The Austin Chronicle

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/books/2009-09-16/861933/

Howl, Fantods, Howl.

By Wayne Alan Brenner, September 16, 2009, 3:02pm, Under the Covers

Here's a wonderful literary event called And But So. (It's called that in homage to, as you know even if you've only skimmed a story in which David Foster Wallace allows his supra-narrator characters to get a word in edgewise, a tic of human speech that the acclaimed and beloved – but now, as of about a year ago, suicided – author captured so well and frequently.)

What there will be at this gig is a series of readings and performances of excerpts from DFW's work – and maybe a reading or two from texts about DFW's work? – by such insightful and entertaining worthies as Matt Bucher (publisher of Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and admin of the Wallace-l listserv), Maria Bustillos (author of Dorkismo: the Macho of the Dork), L.B. Deyo (president of Austin’s Dionysium and co-founder of Jinx Multimedia)*, Mary LaMotte Silverstein (former editor at Harper’s, who worked with DFW on the essay “Tense Present"), and others.
After all of which the microphone will be open for acolytes who've brought their own favorite passages from The Bandana'd One's writings to share.

Did we mention there will also be music, food, and drink? There will also be music, food, and drink.

Ultimately, we don't need to recommend this event. You're gonna make it if you can. And it'll be good to have you there.


* Yes, the very same Laughing Boy who should've fucking contacted us about this event weeks ago, if not months ago, but who still hasn't contacted us about it, as if, what, we're not good enough to be part of such a thing? As if our mortally embarrassing Celebrity Crush appearance of years ago hadn't featured a bona fide DFW rap that even Robert Fischer didn't think was overly lame? As if we hadn't dragged our already club-weary carcass to the Moose Lodge to see Deyo & the Catfish Hunters commit white-boy blues that one night after we'd bled from our fingertips in writing the liner notes for their then-recent album? As if we're a pile of, maybe, chopped liver gone slightly off in the star-spangled deli case of life?

It's just too goddam bad we're going to be in Orlando with our lovely fiancée while all the clever and partially if only secretly troubled Wallacites are making merry and lah de dah on Saturday, Sept. 26, 5-7pm at Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Road, isn't it?

You hear me – ah, us, rather – Deyo? Consider your Irishly handsome and redhaired self totally disinvited to the Thomas Pynchon Banana Breakfast Buffet on May 8th of next year.

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