The End of the Tour

- Hey. Bob, what's up? - Hi. Listen.

According to an unconfirmed report, David Wallace is dead.

What? No. No, no, no.

No, It must be some sort of a college prank or something.

Well, I thought if anybody knew whether it was true or not, it'd be you.

Now a remembrance of writer David Foster Wallace.

He was found dead, an apparent suicide, on Friday night.

Wallace's novel, Infinite Jest, brought him fame...

and a wide audience.

Writer David Lipsky has this appreciation.

"To read David Foster Wallace was to feel your eyelids pulled open."

Some writers specialize in the 'away from home' experience.

They have safaried, eaten across Italy, covered a war.

Wallace offered his alive self,

cutting through our sleepy aquarium,

our standard TV, stores, political campaigns.

Writers who can do this... like Salinger and Fitzgerald...

forge an unbreakable bond with readers.

You didn't slip into the books looking for a story, information,

but for a particular experience...

the sensation, for a certain number of pages,

"of being David Foster Wallace."

If anything, there was a conscious attempt...

to not give overt direction,

although, of course, you end up becoming yourself.

Did they want you to be a writer or no?

No. I was gonna be... The big thing, when I was little...

I was... I was, like, a really serious jock. Really?

Yeah. I played citywide football as a kid.

I was really big, really strong as a kid.

And then for four or five years, I was gonna be, like, a pro tennis player.

That was my great dream.

Reading was just this kind of fun,

sort of weird thing that I did on the side.

"I didn't understand SoHo..."

the warehouses, the old buildings, the cobbled streets.

It wasn't the Upper East Side, and it was dirty.

I felt marooned.

Our mother had taken us off the track of the nice life we'd been on.

She'd moored us in a creepy cul-de-sac with her art-world friends.

None of the kids in my school had parents in the art world.

It made me feel different,

like there was something I had to cover up."

It was great. Sorry I missed it.

Don't worry about it.

Hey. I heard you got that Rolling Stone job.

We'll see. I'm sort of on probation. Good luck.

Did you see Kirn's review in New York magazine?

The guy's been fuckin' canonized.

Sorry. Who's this?

David Foster Wallace.

"Next year's book awards have been decided." Can you believe this?

"The plaques and citations can now be put into escrow." It's unbelievable.

"With Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace,

a plutonium-dense, satirical quiz-kid opus that runs to almost a thousand"... What?

"A thousand pages, not including footnotes,"

the competition has been obliterated.

It's as though Paul Bunyan had joined the NFL...

or Wittgenstein had gone onto Jeopardy!.

"The novel is that colossally disruptive and that spectacularly good."

That's the fucking opening paragraph.

What if it actually is that good?

You might just have to read it.

Shit.

Good piece. Thanks a lot.

Solid piece. I'm fine with it.

But you gotta clear it with Legal, okay?

How many times have we interviewed a writer in the last 10 years?

Take a guess.

Uh, how many?

Zero. I checked.

Maybe because Rolling Stone doesn't interview writers.

There hasn't been a writer like this. Okay?

Once in a generation maybe. Hemingway, Pynchon.

Let me have this story. What story?

He's finishing up a book tour, and I want to go with him.

That's not a story.

He teaches at some small state university somewhere in Illinois.

Please, Bob. Send me there.

This is the sort of stuff I should be doing, not 500 words on boy bands.

Talk to Jann.

There better be a story there.

There will be. There better.

David, hi. It's David Lipsky. Where are you?

I think I may have made a wrong turn somewhere.

Let's see. I am on County Highway 29...

just across from the Circus Video.

How'd you get this number?

Your publicist sent it in her e-mail, just in case.

You'd do me a favor by losing it.

Stay. Be calm. Be calm. Stay.

Hey. You made it. Yeah.

Dave. Dave Wallace.

David Lipsky. Hi. It's a pleasure.

Likewise.

Um, I'm sorry about the, uh... the phone call.

No, you're fine.

It was 95% joke. Right, right. Yeah.

Sorry in advance about the dogs. They'll be slobbering all over you.

I don't mind at all. I love dogs.

Oh, yeah? You haven't met these guys yet. No, I love 'em.

Let's, uh... Oh, Jesus. Let's get inside. It's cold.

Boys. Get in there. Thanks a lot.

Ooh. Come on. Come on, buddy.

Wait. I'm very glad to meet you too. Good dog.

Who's that? Oh, that's Jeeves.

Hi. Yeah, that's the Jeeve-meister.

I got him 'cause he was so ugly. Nobody else wanted him.

Now he's, like, a cover girl dog.

And that's Drone. That's my provisional dog.

Why? Why provisional?

He just showed up one day while Jeeves and I were out jogging.

The rest is history.

I feel like I should offer you tea or something.

Yeah. Yeah, thanks. That'd be great. Yeah? Okay.

Nice view.

Thank you. I can't take credit for it.

Huh.

So, um, have you always been unlisted?

I had to do that recently. It was getting kind of crazy.

Oh. Because of... Because of fans.

I don't know if "fan" is exactly the right word.

I think what happened was I had forgotten to tell my parents not to give my number out.

So it was people who had tracked my parents down.

I have this terrible problem. I really hate to hurt people's feelings.

Mmm, right. So I did somethin' kind of cowardly.

No. I don't think unlisting your number is cowardly. Kind of is.

I changed my number so these folks couldn't find me anymore.

Right.

There was this computer operator from Vancouver.

He was living in a basement or something.

I found him very moving. He was in terrible, terrible pain.

What did he want from you?

It's unclear. And when I would, sorta like, ask him,

that's when he would get angry, and then it got scary.

Right. What-What is this? Who's the artist?

That's my friend's daughter. Calls me chicken head.

I call her chicken head.

It's her latest salvo in the war.

Um, that's funny. Would you mind if I...

No. Do what you gotta do. Thank you.

Listen, before we start putting stuff on tape, I need to ask you something.

I need to know that anything that I say five minutes later not to put in,

that you're not gonna put it in.

Absolutely.

Just given my level of fatigue and my fuckup quotient lately,

it's the only way I can see doin' it and not... not going crazy.

No. I completely understand.

It's right back on, huh? Mmm.

Uh, you agreed to the interview.

So this is your road, huh?

Yeah, this is my road.

You're gonna have to tell me where to turn. I'm used to a grid system.

This is all new territory for me.

Fair enough. You just go straight for about a mile.

There'll be signs for the school on the right.

Got it. Do you like teaching there?

I do. Yeah, very much. Which is what's so fucked.

I feel so bad for these kids. Why do you feel bad for them?

They have the greatest writing teacher in the world.

If I was there, maybe. The whole fuss...

it's taken me out of school for the past two weeks.

And we gotta leave again tomorrow.

We gotta be up at the crack of dawn to go to the airport.

Oh, shit. Do we really? That's what you signed on for, man.

You're welcome to stick around and write an article about my dogs.

No, that's just fine. Might be more interesting. I promise you.

Do yourself a favor. Don't expect any fireworks in there.

I'm sure you're gonna be just fine.

Campus-romance story.

Ah! I gotta tell you guys,

the average citizen is not gonna find it that interesting.

The great dread of creative writing professors?

"Their eyes met over the keg."

I just want my narrator to be funny and smart, you know?

I know, I know. I get it.

You want your narrator to be funny and smart.

Here's a tip.

Have him say funny, smart things some of the time.

Thank you.

You did a good job. Thank you.

Um, all right, who's next? Melissa.

I'm normally a much better teacher than that, I swear.

I thought you were great and that they obviously love you.

Oh, yeah? Do you think?

Yeah, come on, you know they do.

You hungry?

And what can I get you to drink?

I'll just have, like, a giant Diet Rite, please.

You know what, I'll have the same thing.

I'll be right back with your pop. Thanks, man.

Oh. Uh, can I, uh...

Do you mind if I... One second.

Uh...

You don't drink.

Is that a question to me?

No. No, it's an observation.

Ah, I see. No, I know. No, I do not drink.

You can order whatever you want though. Go right ahead.

No, no. That's fine.