Off Topic: R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

by Sam Dean - Sep. 13, 2008Comments (6)

It was with great sadness that I just read that writer David Foster Wallace is dead at age 46, apparently having hanged himself.  From bloggers like the ones who keep OStatic fresh every day, to journalists at magazines and newspapers where I've worked, I've often told fellow writers to read David's stuff. I loved his 1996 book Infinite Jest, a 1,000-page, Ulysses-like, uber-tome that I learned to read in the same way it was composed--non-linearly--where you can enjoy Wallace's mastery of the language by flipping it open and reading any passage. Experiencing it is more like listening to great music than anything else.

In my opinion, David was the most talented young writer around, in a world where people don't read books, short stories and essays so much anymore, favoring blogs and other shorter-burst online vehicles. Every magazine left that preserves fiction talent published his writing, including Esquire and The New Yorker. David was also a teacher of creative writing. Infinite Jest appears on Time Magazine's list of "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."

David was perhaps the greatest living master of Nabokov-style wordplay, and was wickedly funny--especially when it came to black humor and sly humor. I laughed out loud at his famous essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." It's a diatribe against cruise ships where David can be found using his tennis shoes to precisely measure his justification for how much he loathes the size of his cabin. Ten shoes by twelve shoes just doesn't cut it.

Many of the bloggers and writers I've worked with shared my affinity for David's work. He once wanted to be a professional tennis player, but couldn't make it. An essay he wrote for Esquire, where he followed the 109th best tennis player on the ATP rankings around for weeks, is one of the best magazine articles I've ever read. It chronicled the guy's frustrations so meticulously that Esquire published footnotes delivered in micro-fonts, and, even though it was filled with compassion, it was also  take-your-breath-away hilarious.

In an eerie piece of evidence of David's unusual powers of observation, I noticed this post providing the following quote from a university lecture he gave:

"Think of the old cliché about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master."

Rest in peace, David. This shouldn't have happened.


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6 Comments
 

A very nice tribute. Man, am I going to miss his writing.

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Godammmittt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Sad. Brilliant wordsmith.

Odd though: no one has mentioned--not a single obit so far--that he wrote a book on (and traveled extensively with) John McCain. Strange omission.

DFW, you'll be missed!

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As a librarian with several friends who can recite long passages from "Infinite Jest," I am more than a little embarrassed to say I have (as yet) never read it.

I have, of course, run across David's works in shorter forms, which are inspired.

And unfortunately... What can you say about a really quite *young* man who ends it himself? There aren't words. I mean, there aren't words that don't sound stupid, self-serving, and full of sickly sweet platitudes. No one can say he's in a better or worse place, no one can shake their heads, say it's a shame, and that it would have gotten better. Sure, most likely it would have, but it's not our place to know that.

There are a lot of elements of tragedy here, of course. The youth, the talent lost... I always find, though, the hardest thing to wrap my head around with a suicide is -- how alone that person must have been at that moment, at least in their own mind. It may not be the case in reality... But, as was said, "The mind is a terrible master."

A terrible master, and so often still such a convincing liar. It's important to be kind and compassionate to others. We need to be able to float ourselves the same break.

Sigh.

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RIP

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When he was alive, I didn't really LIKE dfw's writing. I love so much the stories of Somerset Maugham, e.g., and other such a-irony. I hate the kind of "smartass" writing that dfw appearED to me to epitomize. I had a look at BIWHM and was repelled by how close to the bone some of the testimonies of the "hideous men" were. I said at the time that it was the smartass-ness I hated, but in fact I thought that that kind of ugliness should only be ever very obliquely referred to in literature. As long as dfw was alive I was happy to write him off - ( actually, I was hooked. "The girl with the curious hair" was the simultaneously the story that made my point, and one that went straight to the depths of whatever depths I have and whose power I JUST COULDN'T SHAKE.). Then dfw went and CHICKENED OUT (I blame the drugs, and his lack of exposure to christianity and music). Now that he is dead, I find myself fascinated by him. I KNOW WHAT HE WAS TRYING TO DO. I'm sure a lot of others feel the same. But he went and DID THAT THING! HE GAVE UP. It's a double-edged sword: it all made me sufficiently interested in him as a person to want to read more of his stuff despite what the critics (" with their horrible jargon") say. And this re-(pre)-reading has made me realise what we have LOST. This was a man who understood HIDEOUS MEN. How much of these are just (post-)modern Dostoyevskyan underground men? Despite the liberalism of the modern world, the only mouthpiece of these hideous men remains OBLIQUE literature. Tonight dfw made me realise that these are indeed HIDEOUS men, but also that to dismiss their preoccupations is also to close the door to an understanding of the modern male psyche, and also a mere AD HOMINEM response. It is always uncomfortable when someone bares their soul to you. It is too easy to dismiss such embarassing openness with just such an ad hominem reponse. Goddamn you David Foster Wallace. I was quite happy ignoring you (while simultaneously graciously admitting that some of your stuff was "VERY POWERFUL


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