Manuel Antonio Córdoba at the LARB:
THE YEAR IS 2008. David Foster Wallace has just died by suicide and every Spanish-language writer is rushing to their blog to post a heartfelt obituary for their favorite North American novelist. Vicente Luis Mora: “I wonder if Wallace will become the Kurt Kobain of North American fiction.” Alberto Fuguet: “Perhaps being a writer is, in fact, a dangerous profession.” Luna Miguel: “Today I mourn my boyfriend’s favorite writer. I have never read him.” In the days and months that followed, David Foster Wallace’s dour face monopolized half a dozen Spanish literary supplements, the journal Quimera devoted a dossier to his legacy, Rodrigo Fresán multiplied his condolences between two countries and their respective cultural magazines (Página 12 and Letras Libres), and Random House Mondadori reprinted and sold several runs of their translation of Infinite Jest (1996).
It was the start of a hunt for the Spanish-language David Foster Wallace.
more here.
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