David Foster Wallace RIP
The Internet is alight with the news of David Foster Wallace’s suicide. This is hitting me hard, not only because of Wallace’s youth, talent, and unfinished business, but because of my sense that he was not the type of artist who did this. In his writing, and especially in his magazine writing, I always found an authenticity and decency and all-around avoidance of self-tortured preening. I’m not saying we can spot suicidal hints in an artist’s work, but I am saying Wallace connected to real emotions and real concerns in a way that separated him from many of his pomo peers.
This doesn’t feel like the time to track down who broke the news, but I found out via the LA Times‘s blog. In choosing an image to accompany the story, their reporter posted the wrong book cover—not of Wallace’s opus, Infinite Jest, but of Stephen Burn’s David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide, a short volume in the “Continuum Contemporaries” series.
The Times’ unintentional slip feels like a fitting sort of tribute—with possible implications for Wallace’s style and audience, his relationship to academia, and even the state of fiction today—but I don’t feel like parsing it. I just feel sad.
Comments
Heartbroken with you.
Comment by Tim Jacobs — September 14, 2008 @ 9:44 pm
heartbroken to say the least. He had so much talent and class in him.
Comment by Essay — October 19, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Sad! He could have gone on to such greater heights.
Comment by Video Chat — October 20, 2008 @ 12:43 am
Sad to hear that. I’m sure that he had many more miles to cover.
Comment by Electric Guitar Pedals — October 20, 2008 @ 6:22 am
Sad to hear that..He could have gone on to achieve so much more.!
Comment by Bears — October 30, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
...I can’t believe he committed a suicide. R.I.P…
Comment by danny — October 30, 2008 @ 1:00 pm
Damn..! So sorry to hear that!:(
Comment by Baby Names — November 1, 2008 @ 7:02 am
Just came to know about it. Why good people die and bad continue to live?
Comment by rpar — November 2, 2008 @ 6:57 am
Yes, a great man is gone :(
Comment by green — November 8, 2008 @ 3:26 pm
So sorry to hear that.. I wish he would have taken a second thought before doing this.!
Comment by Voucher Codes — November 9, 2008 @ 6:01 am
i too cant believe he committed a suicide. R.I.P…
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Comment by glyco from canada — November 11, 2008 @ 8:03 am
Sad! He could have gone on to such greater heights.
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Comment by competition from homss — December 17, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
This is really pathetic and really sad indeed.
Comment by Johan — February 14, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
ya really sad one….
we lost one great man
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Comment by thompson from US — February 20, 2009 @ 11:18 am
ya its really very sad news
we lost one great man
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Comment by thompson from US — February 20, 2009 @ 11:22 am
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