DFW

I'm just... can't-even-pony-up-the-energy-or-focus-to-work bummed. I haven't even really begun to sort through what it means that David Foster Wallace has died, apparently by his own hand. The word "sad" just doesn't begin to cover it. It's grotesque, it's such a waste, such broad possibility collapsed into a tiny speck and then crushed or winked out, gone. Empty. It makes me wonder if there's any weird correlation that two of my favorite authors have been suicides. There have been reports surfacing, that his father has indicated that DFW had a long-term history with depression and a relatively short-term difficulty with treating and managing this depression. This seems particularly sad to me since it reveals a little more clearly the struggle against the depression, and what we now know to be the loss of the battle. Though, I suppose some see suicide as a way to regain control, and in that sense, that type of death is a sort of victory (or, as Foster Wallace more or less put it in a short story, as a sort of birthday present). Put in less confrontational terms, suicide is at least thought to be an end to the pain caused by existence. I don't know. It bothers me. It... weighs on me.

What does this immediately mean to me? After blowing through the majority of his body of work in one sequence of book after book, I have had DFW on my mind in a back-burner kind of way, consistently checking every now and then to see if he's written something new, either traipsing through the bookstores, or searching on-line for news of a new release. So...it will be a process of erasing that feedback loop from my brain. No more timer going off in the back of my mind - "time to check on DFW." I had even been thinking about his work over the weekend (I didn't find out about his death until Monday morning), considering using one of his books as a foundation for an assignment for an electronic publications course I'm taking. I had sort of ruled it out though, given the complexity of his work and my desire to make my life as simple as possible regarding these assignments. Now... it just feels macabre and opportunistic to use his work, even though he was one of my favorite authors.

So horribly sad and disturbing. According to NPR's somewhat chilling article, "When someone very gifted kills themselves, it's like the best student dropping out of high school. There's the tragedy, but it's set in a particular and personal fear: What are they seeing that we don't?"

A decent tribute and re-print of a telling interview circa the release of Infinte Jest is to be found here, on the Chicago Tribune site.

A rather lovely memoir from a former student of Foster Wallace's.