Gawker: in memoriam

David Foster Wallace's Online Legacy

Ryan Tate — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:16:29 EDT

Harper's has made available online eleven essays by David Foster Wallace following the postmodern writer's suicide last week. Bloggers have rounded up other DFW work available online, including his Times profile of Roger Federer and 2000 Rolling Stone profile of John McCain. There are also videos, including the writer's appearances on Charlie Rose (other) and these moments collected by the LA Times. All told, the world is left with a reasonably extensive sampling of the writer's work available at the click of a mouse — at least enough to draw in new readers and perhaps even convince them to attempt his daunting masterpiece, Infinite Jest. [via Daring Fireball, Wonkette, LA Times]

George Carlin's Last Interview

Ryan Tate — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:40:12 EDT

Nine days before comedian George Carlin's death, he gave a wide-ranging, two-hour interview to Jay Dixit of Psychology Today. It was originally intended as a 350-word Q&A for the back page of the magazine but today, in the aftermath of Carlin's passing, was published online at much greater length. In the interview, Carlin talks about how he collects and sifts through potential material, the advantages of being an older comedian, how hallucinogenic drugs enhanced his work and life, his extensive use of computers and whether his act is "angry." But most interesting, perhaps, are the parts of the conversation where the rough-and-tumble performer opens up about how his career is tied to his relationship with his Mom, who raised Carlin and his brother alone amid the Great Depression:

I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.

...I needed to be—not the center of attention—but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown...

Q: Can you remember the first joke you ever told?

No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it’s lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard—which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me.

[Psychology Today]

(Getty Images photo taken today at a collection of flowers left in memory of Carlin at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.)

The Death Agony Of America's Biggest Magazine

Nick Denton — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:14:48 EDT

The death of the quintessential TV listings magazine is a shabby affair. The rumor we floated yesterday—that editor-in-chief Ian Birch and other staff are being laid off—appears indeed to be true. The new owners, Macrovision, is thought only interested in the TV Guide's online and electronic program guides; the print edition is loss-making and may be shut down if a buyer can't be found, according to Deadline Hollywood. The magazine—which could not cope with the proliferation of programming in the 1980s and 1990s and further lost relevance when viewers began to use the program guides supplied by their cable provider—will not be mourned. But let's at least pay some respect to its history.

The title was an instant success when it launched in 1953 and at its peak in 1970, with almost 20m readers, its circulation was by some margin the largest of any magazine. In 1988, the parent company went for an astonishing $3bn to Rupert Murdoch's News America—one of the Australian media mogul's most disastrous deals, as it later become evident. The electronic operations and the brand may retain some value; but the print title is essentially worthless except as an object lesson for a publishing industry under assault by technological change.

Death Bets

Richard — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:53:03 EST

In preparation for Sunday's Oscars, Vanity Fair is eschewing the traditional "Who's gonna win?" ballot sheet and opting instead for a "Who's gonna get snubbed?" tally card for the inevitable In Memoriam celebrity death montage. Is it ghoulish? Is it funny? Is it neither? It's neither, isn't it? Either way, our money's on Suzanne Pleshette. For everything. Whatever that means.[VF]