My dad’s a doctor and he would RANT whenever he saw House on TV. Just go on and on about how somebody like that is nothing but a liability who would cost the hospital millions in both misuse of equipment, tying up of labs, and lawsuits, and he’s have been out on his ass years ago in any real version of the show.

Which implies you’re fine with the horrible things he did.

I’m not even French.

The Liars Club. My first Mary Carr.

I agree women can be just as awful as men, but until I hear of an idolized female author throwing a coffee table at her husband, I’d hold off on “all lives matter”ing here.

Uh, no. I don’t think so. But continue to let men off the hook for being abusive assholes by saying “lol, women probably are not nice sometimes!”

Have you read the great memoirs she’s already written?

I’ve loved Wallace’s writing for years. That being said, I really hope Mary Karr writes about this or otherwise tells her whole story. (Even from a very big fan of Wallace’s work) The deification of Wallace since his death has been exhausting. It almost entirely comes from his commencement speech to Kenyon College…

Being a DFW fanboy is one of my red flags when I start dating someone. The venn diagram of those guys and chronic mansplainers is a circle. This gives me even more reason to nope out when someone starts talking about Infinite Jest on the first date.

This whole reasoning is why I used to believe that you had to be an asshole to be a genius. I was always praised for my intelligence but scolded for my behavior so I assumed that the two were correlated. And because badly behaved girls tend to get criticized the most, I kind of internalized the idea that I was mean…

Seriously?

Interesting how often “turmoil of the soul” is justification for men abusing women in service of “art.”

Exactly. I’ve known plenty of fucked-up writers over the years and they have, in general, dealt with it via writing and therapy. Turns out it’s possible to have emotional issues and not be an abusive dick head!

This fucker followed a five-year-old child home from school. No amount of “literary genius” excuses that behavior, and to brush that off as if this indicated Wallace was mired in turmoil is gross.

In his book Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, D. T. Max mentioned in passing that Wallace “threw a coffee table” and “tried to push Karr from a moving car,” which Karr said is “about 2% of what happened.”

This was so beautiful. Bless you.

What Rude Negro said.

Sure, he stalked her, beat her, and threatened her life as well as the lives around her, but he wrote some stuff that seems kinda cool. So....

*jerking-off motion*

DFW intensely loved dogs, and his harassing, stalking and threatening women with violence made him a really fascinating guy and great writer. Got it.