Community Corner

Author D.T. Max Comes to Maplewood Library Tonight

Event begins at 7 p.m. with a book club discussion of Max's biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, recently released in paperback.

The Maplewood and South Orange public libraries are collaborating to present author D.T. Max in conversation on Monday, Nov. 4, at Maplewood Public Library. The event will begin at 7 p.m. with a book club discussion of Max’s biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, recently released in paperback. Then Max will join us at 7:30 p.m. for a reading, followed by discussion and a book signing. Copies of Max’s book will be available for purchase courtesy of Words Bookstore.

David Foster Wallace is regarded by many as the most influential author of the last two decades, a writer whose landmark novel Infinite Jest became a generational touchstone. Since 2008, when Wallace succumbed to crippling, life-long depression, readers have taken to his work with renewed interest and found his influence in the many authors who have written in his shadow.

D.T. Max first profiled Wallace’s final months for a New Yorker piece shortly after the author’s death. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, the first full-length exploration into Wallace’s life and work, expands on that article by drawing on interviews with Wallace’s closest acquaintances and access to Wallace’s archives, providing “an emotionally detailed portrait of the artist as a young man,” according to The New York Times.

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Throughout October, both libraries will be spotlighting Max’s biography and Wallace’s books in anticipation of this event. Readers unfamiliar with Wallace are encouraged to sample his unique body of work. Max suggests newcomers begin with Wallace’s essays, the most famous of which, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” featured Wallace chronicling in exquisite and hilarious detail his observations on a cruise ship.

For more information on this event, please contact Sarah Lester at Maplewood Public Library at 973-762-1622 or slester@maplewoodlibrary.org; or Michael Pucci at South Orange Public Library at 973-762-0230 or mjpucci@sopl.org.

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