WBUR in Boston recently uncovered a long forgotten radio interview with David Foster Wallace conducted February of 1996. Wallace was gaining acclaim and his work in Harper's was certainly turning heads, but at the time he didn't even know if his debut novel from a few years earlier was even still in print. So it's incredibly interesting to hear him speak at this time sine it's a little more candid, and even emotional at times, than later interviews. His view of American politics is so simply true as to be chilling, and his prescient view of where we were headed as a culture is astoundingly spot on, 18 years later.
I'm still absolutely heartbroken we lost his talent at such an early age. I think one of the things that struck me most about him, especially as I've discovered I finally have the time to read as ravenously as I used to, is just how rare it is to find any writer who manages to write more than one interesting thing that deeply resonates in the heart and the brain like his work did.
MP3: David Foster Wallace on The Connection with Chris Lydon, February 1996
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