DFW's iron pen

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Wood's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

Job describes “an iron pen” with which words could be “engraved on a rock forever.” Few writers have such a pen. Even C. S. Lewis might well have been surprised that The Screwtape Letters has enjoyed such a long life. 

Among those who loved that little novel was a large, shaggy, overeducated man-child in Bloomington, Illinois, named David Foster Wallace. One of the most admired writers of his generation, Wallace won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” on the publication of his comic novel Infinite Jest. Infinite, indeed; it goes on for almost 1,100 pages, with still more jokes crammed into endnotes. Apparently this doorstop of a book weighed most heavily on Wallace, for he never could quite follow it up.