David Foster Wallace interview on Charlie Rose (1997)

source

TL;DR

The full-length solo Charlie Rose appearance, nominally promoting A Supposedly Fun Thing but circling back to IJ constantly. Contains his clearest on-camera account of why the endnotes exist (fracturing a linear text without losing the reader), the "I wanted it to be extraordinarily sad" complaint about reviewers, the postmodernism-is-co-opted argument in miniature, the Blue Velvet epiphany about artists being "entirely themselves," and — under Rose's prodding — the most candid televised version of the late-80s breakdown ("attention... at an age when I had a hard time handling it"). Transcript is well punctuated (human captions), unusually readable for this set.

Key claims

Endnotes are structural, not decorative: "reality's fractured right now... text is very linear and it's very unified," so he hunts for "ways to fracture the text that aren't totally disoriented"; there must be "some interplay between how difficult you make it for the reader and how seductive it is." The endnotes were "a useful compromise," and there were many more before Pietsch made him "pare the end notes down to really the absolutely essential."
Reception ambivalence: attention arrived before anyone "had time to read the book"; positive reviews "seemed to me to misunderstand the book. I wanted it to be extraordinarily sad and not particularly post-modern or jumbled up or fractured" — reviewers liked it for being funny/erudite/fractured instead.
Postmodernism post-mortem: it mattered as "the first text that was highly self-conscious... a real beaker of acid in the face of the culture," but "the schticks of post-modernism — irony, cynicism, irreverence — are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself... Burger King now sells hamburgers with 'You gotta break the rules.'" (E Unibus Pluram compressed into one exchange.)
The Lynch/Blue Velvet epiphany (spring 1986, mid-grad-school misery): "what the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves... their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings." Lynch "snapped me out of a kind of adolescent delusion" about what avant-garde art could be. Also the canonical "Lynchian" definition: "the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal" (the Jif-vs-Skippy domestic-murder scenario).
Writer's double nature: "part of you is a nerd... and another part of you is the worst ham of all time. 'Look at me. Look at me.'" TV "stimulates your 'What am I going to look like?' gland like no other experience."
The breakdown, deflated on purpose: "I got some attention for some work that didn't really deserve it at an age when I had a hard time handling it" — a "library weenie from... Amherst" who learned the brass ring "does not make everything okay"; he compares it to a cost accountant making partner at 50 and going into depression, and insists "what it is, is very, very average." Says he now has no brass ring and is "open to suggestions."
Big-book defense: a long book raises the "burden of proof"; IJ "did not start out to be this long" — it began as "a fractured, multiple narrative with a number of main characters" and length emerged (perhaps via denial).
On teaching: the teaching-vs-research "schizophrenia" of academia; he's plateaued after four years and fears repeating himself.

Themes

Entertainment/irony (postmodern devices absorbed by advertising); fame and attention as Substance; depression and the achievement double bind (Hal's trajectory, the brass-ring accountant = Erdedy/professional addicts); construction/form (endnotes as fractured-but-seductive text); art as nerve-ending authenticity.

Cross-references

E Unibus Pluram: the irony-co-opted argument and the "image-fiction can't out-ironize TV" thesis, delivered conversationally; he even calls EUP an argument that "requires 500, 600 pages."
McCaffery interview: early-fame breakdown and the smartness-isn't-the-point arc, four years on.
Bookworm 1996 and Salon 1996: same "I wanted it sad" intent statement; Bookworm has the structural version of the endnote/fracture talk.
Lipsky: the fame-anxiety performed live a year earlier; "What am I going to look like?" gland = the tape-recorder paranoia.
The Unfinished: corroborates the McLean-era biography Rose is fishing for.
Guardian/Zauner foreword extract: the 30th-anniversary foreword quotes this interview's endnote answer in the Guardian's edited print form — close but not identical wording; each carrier is quoted as its own text prints it.
IJ connections: endnote architecture; LaMont Chu's fame-hunger and Lyle's counsel; the entertainment-seduction calculus (Steeply/Marathe); Himself's filmography as fractured auteurism.

Notable passages

"reality's fractured right now... I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for ways to fracture the text that aren't totally disoriented."
"I wanted it to be extraordinarily sad and not particularly post-modern or jumbled up or fractured."
"A lot of the schticks of post-modernism — irony, cynicism, irreverence — are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself."
"What the really great artists do... is they're entirely themselves... if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings."
"Whatever you get paid attention for is never the stuff that you think is important about yourself anyway."