I really suck”-the time and format were ideal. Wallace was in the midst of writing “Infinite Jest,” and his comments to McCaffery on fiction read like a cheat sheet for the book he had going. Despite his initial protests-Wallace objected to McCaffery that he was “probably the world's worst interview. And the capable McCaffery got that from Wallace, for whom rethinking was essential. The protocol makes sense: what the interviewer wants is not the subject's first thought, but his or her best one. Ah, what you wouldn't give to take it back! But this rarely happens in long, literary interviews, where the subject gets a chance to edit the original exchanges in later correspondence. People often say things they regret in interviews. Most memorably, he explained why he was a writer. Wallace talked about rap and postmodernism, his idea of good fiction (William Vollmann) and bad (Mark Leyner), and the shape of the literary landscape. What if an author put forth goals for his fiction so intelligent yet modest, so comprehensive yet dignified, that the reader would not-could not-forget them? Something like this happened to David Foster Wallace when he sat for an interview with Larry McCaffery, for the summer 1993 issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Why have David Foster Wallace’s other works of fiction not gotten the acclaim that “Infinite Jest” has? Photograph by Janette Beckman / Redferns / Getty
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