Late Night

Late Night (or My Appearance) is a short story written by David Foster Wallace. Released in 1988, it is the seventh short story in Wallace's collection Girl with Curious Hair and tells of an actress being interviewed by David Letterman.

Characters[]

Edilyn - an actress
David Letterman
Rudy - Edilyn's husband

Plot[]

On March 22nd of 1989, an actress named Edilyn largely known for her role in a syndicated crime drama show is interviewed by David Letterman for his Late Night show. Before doing so, Edilyn was worried that Letterman (who had a reputation for being extremely cynical towards his guests and making them into laughing-stocks) would ruin her live on air and use a somewhat damning wiener commercial that she filmed to do so. As such, her husband Rudy (someone "whose name is better known inside the entertainment industry than out of it") coached Edilyn on what to do. He told her that the Late Show was an "anti-show" that played off of common sensibilites within late night television and that, like anti-anti-commercials that appeared on Satudary Night Live, Edilyn should become an anti-guest and play off of David Letterman's cynical and deadpan style of humour. Rudy also had Edilyn wear an earpiece that he could speak into.

Edilyn's interview came after Letterman interviewed the President of NBC's News Division - who went fishing without hooks and sat within circles of dynamite, completely protected from the blast due to being in the eye of the storm. In it, Edilyn deliberately described herself as "a woman who acts" and not much beyond that, despite her somewhat successful career (which included an Emmy nomination) and her successful children. Once the subject of the weiner commercial came up, Edilyn stated that she did it for absolutely no money and simply for the love of acting.

See also[]

Title	Author	Release date	Significance
Little Expressionless Animals	David Foster Wallace	1988	A short story from the same author with similar themes

Works of David Foster Wallace
Novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, The Pale King Short story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion Girl with Curious Hair Little Expressionless Animals, Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR, Girl with Curious Hair, Lyndon, John Billy, Here and There, My Appearance, Say Never, Everything is Green, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way Brief Interviews with Hideous Men A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life, Death Is Not the End, Forever Overhead, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XI), The Depressed Person, The Devil is a Busy Man, Think, Signifying Nothing, Datum Centurio, Octet, Adult World, Church Not Made with Hands, Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VI), Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko, On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon, Suicide as a Sort of Present, Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XXIV) Oblivion Mister Squishy, The Soul Is Not a Smithy, Incarations of Burned Children, Another Pioneer, Good Old Neon, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Oblivion, The Suffering Channel Essay collections and nonfiction Signifying Rappers (written with Mark Costello), A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Everything and More, Consider the Lobster, Fate, Time, and Language, String Theory Major and recurring characters Lenore Beadsman, Hal Incandenza, Don Gately, Joelle van Dyne, Rémy Marathe