David foster wallace biography lipsky enterprises

In 1996, Rolling Stone contributing editor David Lipsky spent a week with David Foster Wallace, conducting a series of interviews with the author of Infinite Jest.

Lipsky gradually won the celebrated author’s trust, gaining access to a world few but Wallace’s closest intimates knew. As is often the case in the magazine business, a series of events took place — a rock star’s untimely death, a heated political season — and the profile never saw publication.

So Lipsky sat on a massive interview with one of the most important writers of the last 50 years.

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When we heard Wallace committed suicide on September 12th, we immediately sent Lipsky to report on the author’s life and death. The story he came back with, The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, (from RS 1064, on stands now), is one of the most moving pieces RS has published in years.

Here Lipsky discusses the process of his reporting, the man