One of which sold and one of which didn’t:
According to an article by Leon Neyfakh in this week’s Observer, [D.T.] Max’s proposal was scooped up by Viking Press at auction last week for a low–six-figure sum and will arrive in bookstores sometime in 2011. Meanwhile, [David] Lipsky’s treatment still hasn’t found an interested party willing to publish his “memoiristic sketch” about DFW; according to Neyfakh, even Lipsky’s current publisher, Random House, has passed on the project. The sticking point for publishers seems to be the fact that Lipsky’s project is based on a series of audiotaped conversations between Lipsky and DFW that took place while the two were on the road for the Infinite Jest book tour in 1996. One anonymous editor who saw both proposals said that “whoever [purchases Lipsky's proposal] is going to have quite a task turning it into a proper book,” but also admits that it “will satisfy a different itch, and that is to kind of hear that incredible music again: the sound of David Foster Wallace at full tilt.”
Like NY Mag’s Mark Graham, I’m hoping that someone picks up Lipsky’s book, which sounds pretty fucking rad (his “The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace,” published in Rolling Stone last October, is a must-read). [via bookslut]
