IJ study archive

Mark Leyner Remembers David Foster Wallace: 'He Was the Opposite of an Arrogant, Swaggering Person'

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TL;DR

A September 2008 New York Observer memorial in which Mark Leyner — the novelist Wallace had singled out in "E Unibus Pluram" as the emblem of a culture-cancer irony — remembers Wallace warmly days after his suicide. Leyner recalls the 1996 Charlie Rose "Future of American Fiction" panel (Leyner, Franzen, Wallace), the private apology Wallace offered before the taping for his published jabs, and insists he never took the criticism personally. The piece's interpretive value is small and derivative: it re-quotes Wallace's E.U.P. verdicts on Leyner ("a kind of antichrist"; the culture as "a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis") — material the archive already holds in the essay — and adds a reception/biographical layer (that the antagonism was one-directional and that the two were, in person, friendly). It advances no reading of Infinite Jest.

Key claims

  • The Charlie Rose panel. On May 17, 1996, Rose convened Leyner, Franzen, and Wallace to discuss "The Future of American Fiction"; Leyner was then the best-known of the three, Wallace "just coming to prominence for Infinite Jest, his 1,079-page novel." (See the archive's separate note on that broadcast.)
  • Wallace's published critique of Leyner (re-quoted). In "E Unibus Pluram" Wallace called Leyner's My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist "the biggest thing for campus hipsters since The Fountainhead"; in a William Grimes NYT Magazine profile he called Leyner "a kind of antichrist" and said, "He's so into making fun of everything that, reading him, I think of the culture as a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis." (These are the essay/profile positions, surfaced here, not new statements.)
  • The apology and the friendship. Before the Rose taping Wallace apologized; Leyner: "He was so considerate about it." Leyner took no offense — "I never took any of that personally … I never ever felt a tinge of insult about it. David was not capable of that" — and notes Wallace hung Leyner's 1997 Jenny Jones "recovering postmodernist" satire on his office door. "When I was with David, we never had those kinds of conversations … It was always about the work."
  • Leyner and Franzen on Wallace, plainly. Leyner: "He was the opposite of an arrogant, swaggering person." Franzen (quoted from the NYT): Wallace "was a huge talent, our strongest rhetorical writer … He was also as sweet a person as I've ever known and as tormented a person as I've ever known." Leyner on the loss: "What we're losing is someone who saw a kind of profundity in almost everything as a human being and as a citizen and as an artist."

Theories & evidence

The piece advances no reading of Infinite Jest; it reports (does not argue) Wallace's already-published anti-irony position, recorded below as a sighting.

THEORY: Wallace's fiction sets itself against the empty, self-cancelling irony of image-fiction — with Leyner as the named exemplar of the dead end

  • Crux: eup-connection
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [author] Re-quoted from "E Unibus Pluram" and the Grimes NYT profile: Leyner's work is "the biggest thing for campus hipsters since The Fountainhead"; Leyner is "a kind of antichrist"; "He's so into making fun of everything that, reading him, I think of the culture as a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis." [Observer interview, quoting E.U.P. / Grimes]
  • Notes: This is a re-surfacing of Wallace's published E.U.P. diagnosis; the memorial adds no new argument and does not connect the critique to IJ's execution — a name-check, not a case. Counter-texture in-source: the antagonism was literary, not personal — Wallace apologized, and Leyner "never took any of that personally" and read the jabs as a compliment.

Themes

Irony versus sincerity (the E.U.P. quarrel); the culture of the terminal joke; literary rivalry and its private courtesies; reception and mourning; Wallace's tormented-yet-gentle public persona.

Cross-references

Notable passages

  • Leyner: "He was the opposite of an arrogant, swaggering person."
  • Wallace on Leyner (from E.U.P.): "He's so into making fun of everything that, reading him, I think of the culture as a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis."
  • Franzen (via the NYT): Wallace "was a huge talent, our strongest rhetorical writer." — "He was also as sweet a person as I've ever known and as tormented a person as I've ever known."
  • Leyner on the friendship: "It was always about the work."
  • Leyner on the loss: "What we're losing is someone who saw a kind of profundity in almost everything as a human being and as a citizen and as an artist."

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