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As an obsessed DFW reader and howling fantod, I am dissapointed with this biography and surprised at the generally good reviews it has collected.
I compare it with other engrossing, all-encompassing biographies of other great fiction writers (Carlos Baker's Hemingway bio comes to mind) and it comes up short in so many ways.
First -- it seems merely to the take work and tries to correlate it with what was going on with DFW personally at the time. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Second -- it seems so superficial. It devotes about a page to his childhood and even less than that to his parents. Excuse me - but when I read about a writer, I want to know what MADE that writer ???
For example -- there are hints here and there about his mother ... her extreme grammarphilia, her "nerves." Well, what about them? Two sentences are not enough!!! A few sentences are devoted to his father as being an academic and somewhat distant. Well???
Mary Karr - another brilliant writer who had a romantic relationship with Wallace in the mid-1990s -- has gone on record about how his parents put extreme pressure on him to be a "genius" -- and this book never mentions it. Whhhaaaa????
About his wife, Karen Green -- we learn only that she was "an artist" - that she had a son from a previous relationship and opened a gallery after they moved to Claremont, CA. Aaaaannnd ...nothing. Nada.
Finally -- this book didn't tell me ANYTHING that I didn't already know about DFW. It's as if the author studied all of the collected interviews with DFW and then sort of pieced them together to form a timeline with his his books. That's not a biography, it's LitCrit-Plus.
Obviously, this is the kind of biography that emerges when too many of the "players' are still present and waiting in the wings with their lawyers on speed dial.
Very unsatisfying.
My recommendation: Read "Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself" by David Lipsky. Far more interesting and honest.
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