In early 1996, journalist and author Lipsky (Absolutely American) joined
then-34-year-old David Foster Wallace on the last leg of his tour for
Infinite Jest (Wallace's breakout novel) for a Rolling Stone interview
that would never be published. Here, he presents the transcript of that
interview, a rollicking dialogue that Lipsky sets up with a few brief
but revealing essays, one of which touches upon Wallace's 2008 suicide
and the reaction of those close to him (including his sister and his
good friend Jonathan Franzen). Over the course of their five day road
trip, Wallace discusses everything from teaching to his stay in a mental
hospital to television to modern poetry to love and, of course, writing.
Ironically, given Wallace's repeated concern that Lipsky would end up
with an incomplete or misleading portrait, the format produces the kind
of tangible, immediate, honest sense of its subject that a formal
biography might labor for. Even as they capture a very earthbound
encounter, full of common road-trip detours, Wallace's voice and i
nsight have an eerie impact not entirely related to his tragic death;
as Lipsky notes, Wallace "was such a natural writer he could talk in
prose." Among the repetitions, ellipses, and fumbling that make Wallace's
patter so compellingly real are observations as elegant and insightful
as his essays. Prescient, funny, earnest, and honest, this lost
conversation is far from an opportunistic piece of literary ephemera,
but a candid and fascinating glimpse into a uniquely brilliant and very
troubled writer.

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