Winter's Coming Wednesday
Songs
Control the Storm by Delain
Dark Star by Tarja
Nothing Else Matters by Metallica
Just One of Those Days Bonus
White Walls by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Holidaze
from www.brownielocks.com
December 18 is Answer the Telephone Like Buddy the Elf Day?!
Today in History
from www.todayinhistory.com
1913 – Birth of Alfred Bester, US, Science Fiction author
1892 - "Nutcracker Suite," Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet, premieres
1997 – Chris Farley, comedian (SNL, Tommy Boy), dies at 33
Word of the Day
from www.dictionary.com
transpontine – across or beyond a bridge.
Quotes
from www.brainyquote.com
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely." ~Albert Einstein
WikiWikiWikiWiki
from www.wikipedia.org
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an award-winning American novelist, short story writer, essayist, professor of English at Illinois State University, and professor of creative writing at Pomona College. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[1][2] which was cited as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 by Time magazine.[3]
Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years".[1] With his suicide, he left behind an unfinished novel, The Pale King, which was subsequently published in 2011, and in 2012 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which was not awarded that year.[4] A biography of Wallace by D. T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, was published in September 2012.[5]
Biography
Early life
Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, the son of Sally Jean (née Foster) and James Donald Wallace.[6] In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois.[7] In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school and Urbana High School. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player.
He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic, Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality (described in James Ryerson's 2008 New York Times essay "Consider the Philosopher"[8]), was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize.[9] His other senior thesis, written for his English major, would later become his first novel.[10] Wallace graduated summa cum laude for both theses in 1985, and in 1987 received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.
Family
Wallace's father was James D. Wallace, who accepted a teaching job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 1962 after finishing his graduate course work in philosophy at Cornell University. James D. Wallace received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1963 and is now Emeritus Professor at Urbana-Champaign. Wallace's mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996. Wallace's younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005.
In the early 1990s, Wallace had a relationship with the poet and memoirist Mary Karr. Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004.[11][12] Dogs played an important role in Wallace's life:[13] He was very close to his two dogs, Bella and Werner;[12] had spoken of opening a dog shelter;[13] and, according to Jonathan Franzen, "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them".[12]
Death
Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008.[14] In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.[11] When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine.[12] On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007,[11] and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness.[12] In the months before his death, his depression became severe.[11] The same year Wallace had checked into a nearby motel and taken all the pills he could obtain, ending up in a local hospital. His wife kept a watchful eye on Wallace the following days, but on September 12, after his wife left their home, Wallace went into their garage, wrote a two-page note, and neatly arranged the manuscript for The Pale King before hanging himself on the patio.[15]
Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, University of Arizona, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University—the last with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at Harper's Magazine; Michael Pietsch, the editor of Infinite Jest and Wallace's later work; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen.[16][17][18]
Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years".[1] With his suicide, he left behind an unfinished novel, The Pale King, which was subsequently published in 2011, and in 2012 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which was not awarded that year.[4] A biography of Wallace by D. T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, was published in September 2012.[5]
Biography
Early life
Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, the son of Sally Jean (née Foster) and James Donald Wallace.[6] In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois.[7] In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school and Urbana High School. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player.
He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic, Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality (described in James Ryerson's 2008 New York Times essay "Consider the Philosopher"[8]), was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize.[9] His other senior thesis, written for his English major, would later become his first novel.[10] Wallace graduated summa cum laude for both theses in 1985, and in 1987 received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.
Family
Wallace's father was James D. Wallace, who accepted a teaching job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 1962 after finishing his graduate course work in philosophy at Cornell University. James D. Wallace received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1963 and is now Emeritus Professor at Urbana-Champaign. Wallace's mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996. Wallace's younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005.
In the early 1990s, Wallace had a relationship with the poet and memoirist Mary Karr. Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004.[11][12] Dogs played an important role in Wallace's life:[13] He was very close to his two dogs, Bella and Werner;[12] had spoken of opening a dog shelter;[13] and, according to Jonathan Franzen, "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them".[12]
Death
Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008.[14] In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.[11] When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine.[12] On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007,[11] and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness.[12] In the months before his death, his depression became severe.[11] The same year Wallace had checked into a nearby motel and taken all the pills he could obtain, ending up in a local hospital. His wife kept a watchful eye on Wallace the following days, but on September 12, after his wife left their home, Wallace went into their garage, wrote a two-page note, and neatly arranged the manuscript for The Pale King before hanging himself on the patio.[15]
Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, University of Arizona, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University—the last with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at Harper's Magazine; Michael Pietsch, the editor of Infinite Jest and Wallace's later work; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen.[16][17][18]
Bookworm Fix of the Day
For all you bookworms out there like me.
What Should I Read Next?
Go ahead and check it out. Enter a book. It will populate with recommendations for what to read next. :)
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