David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner interview on Charlie Rose (1996)

These three are all so insecure and obsessed with how their viewed. It's pretty distracting.

DFW would later say that doing this interview was a mistake. I can't seem to figure out why

David Foster Wallace was a genius. He had such an extraordinary mind.

DFW was really impressive and had a clearer insight on tech than most "gurus" in 2023.

I kept getting the vibe that Charlie Rose is just a shitty interviewer who somehow stumbled into this job

They all look like they're in trouble at the beginning

less readers? WTF dude

David was clever as usual, but the throwaway line about putting "both these guys in a blender" was about as petty and rude as you could possibly be --- no matter what David meant by it.

not only a young audience raised on television....but raised on horror.

Interesting.
However, there seems to be a lot of over complication and unnecessary meandering from the point.

This Mark Leyner guy is insufferable

They all look like they take themselves too seriously

This shit is just braniacs going neutron mode habahaba

Trying to follow Wallace's thought processes is very engaging yet very frictional and fatigueing. His mind is one step ahead of verbal articulation in many of these interviews. Heady stuff, good in small doses. But sometimes it's better to just take a hike in the mountains for a day.

No body talks to each other anymore, it would be nice to sit across from a stranger and talk about a book or something, and really engage. I blame the gays, or the pope or video games or something.

Love Mark Leyner.

This looks like a comedy sketch

David’s comments about the minimization of influence due to technology/technique is very interesting. The study of something can influence the production of said thing enough to where the parameters that created that product are eventually replaced in the name of replication on behalf of efficiency.

It’s all over resistance is futile Instagram is a filthy bastardized twisted self involved piece of dog shit has anyone ever tried to communicate with “influencers” and Instagram junkies???? I’ve simply lost them as friends their instant metamorphosis is much more lethal than Franz Kafka’s giant cockroach even that’s better . 🤡🤡🤡

David Foster Wallace the greatest of the Great so so sad about your struggles with deadly depression the smartest people are those that feel the most alienated and least understood the bestial human crowd beast destroys your beauty, as with Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingways self destruction you are all Prophets of the highest order and always missed . 😢😢😢

Mark Leyner is so much less interesting than the other two.

David Foster Wallace and Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon. The Big Three.
The great American writers of their time.

Leyner should have called his book 'Crease Marks on a Shirt Collar'.

if dfw didnt kill himself in 2008, he would have killed himself once tiktok had been developed.

Insane to have this conversation in 1996 before phones and tablets and 'real' internet

Mark Leyner peaked at this interview.

Looked like Charlie heard the music at the end

The beginning pan to author's depressed faces lol oh man

Gold

First question if the interview, Mark: “I don’t know…” - good start haha

David Foster Wallace speaking to commercial art impacting us in deeper ways really hits home with the algorithm telling me to keep consuming and altering my consciousness.

It’s a shame David Foster Wallace was a pretentious prick and a creep, he was really intelligent and insightful and had a really complex mind and I wonder what he would’ve been able to write if he didn’t kill himself and wasn’t an asshole.

brain hurts yet is very stimulated listening to this this lol

its insane how dfw just literally blows up the entire interview right at the end and showing it to be the wrong question entirely

Leyner got btfo'd

1996. "People have no down time from electronic media" oh my my was he right but that was nothing compared to now

The irony here is DFW is trying to sound like Mr. Everyman but it’s Franzen and Leyner who come across as normal guys while Wallace always sounds professorial with that private liberal arts college lilt to his voice. I saw this interview before I ever read Infinite Jest and I couldn’t get that voice out of my head!

Franzen and DFW: more challenging interviewers than Rose ever was.

I swear to God, Charlie Rose is high the entire time.

These three men were giants, but listening to DFW really makes you realize he was a bigger giant among giants.

Whereas Franzen and Leyner speak quite linearly and directly, Wallace is fishing between the lines, looking at the paradoxes and contradictions that exist in simplistic notions. You can tell he was always obsessively questioning things with superhuman-like reductivity ... likely at the cost of his psyche.

But it's here I think DFW's thinking is the most human, especially with how prevalent media has become, how the bedrock of morality has crumbled, how easily inquisitive and intelligent the new generation is, and also how well-off they generally are to their parents.

DFW reminds me a lot of Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter considered great for just how finely between the lines he could see and observe. I feel like if DFW had kept working, he might have suffered the same artistic setback Charlie Kaufman had in creating a masterpiece so complex, human, and honest yet a commercial failure. I'm sure he'd have kept working, but these greats have their time in the sun when their honest works are misinterpreted as something else (like when Infinite Jest was consumed because people thought it was "funny" or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was consumed because people thought it was "quirky").


Charlie then ventured to his next film, Synecdoche, New York, a monument of cinematic genius that fell completely under the radar for most audiences.

All three of them look like they've seen the darkest places when they're introduced. Probably what it took to have them write the kind of fiction they did.

i was not ready to see johnathan franzen with that haircut

sure miss this quality of television

"My artistic snorkel to the universe"... [yes🤿].

wait until these dudes discover TikTok

Miss David Foster Wallace. Incredible person. Simply remarkable.

Mark Leyner actually does a decent honest job here