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

[calvin]

An act of tribute to this man would be to think about those in your own life who might be depressed and do something to contact them, and get them help. I've suffered depression all of my life, sometimes so deep that I was suicidal. The help of a good psychiatrist, counselor, medications and loving friends and family have helped me learn to find joy through sadness. Depression kills so many, great and small. And if the one who is reading this is depressed, I want to tell you that there really is another way out of the feelings of hopeless misery. Suicide hurts the very people that you love the most, forever.

[Alex]

Yo no te elegí a tí, sino tu a mi. Gracias. Respetar su decisión. INFINITE DFW.

[Tom Tracey]

David Foster Wallace was a great artist, among the greatest of our age. His death is a severe, irreplaceable loss. His work meant the world to me.

[Nancy]

We have lost such an amazing writer -- and a writer who thought about big things, big ideas. Very, very sad. In response to the person above who interpreted this as a hostile gesture to his wife -- I always assume that when someone is about to take his life, his mind in in such a state of blackness that everything else is erased. Yes, oh, his poor wife. And oh, the poor dear man. We will miss him.

[syzygy]

Now that we know there will be no more written words from David Foster Wallace, we should go back and embrace the ones left behind. Not for what they say, but for what they mean. For me, personally, Don Gately is the most honest person in 20th century literature and therefore the most heroic.

[charles bradford]

My deepest and heartfelt condolences to the Wallace family.

[SeanO]

When told the news of his death, I hoped it wasn't suicide as the pulse of his heart seemed to thump out the reassurance: "If I can stand it, you can"....and, but, so, now what?

[Jared]

I remember when Oblivion came out, I went down to Skylight Books that Tuesday to get it. Started with Mr. Squishy and read it straight through. The Suffering Channel in particular floored me. So anyway, I went to see him do an informal Q&A at UCLA about a month or two later. The woman who introduced him spoke of a story within Oblivion titled Good Old Neon, that featured a narrator who, in the final pages, reveals himself as Dave Wallace. I was a bit hungover on this particular Saturday and so not quick or energetic enough to say aloud that maybe she ought to go ahead and read that story one more time, a bit more carefully. (This reminds me of when my friend read A Perfect Day for Bananafish and then asked me why Seymour shot his wife on the last page.) But it was DFW that I remember clearly, wincing in his chair as she said it, wanting to crawl beneath it and hide. He was seated behind her and so she didn’t see him. He just got up and graciously took the microphone and didn’t try to correct her. I miss him already.

[Gino]

Sì, una brutta notizia... e questa mattina il cielo è grigio,
nuvoloso, opprimente come il cielo dell'incipit del racconto di Poe
"Il crollo della casa degli Usher"... e un insopportabile tristezza
cerca di fare breccia nel cuore...

Ricordiamoci di David Foster Wallace. Lo merita, lo meritava...

Mi viene in mente un altro scrittore, T. Egolf, che morì in uguali
circostanze qualche anno fa. Un altro astro promettente della
letteratura americana contemporanea. Aveva 34 anni Egolf. Vorrei
ricordare anche lui...

ciao

[Josh]

Does anyone know of 'physical' tributes around Los Angeles? Where we could get together, at a bookstore, or Pomona, and remember this literary blessing?

[Colleen MacTavish]

When I read yesterday in a chat room the horrifying news about David Foster Wallace, I felt as if someone had sucker punched me in the gut. I loved him! When IJ came out, I immediately bought it and loved it. (another book you may like is called, "Elegant Complexity:A Study Of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest". I was supposed to go out somewhere yesterday and realized halfway through my walk in the sweltering heat that I was too depressed and felt like crying so I went back to my apartment. I just couldn't believe he was gone. Damn it, what about Britney Spears or someone equally superfluous? That sounds cruel but it's true. In 1996 I wrote DFW a letter and he sent me a postcard, thanking me. He drew a little smiley face on it. I am still in shock and my regards go out to his family and his wife. We have lost a valuable person.

[Kathy Peterson Colbert]

I am absolutely stunned. I just heard the news about 2 hours ago, and haven't stopped crying. David was my professor, mentor and friend during my graduate studies in literature at ISU. He was the reason I chose to move to Normal, IL, even in the face of other, more lucrative teaching assistantships. Thank you to those of you who have been posting such beautiful commentary about how David touched your lives or inspired your careers. Nothing really softens the shock or grief of David's passing, but knowing that he mattered to so many of us makes me feel less alone in this overwhelming sorrow.

Rest in peace, David.

[dar]

David Foster Wallace
Suicide and Anti-Depressants
"James Wallace said that last year his son had begun suffering side effects from the drugs and, at a doctor’s suggestion, had gone off the medication in June 2007. The depression returned, however, and no other treatment was successful. The elder Wallaces had seen their son in August, he said.

“He was being very heavily medicated,” he said. “He’d been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy. Everything had been tried, and he just couldn’t stand it anymore.”