Austin Writers and the HRC Celebrate David Foster Wallace [reading preview]
Tuesday, September 14
Jessen Auditorium (Homer Rainey Hall, 21st street at University Avenue)
Free, 7pm
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Exposing the raw truths and ironies often lacquered over by the typical 9-to-5 was, to put it one way, second-nature to David Foster Wallace’s genius. Indeed, if we’re abiding Wallace’s charge (and taking heed of his observations thereafter) to Kenyon College’s 2005 graduating class to suspend their "skepticism of the value of the totally obvious,” most members of the over-educated working class will find themselves chuckling (or nodding, depending) in acknowledgment. In this media-saturated society, Wallace might say, our tendency toward over-intellectualizing the otherwise straightforward, hidden-in-plain-sight truth often leaves us mired in an increasingly familiar modern anxiety. Remember, readers: diagnosis can give us calm, like the receptive patient upon hearing his (or her) condition is no longer nameless.
Soon, of course, both recent initiates and longtime devotees of Wallace’s work will have the chance to mark the end of their own "everyday" in particularly fitting fashion. Fellow Austinites: consider yourselves supremely lucky. Adding to its already impressive collection of authorial artifacts, our own Harry Ransom Center is making its recently-acquired David Foster Wallace archives publicly available this week, and you’re invited to the commemorative opening.
A sampling of the Wallace archives’ contents includes handwritten notes and drafts of various book manuscript materials (including Infinite Jest), earlier iterations of his stories and essays, some of Wallace’s collegiate writings, and copies of his own heavily annotated dictionary and books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and many others.
Now for the fine-grained details: co-sponsored by American Short Fiction and Salvage Vanguard Theater, the HRC is hosting a formal opening for the D.F.W. archives this Tuesday, September 14th at 7 p.m. (get there early - there’s limited seating and the line starts forming as soon as the first person arrives) in the Jessen Auditorium at Homer Rainey Hall, and to celebrate, the likes of Elizabeth Crane, Doug Dorst, Owen Egerton, Chris Gibson, and Jake Silverstein will be reading from various selections of Wallace’s correspondence, essays, and fiction. Doors open thirty minutes in advance and seating is free, too, so no excuses. For those that can’t make it, the HRC is making a live webcast of the event available starting at 7:00, which you can check out here. Do yourself a favor and show up.
