AUDIO: Rare David Foster Wallace Interview Found

Kunal Jasty and Max Larkin at Radio Open Source have uncovered an old David Foster Wallace interview from 1996, the year Infinite Jest came out and before he was the literary star he’d become. The interview was conducted by Chris Lydon for WBUR in Boston. He discusses why his generation feels lost, his hopes for his career, and his feelings of loneliness: “I think somehow the culture has taught us or we’ve allowed the culture to teach us that the point of living is to get as much as you can and experience as much pleasure as you can, and that the implicit promise is that will make you happy. I know that’s almost offensively simplistic, but the effects of it aren’t simplistic at all.”

You can listen to the full interview above.