'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace' by David Lipsky

Finished 5/13/19 at ~3:46pm

As you may know, David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite writers. In past year or so, I read Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, two books on my bucket list for some time. Both made me appreciate his work at a different level than before -- it's amazing just how versatile of an author he was.

I've wanted to read 'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself' for some time as well. The book is documents (quite literally) a road trip that the journalist David Lipsky took with DFW back in 1996, right after the publication of Infinite Jest. It's also the basis for the movie 'The End of Tour'.

The format was very interesting -- aside from a forward and epilouge, the book is an almost word-for-word transcript of a number of conversations the two had. I listened to this in audiobook, which added an interesting dynamic as it was almost a live 'dialogue' in a sense.

As a reader and fan of DFW, I enjoyed it a lot -- there's a good amount of material around his goals with Infinite Jest as a book, his views on a number of topics, how he chooses to write and work, his addiction to Television, his love of Alanis Morrisette -- and after you get into the rhythm of the book, the raw-ness of the conversations just makes it a bit more "real". Lipsky as a character himself is quite interesting too, though I appreciated his editorial notes that he made at the time of publishing the book even more.

If you haven't read IJ, 'Although' is probably something you should keep on the shelf until you do. The book is fresh in the minds of both DFW and Lipsky during the interviews, and is referenced heavily. However, if you have, the books makes for a great companion as the history and motivations behind many of it's features are illuminated.

The major thing that struck me on reading this was just how forward thinking DFW was. In more ways than one, he understood American culture to the point where he could see where we were going long before we got there. In this book alone, I feel as though he predicts Netflix, the long-term effects of the Internet, and talks at length about how we need to evolve to be able to handle what's coming.His words are still pertinant and enthralling to read almost 15 years later.