RIP David Foster Wallace

Wow, terrible news. RIP.

 

Sad sad day for American writing.

Sadder still, so few posts on this thread.

 

This terrible news hit our tiny household very hard. Very hard.

I send our condolences west to his family and to his friends and to his students. To his readers everywhere.

We were acquaintances at a remove of one or two degrees, friends of friends. Over the years we wrote for some of the same people and passed occasional comment back and forth through them. No more than that. He was a sweet, gentle man, a devoted teacher and a genius of immense and singular gifts.

DFW fought a deep and abiding depression for a long time. As we sometimes must, he lost. His melancholy arose perhaps out of the clarity with which he saw what we'd all become. Just as that clarity of vision arose from the melancholy. A monstrous talent is just that sometimes, monstrous.

I will miss having him here. Please read him.

I'm going to take a little break from this place now. Be well.

 

didn't want to read too much into that, but yeah, it is

 

So profoundly sad.

Heartbreaking conclusion to today's obit in the Times:

He was my favorite writer. I found him in Harper's, though the piece he wrote about going to the Illinois State Fair. His talent and powers of observation were staggering. I am sure that he reserved his most accute observations and criticism for himself and his own writing. Sure, he never published another novel after "IJ," but my guess is he must have written half-a-dozen of them and then threw them away because he (and probably he alone) found them lacking.

I knew him: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination.

 

Was shocked to read this myself.

Actually took a creative writing class he taught at Illinois State at the time "Infinite Jest" was published in '96. It was an interesting experience. He was an interesting man to talk to and to learn from.

RIP

 

I was not familiar with this man.
Had never heard of him.

RIP Mr. Wallace

 

Have only read "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" and loved those stories. been meaning to get infinite jest.

rip dfw. his piece in rolling stone after 9/11 was fucking great.

 

Let's keep in mind that for those of us on the word farm, depression can be an occupational hazard, sometimes born of isolation and too much inner dialogue and too many deaf ears, and sometimes for other reasons.

Doesn't have to be.

Peace.

 

His work shows such an intellectual curiosity ... it astounds me that someone like that cannot find something to live for. I mean, life just oozes from every word of his I've ever read. He seemed to have such a wry view of things, though, that it somewhat surprises me that this all was really getting to him. He seemed so ... bemused by it all.

His observation skills were unparalleled. Sickeningly good. When he decided to turn from fiction to our world, it was a victory for us. In fact, I think that a movement is still underway in which nonfiction replaces fiction as a pre-eminent American literary style. And I think history will judge David Foster Wallace's shift as a touchstone.

 

One of those rare writers who expanded the possibilities of what the rest of us do. I'm very saddened.

 

Someone told me they heard NPR replay an interview where he was talking about (I paraphrase 2nd hand)how much he wants to break away from writing cynically because it's just making him miserable, and write about the good in people, but partly because of the market he helped create, there was no market for it & it would seem square, so he kept up with the same old edgy material about how crappy everyone and everything is, and made himself more & more unhappy.