David Foster Wallace was an award winning writer from New York; however, h e was raised in Chicago, Illinois. Wallace went to Amherst College for English and Phi loosely and then to graduate school at Harvard University. The start of a long trail of deep session led him to drop out at Harvard and become a teacher at Emerson College in Boston, MA. Wallace is known for his intelligence, however this characteristic is in the genes. His faith ere, James Donald Wallace, studied Philosophy at Cornell and later moved to Chicago with his FAA mill to teach at University of Illinois.
Sally Foster Wallace, his mother, won the professor of the e year award and got her masters at university of Illinois. However, this strong upbringing can r exult in a lot of pressure. Wallace struggled with depression for quite sometime which can be seen through his writings. This struggle continued until he took his life at age 46. Put simply, artistic merit is the value of art, if it has any or not. A piece with high her artistic merit shows a sense of individualism, intensive research, and connection on to the audience.
David Foster Wallace argues that this value has been declining through the ye RSI and we are increasingly getting closer to “low art”. In a society constantly observing “low a art” we don’t have to do much work in analytically understanding the piece; writers constant TTYL spooned information to the reader, serving their own agenda. This lack of analysis the r deader is forced to do is the major factor in deciding if a piece lacks artistic merit. However, in “Big Red Son” by David Foster Wallace this is not the case. He put in his own style making the reader change “their agenda”.
DEW allows the reader to come to his or her own conclusion. He makes you want to look up more information by adding u unfamiliar places and people. He uses footnotes to further the readers understanding. The boo denotes are never all the same. Sometimes providing comedic relief, other times simply going more in depth on a topic. However, always adding a bit of his personality. The format is almost as rustic being that as he is mocking the porn industry he also uses such a ‘type A”, studious form at. David Foster Wallace shows the difference between “low art’ and work done with artistic m Ritter by saying “Serious art… More apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by product of hard work and discomfort. ” in an interview conducted by Larry MacAfee, a famous literary c artic. This quote reiterates David Foster Wallach’s ability, moreover his knowledge of the import dance in challenging the reader. By putting his full self into his work, Wallace thrives in artistic merit. Public pop onion constantly swayed his thoughts and writing.
Despite the battled he fought wit h himself through he years, David Foster Wallach’s troubles only forced himself to never settle f or anything less than perfect in his work. It is evident that this strive for perfection was a facto r in the way he constructed his footnotes, almost as if he was worried to leave anything out. During an interview with Charlie Rose you can really see how Wallach’s depression impacted not o only his way of thinking, but his writing as well. In the interview, while talking about the foot totes, he begins by praising himself for his own individuality he expresses within each one.
Hesitate NT to seem slobbered he immediately puts himself down, gaining a self of humility hi chi may be overlooked as pure embarrassment. This humility was clearly out of discomfort t with his own self, causing him to filter what he truly wanted to say. This same occurrence took Pl ace again during another interview critiqued by Ryan Bloom in an article called “The Best of Dad vivid Foster Wallace” posted in the American Prospect: Once, as Max relates, Wallace strode into a room of interviewers and told them, “You should know am really really smart. This type of hinging eventually repulsed Wallace, though, and, looking back, he told Mark Carr, in an interview now collected in Conversations with David Foster Wallace, “When I was in my twenties, thought I was really smart and really clever and that anybody would be privileged to read whatever I’d written. ” But thinking like that, he told Rolling Stone writer David Lipids, ‘almost made me die. ‘ This quote was clearly before DEW’s depression took a turn for the worst. His decline in self esteem is evident through the previous quote.
Although unfortunate, one may believe his oppression helped build his artistic merit. It brought him to a deeper thinking and had him put himself into every piece he wrote. “Big Red Son” was a fantastic was to introduce David Foster Wallach’s artistic merit to a group of young adults. The merit is evident through not only his materials but his extensive background as well. “Low art” has becoming strikingly more common as writers are getting to liberal with not just what they say but how their message is relayed to an audience. Wallace portrays his writing Structure in such a way that makes a reader want to read more.
