Essa lista do DFW deu muito o que falar. Teve gente se perguntando se ele não tava brincando e tudo, mas parece que não mesmo. No Although of course you end up becoming yourself ele conversa com o Lipsky sobre o King: [Lipsky sobre o DFW: oddly, the writer who does approach, finds a way to talk about religion, is Stephen King, who he thinks is underrated. He gets toward it in The Stand.], DFW: "this isn't for the tape, this is just for you - because he's got this part about that. [In the Stand] You've gotta look real closely to see what's cool about King, because most of it's I think very cynical shit. He tries to sound how people really speak, although he's got two or three tricks. He's just got a real limited range; he can do the same character and brain voice over and over and over again - which would be fine if he didn't write two books a year. [Lipsky: we talk more about Stephen King... whose work he knows astonishingly well.]
Eu sei que em algum ponto o Wallace também fala de como o Clancy é talentoso "for the ability to pack in facts", algo assim. Tem quem diga que o Eschaton é uma homenagem do DFW ao Clancy.
Eu não li The thin red line (nem vi o filme), mas o que eu li a respeito do livro me lembrou demais um trecho do Pale King que acabou ficando fora do livro (mas tem disponível no site da New Yorker) chamado All that.
A dança da morte é o livro preferido de um amigo meu, que diz ter lido o livro inteiro em 3 dias, e recomenda o livro fervorosamente.
Numa entrevista pra Salon, o DFW respondeu:
Historically the stuff that’s sort of rung my cherries: Socrates’ funeral oration, the poetry of John Donne, the poetry of Richard Crashaw, every once in a while Shakespeare, although not all that often, Keats’ shorter stuff, Schopenhauer, Descartes’ “Meditations on First Philosophy” and “Discourse on Method,” Kant’s “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic,” although the translations are all terrible, William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience,” Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus,” Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Hemingway — particularly the ital stuff in “In Our Time,” where you just go oomph!, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, A.S. Byatt, Cynthia Ozick — the stories, especially one called “Levitations,” about 25 percent of the time Pynchon. Donald Barthelme, especially a story called “The Balloon,” which is the first story I ever read that made me want to be a writer, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver’s best stuff — the really famous stuff. Steinbeck when he’s not beating his drum, 35 percent of Stephen Crane, “Moby-Dick,” “The Great Gatsby.”