December 22, 2025

#178a David Foster Wallace: The Complete Audio Archive of Interviews, Speeches, and Public Appearances (Winter Solstice Special - Part 1 of 2)

6 hours 34 minutes

Support this work on Patreon

Read the full write-up on this archive on William Engels's Substack, Hemlock.

Part 1 of 2:

We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog's yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum's scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother's retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together, J.D. knows. That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what's brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd."

-Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way", Girl With Curious Hair

In an act of desperate folly, I have collated (by my count, which could be wrong) twenty-nine different recordings of DFW, (29!) - and placed them in as strict a chronological order as the otherwise-degraded catalogues of 90s and 00s public radio metadata will allow. There are various (much older) DFW audio archive projects - which I have used to make this - but they are half the size/accuracy/detail of THIS behemoth. May its 14 hour bulk guide you through the 14-hour night of the Winter Solstice. Depending on latitude.

If you listen to this, you are empowered to say with a straight face that you have heard every interview that David Foster Wallace ever gave.

This is my holiday gift to all of you, and my sign-off for the year, as I head home for Christmas.

Enjoy.

Music Credits: Creative Commons: Chopin, Raindrop Prelude Op 28 No 15, CC-0 performed by Rousseau (YouTube)

...more