The genius of David Foster Wallace

Book, film explore the late writer's brilliance, darkness

The late David Foster Wallace may be the most interesting literary figure of his generation. And, like many of the most interesting literary figures of their generation, his legend has outlived and, perhaps, outshined his work.

On July 31, Hollywood will add to Wallace’s already massive legacy with the feature film “The End of the Tour,” starring Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky. The film is based on Lipsky’s 2010 book “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace” ($16.99, Broadway Books, 352 pages).

Before we get into Lipsky’s book and the upcoming movie, first a bit about Wallace.

It is not an exaggeration to call Wallace a genius. In fact, he won the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008. He burst onto the literary scene in 1987 when his senior thesis at Amherst College, “The Broom of the System,” was published to rave reviews.

Wallace would then cement his place as a literary immortal with his gargantuan novel “Infinite Jest.” The book is very much like James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” It is long, complicated, brilliant, and you would have a difficult time finding more than five people who could honestly claim to ever have read it.

What makes “Jest” so compelling, though, is exactly what makes “Ulysses” compelling. Opening the book, a reader is challenged to read something that is beyond what most of us are truly able to comprehend. I first opened “Jest” three years ago, got about 400 pages into the 1,000-plus page tome and put it down. I got about a third of the way through “Ulysses” before the same thing happened. However, both books will forever sit on my bookshelf, a challenge to myself as a reader, an invitation to one day be better than what I actually am as a reader.

Besides “Jest,” Wallace also published several brilliant short story collections, as well as collections of nonfiction work. Perhaps Wallace’s greatest work was not actually written for publication. It was the graduation address he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. There are recordings of the speech on YouTube, and it eventually was published as a short book. The speech allows anyone to easily digest Wallace’s genius as he gives advice on how to live a meaningful life in today’s world.

With great brilliance also comes great darkness, though. Wallace battled addiction early in his life and depression through most of his life. Then, in 2008, Wallace took his own life.

A strange thing happens when literary titans end their lives. Suddenly their work becomes more poignant, and they are viewed forever as troubled geniuses whose talent consumed them. Ernest Hemingway would not be Ernest Hemingway without the final chapter that is suicide. The same thing is true of Wallace. And, like Hemingway, Wallace’s legend has become as well-known as his work.

Since Wallace’s death, his last novel, “The Pale King,” was published posthumously. In 2013 D.T. Max published “Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace,” a stunning literary biography that looks deep into the soul of a man and an artist.

That brings us to “Yourself” and the movie the book will be based upon.

After “Jest” was published, Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to interview Wallace during the last leg of Wallace’s book tour. The article was never published. However, more than a decade later, Lipsky turned the hours of audio recordings into a book.

“Yourself” is a strange book in that it is more or less a transcription of the time Wallace and Lipsky spent together. In some ways, the book comes across as Lipsky simply having won the lottery to have Wallace’s thoughts on the record and the right to publish them. But Lipsky redeems himself by being a talented interviewer capable of asking absorbing questions.

The book is worth reading for only one real reason, though: Wallace’s answers and his thoughts are so profound that you are drawn into them and you marvel at how anyone’s brain could work the way his did.

It will be fascinating to watch “Tour.” Eisenberg is a talented actor, and he will do justice to the part of a Rolling Stone reporter. Segel is an extraordinarily interesting choice to play Wallace. I adored him on “How I Met Your Mother,” and he has been in several funny movies. But when I first heard he was going to play Wallace, I could not see it.

Watching the trailer for the movie, though, I became excited. Segel may not be a perfect Wallace, but he seems to have embodied the writer. And hearing him say words that Wallace once said gave me chills.

The best thing that could happen from this movie is that it inspires more people to read Wallace’s work. I love trashy fiction as much as the next person because it can be so much fun. But readers need a writer like Wallace to challenge us to one day be better than what we are as readers.