How to be a Fan in the Age of Problematic Faves

Posted: August 24th, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: DFW, personal | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

This academic article is really a series of letters between Dr. Grace Chipperfield and me. It was published in January 2021 in the journal “Life Writing” and the subsequent book titled Essays in Life Writing. The question that Grace and I were grappling with is still one that stalks DFW Studies (and plenty of other fandoms): is there an ethical way to be a fan of a problematic artist?

I’ll paste the official abstract below.

ABSTRACT

In 2018, author Mary Karr tweeted about her abusive relationship with David Foster Wallace. This was at the height of #MeToo and cancel culture, where the phrase ‘problematic fave’ was commonplace. Wallace, dead for ten years but still alive in the public imagination, was suddenly brought into the conversation. Wallace’s fans, too, were implicated in his bad behavior, particularly by their reputation for being ‘lit-bros’. At the time, Grace Chipperfield was writing a doctoral thesis on Wallace, which eventually turned into a collection of essays that reckoned with both Wallace’s complicated legacy and her relationship to him as a fan, a scholar, and a woman. The final essay in the collection was a deep dive into Wallace fandom, and to write this Grace corresponded with members of the Wallace community, including one of its most dedicated and active participants: Matt Bucher. Here, then, is a sample of that correspondence. This essay is a series of letters between Grace and Matt throughout which they consider their moral obligations as fans in the age of the problematic fave.

Grace Chipperfield is a Fulbright Scholar and tutor in English and Creative Writing at Flinders University, South Australia. She recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing, a collection of essays on David Foster Wallace and his fans. She is on the board of the International David Foster Wallace Society and an associate editor for The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies. Email: grace.chipperfield@flinders.edu.au