»Ich wusste nicht, ob daraus der beste oder der schlimmste Text über mich werden würde.« Roger Federer. 2006 reiste David Foster Wallace im Auftrag der New York Times nach Wimbledon, um über das dortige Tennisturnier zu schreiben. Wallace, selbst in seiner Jugend ein erfolgreicher Tennisspieler, traf Roger Federer – für ihn eine fast göttliche Begegnung. David Foster Wallace' Reportagen sind Herzstücke seines großen Werks. 2006 traf Wallace Roger Federer und führte ein Interview mit dem damals noch nicht ganz so berühmten Schweizer, dessen »übermenschliche Karriere« langsam Fahrt aufnahm. Herausgekommen ist ein Text, der Federers Talent beschreibt, der aber auch wie immer bei Wallace die scheinbaren Nebensächlichkeiten des Turniers in den Blick nimmt. Dieser Text ist berühmt geworden – nicht zuletzt, weil die Tennisspielerin und Autorin Andrea Petković ihn wie die anderen Tennistexte von Wallace mit Nachdruck immer wieder empfiehlt.
Author
David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it feels like to live." Readers curled up in the nooks and clearings of his style: his comedy, his brilliance, his humaneness. His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination. Wallace was an A student through high school, he played football, he played tennis, he wrote a philosophy thesis and a novel before he graduated from Amherst, he went to writing school, published the novel, made a city of squalling, bruising, kneecapping editors and writers fall moony-eyed in love with him. He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California's Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month [Sept. 2008], hanged himself at age 46. -excerpt from The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky in Rolling Stone Magazine October 30, 2008. Among Wallace's honors were a Whiting Writers Award (1987), a Lannan Literary Award (1996), a Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (1997), a National Magazine Award (2001), three O. Henry Awards (1988, 1999, 2002), and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. More: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw
