John Krasinski Reads David Foster Wallace

When John Krasinski got his check for doing the pilot of the American version of The Office, he didn't buy a car or an expensive rug or a share in a championship racehorse (although he was probably tempted), he optioned the David Foster Wallace book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which he's adapted for the screen, directed, and produced. Back in 2006, he made an appearance at Jest Fest, an evening of readings of Wallace's work. Here is the YouTube footage of Krasinski reading from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Warning: The content is for mature audiences only, and is probably NSFW, depending on where you W):



I've never read Wallace's work. It's something I had planned to rectifiy this fall with an Infinite Jest reading group, but now, support seems to be waning. There's something sad about picking up Wallace's opus now, when before it seemed merely daunting. His death hasn't hurt his sales, so maybe I'm the only one who feels this way. Anyway, what's interesting to me about the Krasinski footage is how he makes the passage come alive. The knock against DFW's writing has always been its difficulty, and yet here's a passage that has the audience in stitches. It's easy to follow, it's funny, hell, it's brilliant.