Charles Bock's report from the University of Arizona David Foster Wallace tribute (The Howling Fantods, May 2009)

TL;DR

The novelist Charles Bock's brief, warm dispatch to the Wallace fan-site The Howling Fantods, written at an airport days after the University of Arizona's May 2009 tribute to Wallace. It is the record of who was actually there: Bock writes "on behalf of Marshall Boswell, Ken Kalfus, Greg Carlisle, Glenn Kenny, Bonnie Nadell, and yours truly," thanking organizers "Aurelie and Michael." Two documentary facts matter most. Bock confirms the whole weekend was filmed for web upload — which is the provenance of the tribute's surviving audio — and reports a surprise from the panels: a first-person account, from one of Wallace's old MFA classmates, of the real-life source material behind the story he cites as "Girl With The Curious Hair." The post advances no reading of Infinite Jest.

Key claims

• The roster. Bock signs off "on behalf of Marshall Boswell, Ken Kalfus, Greg Carlisle, Glenn Kenny, Bonnie Nadell, and yours truly" (yours truly = Bock), and thanks the organizers, "Aurelie and Michael," at the University of Arizona.
• The three sessions, in Bock's own gloss: "the panel Reading DFW, the panel DFW and his Influences, and then the evening event where different writers read from the work of DFW". He rates the panels and readings "Smart and insightful and caring and funny."
• Filmed for the web. Bock reports that essentially the whole weekend was filmed — "all of it has been filmed" — and would soon be uploaded (minus, he jokes, the parts where he legally slandered a literary critic or two).
• The Girl With Curious Hair surprise. Among the panels' highlights was "a first person account from one of" Wallace's "old MFA classmates about the source material for the famous short story" Bock cites as "Girl With The Curious Hair" — a story Bock, a well-informed Wallace reader, says he had never heard, and thought no one else on the panel had either.
• The Sonora Review tribute issue. Bock praises the journal's special double issue: "each side of the SR has its own cover", and "The DFW tribute pages are delineated by black marks on the bottom." He closes that "Aurelie and Michael and everyone at the U of A did one fantastic job."

Themes

Institutional memory of the Arizona MFA years; the Sonora Review connection; reception and community around Wallace's work. No Infinite Jest interpretation is engaged.

Cross-references

• voca-arizona-poetry-center-dfw-remembrance-2009 — the recorded montage from this event; Bock's roster is the panel from which that montage's unlabeled voices are drawn, and the filming he reports is the recording's provenance.
• voca-event-page-2009 — the Poetry Center's own listing, which pins the date and session titles Bock recounts.
• girl-with-curious-hair — the story whose source material a Wallace MFA classmate recounted at the tribute.
• gc-ep046-marshall-boswell and dtmax-every-love-story — panelists and the fuller Tucson-years record.

Notable passages

• "on behalf of Marshall Boswell, Ken Kalfus, Greg Carlisle, Glenn Kenny, Bonnie Nadell, and yours truly"
• "all of it has been filmed"
• "the panel Reading DFW, the panel DFW and his Influences, and then the evening event where different writers read from the work of DFW"
• "each side of the SR has its own cover." "The DFW tribute pages are delineated by black marks on the bottom."
• "Aurelie and Michael and everyone at the U of A did one fantastic job."