Isaac and I caught the indefatigable David Foster Wallace at that ever-popular Union Square B&N tonight. Although I’d read a couple of articles on his new book Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity and I did pick a copy up at the store tonight to have it signed, I haven’t of course read it yet. I was therefore first startled and then pleased when his reading from the book’s first chapter turned out to deal almost entirely with the Humean problem of induction - a little corner of epistemology very near and dear to my philosophical heart. After the reading, I spoke with him briefly about some of the literature on the topic and he recommended a paper (”Will the Future Be Like the Past?”) by Frederick Will; it’s on JSTOR and worth looking up if you’ve got access to it. (NYU students, this means you - just use the web proxy if you’re not on campus.)

I dove into the new DFW book on the train ride home, and I can now safely recommend it - although it is, of course, a change of pace from his fiction. However, even in Infinite Jest I noticed his ability to take immensely complicated things - including mathematical things - and make them into something you want to read without any unforgivable degree of oversimplification or dumbing down of the material. His writing is full of this sort of infectious enthusiasm, and that’s true whether he’s talking about drug addicts or Hume - something few people can pull off.

Overall, I was impressed with what I’ve read (and heard read) of the new book, but I was also impressed with the way he handled the reading and discussion. There were some stupid questions and some difficult ones, and he managed to answer the ones worth answering and tactfully deflect the others.