David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.

David Foster Wallace, the author of "Infinite Jest," was found dead in his home in Claremont on Friday night. The 46-year-old author apparently committed suicide.

In 1996, Wallace talked to the online magazine Stim about the recently published "Infinite Jest."

[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.

David Foster Wallace was a recipient of a MacArthur "genuis" grant in 1997. He was teaching creative writing at Pomona College. He will be missed.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo via DavidFosterWallace.com

Comments

[Maria]

Missed?! MISSED?! This is a catastrophe. What is wrong with us, that we couldn't keep this guy alive.

[dstan]

Absolutely shocking. The word genius is overused but David Foster Wallace was a genius.

[kvs]

I agree. I'm stunned. Floored. He's the whole reason I am a writer and ever believed that I could be.

[Russell]

I wish I could have told him how much Infinite Jest meant to me, how I recall scenes from that book almost daily, how it helped me quit drinking, how it made me laugh out loud and look the cosmos flat in the face and feel how small I am. This is heartbreaking.

[Beth Amsel]

I am stunned and heartbroken. Infinite Jest was a momentous read for me in my mid-twenties and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again forever changed my writing*. DFW was a genius and I feel wrecked to discover that he was so tragically depressed.

*would any of us every look at footnotes the same way again?!?

[Brian Roessler]

I just need to somewhere to write this:

DFW, I love you. The future seems shittier without you in it.

[Melissa]

I believe the below is an accurate quote from David Foster Wallace--it's one I've always appreciated as very wise. Also appreciated: Wallace's humor, insight, and keen observation of and attention to detail. He will be much missed.

The intellectualization and aestheticizing of principles and values in this country is one of the things that's gutted our generation. All the things that my parents said to me, like "It's really important not to lie." OK, check, got it. I nod at that but I don't really feel it. Until I get to be about 30 and I realize that if I lie to you, I also can't trust you. I feel that I'm in pain, I'm nervous, I'm lonely and I can't figure out why. Then I realize, "Oh, perhaps the way to deal with this is really not to lie." The idea that something so simple and, really, so aesthetically uninteresting -- which for me meant you pass over it for the interesting, complex stuff -- can actually be nourishing in a way that arch, meta, ironic, pomo stuff can't, that seems to me to be important. That seems to me like something our generation needs to feel.

[Paul]

Awful news. I feel this loss personally also. I feel like the above poster. I once wrote him a letter, but never sent it. Infinite Jest struck me as so much about me personally that I was both creeped out and comforted. A major loss to writers. Lyndon remains the best short story I have ever read.

[jv]

This is purely heartbreaking. No one ever wrote about addiction with such a brilliant combination of head and heart. I'm indescribably sad, and never post this sort of thing online.

I ripped off David with a song I wrote. I taped it and brought him a cassette (this was 1997 or so) at a reading he did at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

He called information and got my number and called me to tell me he didn't recognize what words of his I had stolen. I called him back and we spoke for a while. I liked him. We sent each other postcards for a few years and spoke again at two other readings he did in Boston. Just a sweet and friendly correspondence.

My part of that is irrelevant. He was probably my favorite contemporary writer, if one picks these sorts of things. It turns out that I had met him in an extraordinarily different setting years before. Also irrelevant, when it was his writing that was so smart, so moving, so important. I live in Brooklyn now and am here with a heavy heart tonight. I don't pray, exactly, but my thoughts are with his family and friends. This is a grave loss. His writing got to me as deeply as writing can, which, well, you know....

[tcd]

I am shocked and sad. DFW's writing (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) was one of the reasons and the rain that gave me the clarity to leave my abusive husband 6 years ago and start a new, wonderful life with my kids. How can this man who helped give me a new life through his writing die like this?

[Phil Dangler]

This is very, very sad.

I was a longtime member of the DFW-L email list at waste.org, but now it seems to have moved or is inaccessible... if someone on the list sees this and it still exists, please email me: pdangler@gmail.com with any info.

I don't even know where to begin.

[Amanda]

This is so very sad. It makes me feel fearful for other artists and authors with huge talent. Scary, don't you think?

[sr]

Why? Why? Why, David?

What could we have done?

What a loss!

[jn]

stunned. hurt. sad. confused about rising tide of feelings over a man I never met or even imagined I knew. His words will be rememberd fondly.

[Erika Szostak]

Such heartbreaking, stunning news. Every semester, the first thing I assign in my critical thinking and composition classes is DFW's 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech. In fact, I've just discussed it in three different classes this very week. Every year, students fall in love with that speech and are moved to do things like call their parents and read it to them too. DFW's words have inspired and moved so many of my students as they have moved me. I have always hoped to be as successful and inspiring in my work as he was in his. He was clearly admired more than he knew.

[Brent]

Rest in peace, David.

[lexingtonandfifthnine]

Very sad.

Mr. Wallace knew his wife would find him hanging. Psychologically, more analytically, it's considered to be interpreted as a very hostile gesture. The person left suffering and in horrific shock is the person who finds the body, especially is a gruesome way like hanging.

[KL]

Ugh, what a gut punch. I'm verklempt. Depression is so common in our modern world, it makes you wonder where exactly our culture made a wrong turn. This evening a doctor friend of mine was commenting that roughly 7% of Americans take anti-depressants. I imagine that percentage is higher among those of us who read things like the work of DFW.... I remember reading _Girl With Curious Hair_ in college and just loving it for its perfect cleverness. Until reading the comments here, I was literally the only person I knew who'd actually read all of _Infinite Jest_. It was almost too big of a book, but truly so impressive, like Melville's _Moby Dick_ (perhaps minus the flensing chapters ;-) ) or Joyce's _Ulysses_ -- grotesque, somehow, but beautiful at the same time... David, David... clearly your own talent was not sufficient comfort. We your fans wish we could have done something for you, as your work so delighted and amazed us... I will pray for you, and for the loved ones you've left behind -- God grant you peace, and bring them solace. Shantih shantih shantih...

[phreejazz]

I have been affected by the death of someone I didn't know personally. Until now. Beyond this, speechless.

[Derek]

Through his writing I felt like I knew him.

And I feel like I lost a friend.

[stefano]

well...should i say something about a man who wrote a novel and an essay on "infinite" concept?
maybe he founded the infinite way.
And i also want to say that if i knew just a bit this man: he's right.
This is all i can think today, because i really miss him.
So long.

[Sad Erik]

I read all his books. He was probably the most promising writer this country had, at the very least of his generation. The fact that he's such an unknown next to say a JK Rowling is obscene. It's such a lonely time culturally now. A bad time for the novel, for thinking people in general. He's left a gaping hole in a landscape already full of gaping holes. It used to give me hope that he was in the world. Now it gives me hope that all of you are. I just got back from a walk downtown in the city where I live. I wrote the names of all his books in sidewalk chalk outside of bookstores. Ironic and somewhat sinister that the latest thing of his to be published should be about McCain in 2000, who would years later go on to choose a VP who expressed interest in banning books. A perfect day and age for dark comedies. Stay awake.

[TGP]

Very few people have inspired me in such a dramatic and visceral way - as DFW has. Often, when I felt understimulated, depressed, intellectually foggy or in need of some poignant thought or comedy..I turned to DFW's words. He was a truly gifted and unique writer that spoke to legions of readers.

I tried to get into a book signing once, about 8 years ago, but I had underestimated the number of fans who'd show up, and couldn't get in to meet him. At one point, I thought of moving back to L.A., just so I could take a class with him at Pomona college where he taught.

Why would he do this? What motivated him to do something so drastic and final? I am in shock and am having a difficult time fathoming this reality. I know that many, many people are as devestated as I am that this brilliant bright light has gone dark. I hope you're in a better place David.

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[msw]

I was so happy. So happy to stumble on to this message board because I had been reading message boards about this all through the last day and half. And finally I found a place where people weren't criticizing David for his actions on Friday night, but for his actions as an artist. people here seemed to be given so much by him - like many I would not be the person I am without DFW. And I am sad. Thankful for his brief existence but in tears for the last 36 hours. Just unbelievable. Alas, Poor Yorick. Poor poor Yorick.

[John Hemingway]

Everyone has a limit. That's what I always say whenever people ask me about my grandfather's suicide, or Margaux's or any of the others. When the pain, existential, physical or whatever becomes too much everyone has a limit and you really can't blame a person for doing what they do.
I never knew DFW but I am saddened by his death. It is a tragedy.