David Foster Wallace, RIP

[cutout]

Wow -

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-wallace14-2008sep14,0,246155.story

[Chris L]

Wow indeed.   He was a tremendous talent. 

[Steve of Bloomington]

This really, really depresses me.  I was so sorry to hear about this and hate to think of his wife finding him.

[Omar]

Stunning.  DFW is, by far, my favorite writer of all-time. 

[A.M. Thomas]

Very, very sad.

[joanna]

i'm still jaw-droppingly shocked, hours after finding out.

but mostly: i feel horribly for his wife.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Stunning.  DFW is, by far, my favorite writer of all-time. 

His influence is evident in your recaps.  Seriously.

This is totally fucking sad and makes me wonder why this world is so mean to its geniuses.

[cutout]

makes me wonder why this world is so mean to its geniuses

DFW was worshiped for his work since a young age, no? I never heard a bad word about him as a person.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

makes me wonder why this world is so mean to its geniuses

DFW was worshiped for his work since a young age, no? I never heard a bad word about him as a person.

I think a lot of people vocally hated him in egghead circles.  Also, I think he felt underappreciated in a way that I have to admit hits home.  From a 1996 interview, quoted on the LA Times blog:

"[My] secret pretension ... I mean, every writer wants his book to change the world, but I guess I would like to know if the book moved people. I assume that the future the book talks about, while it might be amusing, wouldn't be a fun future to live in. I think it would be nice if the book could maybe make people think about some of the choices we are making, about what we pay attention to and give power to, so maybe the future won't be quite that ... glittery. but cold....

Fiction used to be people's magic carpet to other places.... You know, 'Oh, a really boring formulaic story but it takes place in Tibet.' But now you turn on PBS and watch someone milking a yak.... Which means that one of fiction's fundamental jobs has been supplanted. But it has another one now. TV's illusion of access to other cultures is, in fact, an illusion. TV itself cannot comment on that."

I dunno, he was probably just unhappy, maybe I'm reading too much into it.  Like it was really Kurt Cobain's stomach ailment (or possibly El Duce) that did him, in and not any concerns about selling out or whatever.  But anyway, that's what this made me think about.

[cutout]

Judging from his writing, my first (unconfirmable) thought was that his hyper-obsessive nature led to major unhappiness, as it usually does with brilliant people who can't escape their own head. He mentioned suicide in that famous speech to Kenyon:

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote 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. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

As he got older, I'm sure it only got worse.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Judging from his writing, my first (unconfirmable) thought was that his hyper-obsessive nature led to major unhappiness, as it usually does with brilliant people who can't escape their own head. He mentioned suicide in that famous speech to Kenyon:

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote 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. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

As he got older, I'm sure it only got worse.

I think about this speech every time I'm in line behind someone annoying at the grocery store.  And I get annoyed anyway, despite my education, which I've always found strangely reassuring.

[jbissell]

This really sucks. I only started reading him in the last couple years and Consider the Lobster was one of the better essay collections I've read.  Maybe I'll try to tackle Infinite Jest now.

[Steve of Bloomington]

Yeah, much of what's troubling is how attuned he was to some of the less glamorous (than spectacular youthful drug or accident flame-outs) but equally (long term) damaging aspects of life - the crushing, dehumanizing boredom of the corporate gig, the slow realization that you probably aren't going to 'make a difference', actually both of these covered extensively in stories in 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'.  So when he does this, you think, well, it was too much for DFW, do I stand a chance?

[Bryan]

I don't have much to add, except that this is a pretty devastating way to start my Sunday. He was one of my favourites, and the qualities of his that I admired most were the way that he was alive to the world, generous in his appraisals of others, and (I thought), able to express the joys of life. Depression kills.

RIP - I'll miss him.

[crumbum]

Judging from his writing, my first (unconfirmable) thought was that his hyper-obsessive nature led to major unhappiness, as it usually does with brilliant people who can't escape their own head. He mentioned suicide in that famous speech to Kenyon:

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote 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. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

As he got older, I'm sure it only got worse.

This is really depressing.

One of the things I always liked about his writing, beyond the incredible verbal dexterity, was his need to keep doubling back and reevaluating his own thoughts and beliefs about the world, aiming for more and more precision with each go-around. That tendency seemed to me the reason why he loved footnotes so much -- and I don't know of any other writer who can belabor a subject and look at it from so many angles without seeming like a total bore.

But looking at this excerpt makes wonder if he didn't feel cursed by that way of looking at things. In his essay on 9-11 in 'Consider the Lobster' he eloquently expresses how intense self-consciousness can feel like a retreat from real experience.