1458 words on a book that has more than 1000 pages (SPEAK magazine interview with David Foster Wallace)

source

TL;DR (plain-language summary)

A short 1996 print interview (self-described as "1458 words on a book that has more than 1000 pages") from SPEAK magazine, published the year Infinite Jest came out. It survives only as a two-page magazine scan, rescued by Matt Bucher after SPEAK folded; the text is transcribed here from the images, so it is quotable where the transcription is confident. The format is unusual: not a Q&A but a run-on DFW monologue with the interviewer's questions and stage-directions folded into it as bracketed asides. Its two biggest payloads for this archive: (1) a primary, contemporaneous author statement on the size of the IJ cuts — DFW himself, in 1996, says the book "was cut by 400 pages or so," splitting the cuts into "commercial" and "literary" and saying he cut mostly the literary ones — a data point that bears directly on the ij-cuts "300–500 pages" question; and (2) the E-Unibus-Pluram program stated live in IJ's own year — art against a "frightening right-wing resurgence," fiction as "one gut talking to another gut," the avant-garde faulted for refusing to "marry sophistication with reading pleasure," and the declaration "That's all the stuff I'm trying to do with this book". Also carries prime biographical and composition color: the Broom of the System ending as a failed experiment in "technical semantics," the shift from wanting "to throw out the emotional in favor of the technical" to wanting "to save the emotion," and his teaching persona ("the Switzerland of the department").

Key claims

The IJ cuts, from the author, in 1996: "This one (Infinite Jest) was cut by 400 pages or so. There were commercial cuts and literary ones. I listened, and cut out most of the literary ones." A primary-source figure and a commercial-vs-literary taxonomy of the cutting (see Theories).
The Broom of the System ending was a deliberate, failed experiment. The novel "rolled merrily along for almost 500 pages" and then "fell apart" at the last paragraph. DFW: he "had lots of reasons why the ending of that novel had to be that way. But it shouldn't have, which is probably why you shouldn't let 23-year-olds do it." The experiment: "technical semantics, which is the relationship between form and context. That paragraph at the end is missing the word 'word,'" — an attempt to "bridge both the formal and the reference" that he now judges "missed on both counts."
The emotional-over-technical turn (a compositional self-diagnosis). "Before I wanted to throw out the emotional in favor of the technical. Now I would get rid of the technique to save the emotion." He credits teaching for the shift: "If I hadn't been teaching, I don't think I would have made the cuts."
The Harper's cruise piece was heavily cut. His "recent piece in this January's Harper's" (the cruise essay, later "A Supposedly Fun Thing…") "was severely cut," leaving mostly "the comic sections"; "Harper's flew me out to make the cuts."
Teaching testimony. DFW is on a tenure track at "a Illinois college" (Illinois State), calls himself "the Switzerland of the department," is "brutal with those I think are talented," and makes students "write stories about when their hamster died so they can get over the phobia of looking unhip".
Cultural diagnosis (the interview's thesis spine): a hunger for narrative left unfed by a "convoluted and self-satisfied" avant-garde; serious art "marginalized"; the right-wing resurgence read as symptom of a "void"; belief framed as survival ("believing in something bigger than you is not a choice").
Biographical color: in 1996 he "smokes American Spirit cigarettes and chews tobacco" (magazine's framing); born after 1960, grew up on TV; recalls his "first spontaneous erection when I was four watching Robert Conrad" on Wild Wild West.

Theories & evidence

THEORY: The Infinite Jest cuts were on the order of ~400 pages, divided into "commercial" and "literary" cuts, of which DFW cut mostly the literary ones

Crux: ij-cuts
Stance: advances
Evidence:
- [author] "This one (Infinite Jest) was cut by 400 pages or so. There were commercial cuts and literary ones. I listened, and cut out most of the literary ones." [p.1]
- [author] "If I hadn't been teaching, I don't think I would have made the cuts." (teaching credited as what made the cutting possible) [p.2]
Notes: This is a primary author statement contemporaneous with publication and it lands on the high end of the "300–500 pages cut" range that later sources (Moore, Carlisle) treat as folklore — Moore reports being puzzled by the story that the publisher cut 300-400 pages. Here Wallace himself, in 1996, gives "400 pages or so." Two things worth preserving: (a) DFW's own figure does not settle MS-page vs. book-page accounting (a still-open reconciliation), and (b) his commercial-vs-literary taxonomy — and the claim that he cut "most of the literary ones" — is a distinct datum from Pietsch's "around 250 manuscript pages," pointing at who cut what and why rather than only how many. Recorded cite-as-written; no support-judgment offered.

THEORY: Serious fiction's job is to reach the reader emotionally against a media-saturated culture and a self-satisfied avant-garde — the E-Unibus-Pluram program, stated in IJ's own year and claimed for IJ directly

Cruxes: eup-connection (primary); bears on anti-entertainment, cynicism-naivete, sincerity-definition, irony-vs-recovery
Stance: advances
Evidence:
- [author] "Somewhere in all of us is a hunger for narrative, to see what we're up to and about." [p.2]
- [author] the avant-garde "is so convoluted and self-satisfied that it can't speak to the parts of us that are hungry and can't marry sophistication with reading pleasure. That's all the stuff I'm trying to do with this book" — the program claimed for IJ by name. [p.2]
- [author] "Really good art, though, seduces the reader and holds out real promise." (against the premise "that readers are stupid") [p.2]
- [author] "We have to surf and triage and decoct so much meaning from the information overload just to get through life that a writer must get you to taste the truth without throwing the book against the wall." [p.2]
- [author] "That's why you see such a frightening right-wing resurgence, it comes from having a void. Pat Buchanan may be very easy and very appealing to a lot of people, but art is the chance for us to do the hard work." [p.2]
- [author] on craft: "Before I wanted to throw out the emotional in favor of the technical. Now I would get rid of the technique to save the emotion." [p.1]
Notes: This is the E Unibus Pluram thesis in compressed, off-the-cuff form, stated the same year IJ appeared and — unusually — attached to IJ explicitly ("all the stuff I'm trying to do with this book"), where the WORD chat (May 1996) states the irony diagnosis without claiming IJ executes it. The "one gut talking to another gut" and "seduces the reader" formulations are the sincerity/anti-irony program on the craft side; the Buchanan/"void" passage is its cultural-diagnosis side. No in-source counter-tension is raised (DFW does not here hedge or deny the program). No support-judgment offered here.

THEORY: Belief — in "whatever it is" — is a survival necessity for DFW's generation, held for its own sake, not instrumentally

Crux: axiology-value
Stance: advances
Evidence:
- [author] "If you're about 30, believing in something bigger than you is not a choice. You either do or you're a walking dead man, just going through the motions." [p.2]
- [author] "I absolutely believe in something, even though I don't know what it is." [p.2]
- [author] (closing pull-text) "The belief, in whatever it is, is not for something but for your own sake. If we don't as a generation find that, we'll either crash and burn or come up with something really POWERFUL AND BEAUTIFUL." [p.2]
Notes: Author-intent testimony bearing on the value/anhedonia concerns the novel dramatizes (belief-for-its-own-sake vs. instrumental choosing) — logged as axiology-value evidence, not as an IJ-plot claim. The "walking dead man, just going through the motions" phrasing is adjacent to the novel's anhedonia and figurant material but no character link is asserted here.

Themes

Irony / sincerity and the E-Unibus-Pluram program (the interview's spine: art that "seduces the reader," fiction as "one gut talking to another gut," the avant-garde faulted for refusing "reading pleasure"); entertainment / information overload ("surf and triage and decoct … without throwing the book against the wall"; TV as the formative medium of everyone "born after 1960"); value and belief (belief as survival, "not for something but for your own sake"); composition and editing (the IJ cuts; the Broom ending; the emotional-over-technical turn); the writer's self-effacement ("I am not the story"; the "sidelines"); generational diagnosis (the '80s as "fake hardy optimism," the '90s "more frank about being confused").

Cross-references

word-ezine-1996-chat — the closest sibling: a same-year (May 1996) live venue where DFW states the irony/sincerity diagnosis. SPEAK differs in attaching the program to IJ by name ("all the stuff I'm trying to do with this book") and in carrying the composition testimony the chat lacks.
e-unibus-pluram and mccaffery-1993-interview — the essay and the long interview this monologue compresses; "seduces the reader," "hunger for narrative," and the anti-avant-garde line are EUP in miniature.
debraski-ij-cuts, moore-first-draft-ij, infinite-summer-pietsch-editing-ij — the other accounts of the pre-publication cuts; SPEAK is the earliest primary-author figure on the question, in Wallace's own voice.
broom-of-the-system — the Broom ending post-mortem ("technical semantics," "missing the word 'word'") is direct authorial commentary on that book's disputed close.
kcrw-bookworm-1997-asft and the Harper's cruise essay — the "recent piece in this January's Harper's" that "was severely cut."
Biography / did-you-know: American Spirits + chewing tobacco (1996); Illinois State tenure track, "the Switzerland of the department"; the Wild Wild West / Robert Conrad anecdote.

Notable passages

Verbatim; transcribed from the scans, apostrophes in contractions restored per the documented normalization there. Locators are the source page (p.1 = SpeakMag1.png, p.2 = SpeakMag2.png). No span quoted here contains a transcription-uncertainty marker.

"This one (Infinite Jest) was cut by 400 pages or so. There were commercial cuts and literary ones. I listened, and cut out most of the literary ones." [p.1]
"I was hard to edit and had lots of reasons why the ending of that novel had to be that way. But it shouldn't have, which is probably why you shouldn't let 23-year-olds do it." (on The Broom of the System) [p.1]
"Before I wanted to throw out the emotional in favor of the technical. Now I would get rid of the technique to save the emotion." [p.1]
"The avant-garde debunked the myths but didn't have the foresight to follow it up with anything. So we grew up in the rubble." [p.2]
"The avant-garde is so convoluted and self-satisfied that it can't speak to the parts of us that are hungry and can't marry sophistication with reading pleasure. That's all the stuff I'm trying to do with this book" [p.2]
"Really good art, though, seduces the reader and holds out real promise." [p.2]
"We have to surf and triage and decoct so much meaning from the information overload just to get through life that a writer must get you to taste the truth without throwing the book against the wall." [p.2]
"That's why you see such a frightening right-wing resurgence, it comes from having a void. Pat Buchanan may be very easy and very appealing to a lot of people, but art is the chance for us to do the hard work." [p.2]
"If you're about 30, believing in something bigger than you is not a choice. You either do or you're a walking dead man, just going through the motions." [p.2]
"I had an advantage in that I got a taste of fame early on. Everything about it makes me really self-conscious. I need to be on the sidelines, to watch, so I can tell the stories. I am not the story." [p.1]
"It is difficult to try to work the magic of fiction, of one gut talking to another gut." [p.1]

Interviewer's questions & framing (interview-questions comp)

Format note: SPEAK renders the piece as a DFW monologue with the interviewer's questions and stage-directions set off in brackets inside the running answer, rather than as discrete Q&A. Reproduced from the scan:

Physical/character framing (the intro): DFW "smokes American Spirit cigarettes and chews tobacco. He has a firm handshake, a compelling intensity and a bright future," and is billed "author of Infinite Jest, the book of the season, if not the year" (the magazine sets the whole intro in small caps).
Only explicit question-form on the page: "Why?]" — closing the setup that Broom of the System "rolled merrily along for almost 500 pages" then "fell apart" at the last paragraph (i.e. why did the ending fall apart?).
Stage-direction / framing brackets: "[at a Illinois college]"; "[Not that the novel is getting so much attention, connecting, much is being made of Wallace's new normality …]"; "[Teaching, however, is another story]"; "[The conversation switches to Generation X]"; "[It's nothing less than trying to address cultural infantilism.]"; "[Although I don't know if it does any good]".