MIT professor, Boston Review fiction editor, Pulitzer Prize-winner — Junot Díaz, a man, it appeared from listening to the women’s ...
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Jason Brown’s short story collection, Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work — chilling, outstanding, November of mood — takes place in a fictional Maine town called Vaughn. And this is not the Maine of lobster and lighthouses. This is no Vacationland. His characters — loggers, drinkers, jealous siblings, high schoolers, angry widows, ...
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Christian Lander, creator of the hugely popular blog Stuff White People Like, and now the author of a book by the same name (coyly subtitled “The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions”), pulled an overflow crowd to Harvard Book Store last night for his first appearance on his book tour. Poised, self-deprecating, and very fucking ...
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Ketman
All-time Best Band: Pixies
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Jonathan Richman
Best New Band: Ketman
No offense, everyone who lives here that has ever been in a band, but the PIXIES were, are, and will always be better than you. This, being fact, remains out of your control, but take heart: in many ways, it’s out of their hands, too, so wild ...
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Wye Oak
All-Time Best Band: The Orioles
All-Time Best Solo Artist: John Fahey
Best New Band: Wye Oak
If you or your band mates have ever issued a doo-wop or any variant thereof (be it a shoo-wop, bah-bop, or, God forbid, mmm-bop), you owe props to the ORIOLES. Sonny Til’s trill was part warble, part croon and, well, all Sonny. | The ...
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Big Blood
All-Time Best Band: Rustic Overtones
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Juliana Hatfield
Best New Band: Big Blood
A jam band with the stick removed from its ass, RUSTIC OVERTONES explore the terrain between roots rock, jazz, and funk. (Question for haters: do ya think Naughty by Nature or David Bowie would have worked with Dave Matthews?) ...
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Bipolaroid
All-Time Best Band: The Meters
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Jerry Lee Lewis
Best New Band: Bipolaroid
Long the house band for what is arguably America’s funnest, drunk-assiest city, New Orleans’s METERS fed us funkified instrumentals in what could be called “flower-child soul.” They played with Paul McCartney (in his pre-suck ...
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Wax Fang
All-Time Best Band: Slint
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Will Oldham
Best New Band: Wax Fang
Okay, so our admittedly hip winners here may reveal which side our proverbial Kentucky biscuit is buttered on, but come on. This is Boston. We love stuff from down South, provided it doesn’t make us feel like we’re down South. Take SLINT, ...
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Ad Astra Per Aspera
All-Time Best Band: The Embarrassment
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Charlie “Bird” Parker
Best New Band: Ad Astra Per Aspera
Posthumously covered by Shonen Knife and celebrated by no less a knowing curmudgeon than Robert Christgau as a “great lost American band,” the EMBARRASSMENT were Kansas’s answer to the Modern Lovers, ...
