David Foster Wallace
The news of David Foster Wallace’s death makes me want to cry. I have no special insight on the subject, however.
I have no clue as to what was going on in his head, but I was reminded, inevitably, of my uncle, the youngest of my father’s brothers, who died when I was 10 or 11. He was an artist, and a terrifically bright, scatter-brained kid who was always bouncing off walls. He wasn’t a kid, technically. Actually, he had just married a heart-stoppingly beautiful young woman the last time I saw him, and it was pretty clear to me that they adored each other. I’ll bet they were both younger at the time than I am now. I shudder to think of what she had to go through after his death.
I remember that he was really obsessed with Michael Jackson, and he spent some time working in the Gulf, where lots of young Bangladeshi men go to do backbreaking labor for a year or two. I don’t think it agreed with him. But it gave him a sense of the wider world. I can’t say why he did what he did. I do remember that it broke all of our hearts.
I talked to my father about mental illness in the developing world, and how it was a cause worth supporting. He said, stoically, that it was better to focus on agriculture and literacy and other basics of ginning up life-saving economic growth. And while I certainly see his point, I was struck … I don’t know. Maybe I look at things through the lens of experience and analogy than is right or appropriate.
David Foster Wallace was, without question, an extraordinary talent. I have to wonder about all of the other lights that have gone out unbeknown to us, including children who’ve died before the age of 5 due to malnutrition or preventable disease. What a nightmare.
I did cry, which sort of surprised me. I like and even love chunks of DFW’s work, but I was never a rabid fan. It’s hard to say why his death affected me the way it did. I think partly it’s because, more than a lot of writers, he made you feel like you were being spoken to, addressed directly. He made you feel like you knew him. I’m thinking especially of his non-fiction, but his fiction, too, has that quality. Really a terrible loss.
— gunter · Sep 14, 09:57 AM · #
The only things I ever read of Wallace’s were an anthologized version of his essay about the 2000 McCain campaign, and a commencement address he made to Kenyon College. Cannot speak from knowledge of his work otherwise, but he seemed quite gifted, if somewhat sentimental. The suicide is of course very sad. I’m moved to think what I thought about Cobain, about lost talent, of course – but also the things I think whenever I hear about a suicide. Like many people (I would guess), I’ve seriously considered it at times, but never took the leap. What I recall from those times when it seemed most possible is an incredible (and, I think, starkly irrational) sense of isolation, dread and anguish, and lack of hope. There seemed no possibility at those times that the future, and especially my future, might be alright. The saddest part, to me, of hearing about someone’s suicide is the sense that it’s very likely that they died suffocated in those same kinds of feelings. It is not a nice thing to think about, nor a nice mental place to occupy. If there’s any value to it, for me, it’s a new revelation of the value of the smallest things, and of a long night’s sleep.
— donald · Sep 14, 02:06 PM · #
Ouch, Reihan, you just wrecked my day. But thanks for the news anyway.
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 02:22 PM · #
I can’t help but feel that my grief is selfish, because my first thought was that I wouldn’t ever get to read the next great David Foster Wallace novel. I love his nonfiction and short stories, but I just assumed that another rambunctious and audacious novel along the lines of “Infinite Jest” would come along. And it’s our loss.
It reminds me of what a theatre director friend of mine said about an actor we knew who was going through an emotional crisis: “It’s an extraordinary difficult thing, being human.” And for artists who are enormously sensitive and spend their lives trying to figure out what it means to live in this human condition, the burden can take unexpectedly great tolls. I will greatly miss him.
— saxon conrad · Sep 14, 02:26 PM · #
It’s hard not to read DFW’s story “The Depressed Person” (from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) in a different light. I know that I took great comfort from the feeling that he really understood pathologically self-aware people like myself, but it was of course an entirely one-way street; we failed him in some sense.
— Ryan · Sep 14, 06:34 PM · #
We weep not for those who leave, but for those who are left behind.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 08:22 PM · #
It’s interesting what you said about mental illness in the developing world. It carries such a strong stigma in so many of those countries. My parents are immigrants from Asia, and they’ve carried that stigma with them to the US. Because of this, it’s been difficult dealing with family members who have emotional problems ranging from mild to severe.
I have to say I’ve never read any David Foster Wallace. I once saw an interview with him on Charlie Rose. He just seemed to be another pretentious hippie, so I didn’t bother. But seeing you and your commenters extolling his writing, I’ll have to give his essays a try.
— PS · Sep 15, 10:15 PM · #