Recent Update

I haven’t updated this site for a while because of a bizarre WordPress error, but all seems well now.

I’ve been busy the past six months! I’ve posted a lot of new things at SimpleRanger.net, tons of new images at Apres Garde, and started posting a lot over at mlkshk. I’ve started one mlkshk for Breaking Bad (new favorite show) and one for modern homes. I think I only have one new post up at GoogleSightseeing, but I have a couple more in the works.

I was quoted in this CultureMap series about the DFW archives at the Ransom Center in Austin (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

And just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Arlo’s first birthday!

Goings on

I’ve been busy lately! Last month I was interviewed for this article on the Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy blog:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/15/david-foster-wallace-his-secret-life-as-a-philosopher/

If the movement to which Eckert is alluding has a head, it is probably Matt Bucher of Austin, Texas, whose day job is editing textbooks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. For the past eight years, Bucher has administered Wallace-L, the largest list-serve connecting Wallace fans across the United States. … Bucher explains that Wallace-L spun off from a Thomas Pynchon emailing list in the late 1990s. It has swelled from about 100 members in 1996-97 to 1000 at present. Bucher, who started monitoring the list in 2002, reports that there was a roughly 25% increase in membership in the months following Wallace’s death. Though generally pleased, Bucher complains that some of the information online has gotten less reliable.

Also, I was mentioned in this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Afterlife-of-David-Foster/125823/

Meanwhile, Sideshow Media Group, run by an independent Wallace scholar named Matt Bucher, just published Consider David Foster Wallace, a collection of critical essays born out of the first academic conference on Wallace, held at the University of Liverpool in 2009. (Another Wallace conference took place that year at the City University of New York.)

In Street View news, my Apres Garde blog was mentioned in this Italian news article: http://notizie.virgilio.it/esteri/blog-fotografici-da-google-street-view-fenomeno-web-2010_142053.html

Over at my other site, Simple Ranger, I’ve posted some things that weren’t right for Apres Garde:

Street View Essay – Macau

Vending Machines of Yokohama

And a bunch of “Best of” Apres Garde posts that collect thematic posts there:
Best of Apres Garde – People
Best of Apres Garde – Roads
Best of Apres Garde – Fields
Best of Apres Garde – Darkness
Best of Apres Garde – The Sea

Modern Reader

I’m leading a group read of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 over at my blog Bolanobolano.com

You can also follow the conversation on the bolano-l mailing list.

The project got a nice write-up yesterday in the LA Times Jacket Copy blog.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/weekinreview/24rich.html

by Motoko Rich

Published January 23, 2010

Communal reading can also help for books that are challenging to approach on your own. How many people actually got through “Ulysses” outside of a college class? Matthew Bucher,  a textbook editor in Austin,
Tex., who administers “Wallace-L,”an online discussion group for fans of David Foster Wallace, said that the expertise of mathematicians, linguists and other fans sharing insights with the online group vastly improved his reading of “Infinite Jest.”

That doesn’t stop Mr. Bucher from having a deeply intimate relationship with books. “I still read the book at home at night by myself with one lamp,” he said. “The next day it does enhance my experience to talk about it.”

The Book Club With Just One Member

I’m leading a group read of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 over at my blog Bolanobolano.com

You can also follow the conversation on the bolano-l mailing list.

The project got a nice write-up yesterday in the LA Times Jacket Copy blog.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/weekinreview/24rich.html

by Motoko Rich

Published January 23, 2010

Communal reading can also help for books that are challenging to approach on your own. How many people actually got through “Ulysses” outside of a college class? Matthew Bucher,
a textbook editor in Austin, Wallace-L,” an online discussion group for fans of David Foster Wallace, said that the expertise of mathematicians, linguists and other fans sharing insights with the online group vastly improved his reading of “Infinite Jest.”

That doesn’t stop Mr. Bucher from having a deeply intimate relationship with books. “I still read the book at home at night by myself with one lamp,” he said. “The next day it does enhance my experience to talk about it.”