I have never really been attracted to biographies. I feel like I read an author’s work to read an author’s work. If the author comes out in the work at all, I can speculate. I just don’t usually see the need to delve into someone’s life, especially when they weren’t intending for the public to be privy to that information. I recently made two objections to my otherwise specified rule. I took an evening to read Carolyn Brown’s Eudora Welty young adult biography A Daring Life. There was a certain obligation with that book, considering how much we love celebrating Miss Welty.
The second objection is a new biography of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max called Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. I can’t really explain why I decided to break my rule for biographies other than, “because I felt like it,” or “because he seemed interesting.” The obvious response being, “well Simon. Isn’t that why people read biographies in the first place and maybe you’re just a snobby little hypocrite?” You’d be kinda right, but whatever. 
The first thing I realized when I opened this book is how smooth it reads. Max is a sympathetic voice who chugs through Wallace’s life of addiction, depression, and brilliance with a level of composure that is appreciated by the reader. Wallace was a literary giant who found his first novel spit out of his senior thesis at Amherst. His life was stuffed with relationships that can be considered of great importance to the literary community, including friendships with Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo, and Mary Karr. Apart from his friendships of note, Wallace relied on the people close to him to keep his depression at bay. He frequently wrote letters, which made Max’s recount of his life and times feel intimate. 
As far as literary biographies go, Max finds a way to be quite readable. It is actually quite difficult to put down.
At twenty-five Wallace returned to his alma mater Amherst to teach a writing seminar.
“His syllabus was conventional, meant to teach basic tools of writing: character, dialogue, and plot. He gave his students Eudora Welty’s ‘Why I Live at the P.O.’ to illustrate the unreliable narrator and Lee K. Abbott’s ‘Living Alone in Iota’ to showcase voice.”
On the next page, Wallace “went to New York to receive a Whiting Award, and afterward told his class he had met Eudora Welty.” 
In this same section detailing his small time teaching at Amherst houses one of my favorite little anecdotes:
One day he put the words “pulchritudinous,” “miniscule,” “big,” and “misspelled” on the blackboard. He asked his students what the four words had in common, and, when no one knew, happily pointed out that the appearance of each was the opposite of its meaning: “pulchritudinous” was ugly, “miniscule” was big, “big” was small, and “misspelled” was spelled correctly. The students had rarely seen him so happy.
Another thing that I found particularly enjoyable about this book, like the little quip about Welty, Max makes a point to illustrate which writers Wallace was primarily influenced by. His immense love for Pynchon (duh) and Kafka (obviously) give me a bigger window into what his intentions were from his writing. It seems it was his discovery of Derrida that merged his interests in philosophy and literature. These little pieces of information open up a whole new world for Infinite Jest that I hadn’t considered the first time I read it. The problem, of course, is that now I have to reread it.
This book is about a man’s life, but it is about more. It is about a person dealing with depression. A person who has the mental capabilities to master anything conceptual, but is still limited by his cognitive disease. Max opens up Wallace’s life to show the dirty juxtaposition between his brilliance and his disease. One of the greatest writers and thinkers of his time couldn’t be considered reliable. At any point he could have a breakdown.
I’d like to leave all you nice people with a little poem Wallace wrote his friend after healing from a breakdown.
Roses are red.
Violets are Blue;
I am well
And hope you are too.
Wittgenstein,
Was a raving fairy;
I’ll be in Amherst
In January
by Simon
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