David Foster Wallace, "Lyndon"


1. Wallace's exploration of the thirty-sixth president of the United States is offered from an inventive and distinctive point of view. Describe the narrator of this piece. How does he confirm what is commonly believed about Johnson, and how does he offer a new vision of the former president?

2. "Many of the stories about those last months," David Boyd says, "about Lyndon refusing sometimes ever to leave the Oval Office, are the truth." What techniques does Wallace employ to make this portrait seem as real as fact, and what strategies does he use to ensure that readers will not believe all of it, that they will understand that at least some of it is invention?

3. "Lyndon," the First Lady tells David Boyd, "is haunted by his own conception of distance . . . the distance at which we see each other, arrange each other, love." Explore the nature of distance and intimacy in this purportedly close-up portrait of Johnson and some of the people around him. Is it possible to achieve intimacy with someone so presidential, or with any public figure, or with history itself? The distinction and bifurcation between the public and the private is true for all postmodern individuals, but paradigmatically true for celebrities. What does Boyd mean when he says, "I saw the President's personal eyes"?