Symposium: Who Was David Foster Wallace?

TL;DR

The landing/introduction page of Quarterly Conversation's 2011 symposium "Who Was David Foster Wallace?", assembled after The Pale King's publication to "assess Wallace's status in American letters". This capture holds the editor's frame plus the opening paragraph of each of the seven contributions — a table-of-contents-plus-teasers, not the full essays. A reception snapshot: it advances no new reading of Infinite Jest itself, but records, in seven independent voices, where the novel and Wallace's oeuvre stood in the culture three years after his death (the essays range across IJ, Brief Interviews, Oblivion, Consider the Lobster, and The Pale King).

Key claims

• The occasion. With The Pale King, the college thesis, "and other ephemera" newly published, the editors "look back at the signal works in the career of an era-defining novelist", assessing his standing "over the past 20 years."
• Esposito — IJ as the masterpiece. Scott Esposito's opener: "Infinite Jest is clearly and without any doubt David Foster Wallace's masterpiece. More than that: it is the book--fiction, nonfiction, or otherwise--that will be looked back to when future generations want to understand millennial America." The claim rests on Wallace having "captured the contradictions that were most fundamental to the America that he came of age in."
• Meidav — the durability question. Edie Meidav opens by reproducing a New York magazine editor's dismissal: "Dave? I mean does anyone still read him who's not under 40?" — framing an esteem piece around the age skew of his readership.
• Evans — Brief Interviews. CJ Evans: in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Wallace "uses all just these skills to tackle selfishness the way Infinite Jest tackled addiction."
• Olsen — attention. Lance Olsen opens on a usage-panel video where Wallace, asked about genteelisms, concludes "This is the downside of starting to pay attention."
• Hathcock, Lingan, Altschul. Barrett Hathcock predicts the nonfiction will be "predominantly read in the years ahead"; John Lingan reads The Pale King against the writer's "continued Tupacification"; Andrew Altschul opens "The Management of Insignificance" on learning of Wallace's death by text message.

Themes

Reception and canonization; the IJ-vs-nonfiction durability debate; the age skew of Wallace's readership; the posthumous-publication moment (2011).

Cross-references

• finn-becoming-yourself-reception — the empirical counterpart to this impressionistic symposium; Esposito's masterpiece/canonization claim is exactly the kind of reception judgment Finn measures quantitatively.
• Esposito's other IJ writing in the batch: esposito-westward-my-infinite-summer.

Notable passages

• Esposito: "Infinite Jest is clearly and without any doubt David Foster Wallace's masterpiece."
• Evans: Wallace "tackle[s] selfishness the way Infinite Jest tackled addiction."
• Meidav (quoting an editor): "Dave? I mean does anyone still read him who's not under 40?"