David Foster Wallace's Difference in Approach Between Magazine Articles, Novels

The challenge in editing David Foster Wallace was the difficulty of wrangling his prose and narrative structure, which were often purposefully peripatetic and disjointed (in the best sense of the word), without disrupting the writing's pacing or diluting its effect, which Wallace intended as a numbing overload to the reader's faculties comparable to the overwhelming "constant monologue inside your own head." In Wallace's novels, reporting, and essays, his editors grappled with the difficulties of fitting his excesses to constraints. In his magazine pieces, this constraint manifested itself primarily through the finite space editors could allot in their pages, but editing constraints also included the limits on reader's attention and intelligence. Wallace's mid-career fascination with footnotes and endnotes also led to editorial efforts, both in persuading Wallace to make cuts and, in one case, in creating a design solution to help him cultivate a visual representation of the fractured reality that he hoped his footnotes and endnotes would capture. While different editors' experiences varied, there is a consensus that David Wallace's best editor was David Wallace.

Wallace was less amenable to substantive editorial suggestions in his magazine pieces than in his novels, in which his plot strands could become maddeningly entangled and ran to the hundreds of thousands of words. In magazine pieces, he often felt that his pieces were neutered by space constraints. On the copyright page of Consider the Lobster, his second book of non-fiction essays, he enclosed a note that read, "The following pieces were published in edited, heavily edited, or (in at least one instance) bowdlerized form." The "bowdlerized" piece, "Host," was about a right-wing radio personality, and Wallace was also frustrated by the abridgement of "Up, Simba," the story he wrote about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and, he insisted on publishing a web edition of his full article. Wallace found nonfiction and journalism to be somewhat facile-"there's a certain persona created, that's a little stupider and schmuckier than I am"-and he said they were mostly descriptive exercises, devoid of the challenges that his fiction brought him: "Welcome to my mind for 20 pages, see through my eyes, here's pretty much all the French curls and crazy circles." This self-confidence could explain his rejections of editorial suggestions in that realm.

It speaks well of Wallace that for his novels, which were more personal and more important to him than his non-fiction, he sought out and accepted criticism and suggestions for improvement. This trusting stance was one he developed over time. Howard, who edited Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System, said that "he was very polite in ignoring me." Wallace was steadfast in defending stylistic choices. When his agent, Bonnie Nadell, tried to dissuade him from ending the novel mid-sentence, Wallace "proceeded to explain the entire Wittgensteinian philosophy behind why it was what it was." Howard was frustrated by Wallace's "cute," unsatisfying resolution of a scene with the potential for "a spectacular piece of comic vaudeville." But, Howard said, Wallace told him that, "I was absolutely right in my suggestion and he knew that he really should do this, but here's why he can't. And won't. And the explanation was so convoluted but so heartfelt that at the end I just said, 'Oh, alright!' This wasn't something I was gonna win.'"

Works Cited

[1] Moore, Steven. "The First Draft Version of Infinite Jest." July 16, 2009. Thehowlingfantods.com.

[1] Wallace, David Foster. "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage." Harper's Magazine. April 2001.

[1] Neyfakh, Leon. "Gerry Howard on Discovering, Editing, and Hatching David Foster Wallace: 'He Was the First Person Who Ever Called Me "Mister."'" The New York Observer. September 17, 2008.

[1] Waters, Julia. "Ruth Reichl on David Foster Wallace and Magazines." Salon Magazine. October 6, 2009.

[1] Kipp, Jeremiah. "Looking for One Value but Nothing Comes my Way: An Interview with Film Critic Glenn Kenny about David Foster Wallace." The House Next Door. April 8, 2009.

[1] Neyfakh, Leon. "Infinite Jest Editor Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown on David Foster Wallace." The New York Observer. September 19, 2008. [

1] Pietsch, Michael. "Editing Infinite Jest." Infinite Summer. July 3, 2009.

[1] "David Foster Wallace on Life and Work." Wall Street Journal. September 19, 2008. (Adapted from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College.)

[1] Wallace, David Foster. Consider the Lobster. Little, Brown and Company. 2006.

[1] Lipsky, David. "The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace" Rolling Stone. October 20, 2008.

[1] Max, D.T. "The Unfinished." The New Yorker. March 9, 2009.

[1] "David Foster Wallace." Charlie Rose. March 27, 1997.

[1] Mundaca, Marie. "The Influence of Anxiety: Wading In." Hipster Bookclub. June 2009.

[1] Thompson, Bob. "New Yorker Publishes Part Of Unfinished Wallace Novel." The Washington Post. March 2, 2009.