Manga Ngcobo

“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.” – David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest Adam Gordon, the fictional poet from Ben Lerner’s 2011 novel Leaving the Atocha Station, was my first glimpse into life in Madrid. Gordon, an American exchange student in his early twenties, relocates to the Spanish capital with the lofty goal of writing an epic poem that interrogates the role of literature in the Spanish Civil War.

β€œIt did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.” – David Foster Wallace, Infinite…

1996. A dimly lit table. A blacked-out television studio. The Charlie Rose Show. A talk show host and three young American novelists — still outsiders in the literary establishment: Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, and Mark Leyner. A discussion pertaining to the reception of their novels in the age of the “internet, information, and images.” An elephant in the room. Packed into a fifteen-minute segment, the trio had been summoned to defend their craft.