On Writing

This weekend in the Sunday Times Magazine, Maud Newton had a really interesting piece on David Foster Wallace's influence on how we've been writing over the last fifteen, twenty years. Back when I subscribed to Harper's Foster Wallace wrote for it and it was there that I read his brilliant essay about going on a cruise, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and, my favorite, Tense Present, an essay I ripped out and have taken to every apartment or house I've lived in since. I didn't read much more of his writing, but when I started A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I had to put it down within the first one hundred pages because it was too much like what I knew about Foster Wallace. But what I didn't know, until I read Maud Newton's essay, is David Foster Wallace is the reason I want to throw in a "you know" all the time. Not to mention all those exclamation points! Who knew? I should have. I guess.