David Foster Wallace on Good Will Hunting, Loneliness, Writing, and many more

THE LAST INTERVIEW AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS is a collection of interviews of David Forster Wallace including the last interview he gave before his death. David Foster Wallace not only answers the questions regarding his books and essays or collection of his essays rather he has an opinion on various subjects. Here are some of the recites in his on words.

On Pop Culture:

I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water a hundred years ago. It’s just the texture of the world I live in.

On his teaching career:

I was hired to teach creative writing, which I don’t like to teach.

On the film The Good Will Hunting:

I think it’s the ultimate nerd fantasy movie.

On Loneliness:

[…] there is this existential loneliness in the world. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me.

On Writing Book Reviews:

In my opinion it’s far more difficult to write a review of something that you don’t like because if you’re a fiction writer you know how hard you work even on something that seems really crummy to somebody else.

On the role of fiction in our lives:

I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.

On Writing:

n the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader — even though it’s mediated by a kind of text — there’s an electricity about it.