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September 15, 2008

Rest In Peace David Foster Wallace

In 1996, I was living out of the original white Egg while trying to find my footing in New England, playing open mics, and crashing with various friends, acquaintances, and family. One of my oldest friends, Josh, was living in Binghamton, NY at the time and not only did he have a particularly comfortable grey sectional couch (very square, very post modern), but one of the very best bookshelves to be found east of Cody's. Out of all the places I anchored in that era, Josh's house was where I always tried to linger longest, coming up with excuse after excuse to delay my departures (I didn't have enough money to get up to my sister's, I was feeling a cold coming on, it looked like rain). I played Myst on his computer for a dozen hours at a time (talk about binary crack), devoured his books, and wrote a big chunk of what would end up on my first record. Josh also had a subscription to Harper's Magazine and in the course of passing through that spring, I came across the January issue that featured in its Folio section an essay titled Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise. This was my introduction to David Foster Wallace and I was floored.

Wallace's writing was the perfect, delicious mix of pop culture, keen critical eye, wicked humor, and philosophical rhetoric. You could cut a single sentence with a knife and fork and have an entire meal. Wallace left no tangent unturned and his use of references and footnotes was a brilliant literary style that, to this reader, exploded linear exposition. It wasn't just that he turned a jaundiced eye upon American culture, but poked it with a stick to see what would happen. Wallace's writing was riddled with irony years before it became a slick, culture costume (or straightjacket, for that matter), but underneath it all was a strong vein of humanity, the very thing that most hipster writers (Brett Easton Ellis, I am looking right at you) were desperate to drain in their own work. I wanted to be a mere shadow of the writer I read in his works and I embarrassingly aped his verbose prose. He was a Gen-X scribe through and through and I was in love.

In that pre-google era, I scoured Josh's bookshelves and discovered The Broom of the System and newly published Infinite Jest. I wouldn't say that I palmed them, but I am not certain Josh ever got either book back. From then on, I looked forward to every essay and published work Wallace put out with something akin to birthday anticipation and the man never let me down.

The news of Wallace's suicide over the weekend feels devastating. Wallace had an inordinate sharp talent and had an inestimable effect on not just the literary landscape, but the cultural map. I simply can not fathom that I will never again crack a spine that bears the name David Foster Wallace.

More intimately, I feel bereft at the depth to which he must have been suffering. Depression is a cruel bitch, as patient as death, as suffocating as a vacuum, and longer legged than eternity. In the midst of it, there is no light at the end of the tunnel and certainly no quick fix. It's a fate I wish on no one. I don't know why depression so often seems to go in lock step with creativity, but the line between the spark and the snuff seems so thin. I don't, however, buy into the "mad genius" theory. I speak only for myself, but when you're in the grip of what makes you feel as if you want to dig a hole in the back yard and cover yourself over with heavy, cold dirt just to quiet the ceaseless pain that seems to have no origin other than your very own visceral self, there's no creating. It's like hanging on for dear fucking life. It is just terribly sad that there isn't a better floatation device waiting in the wings. Simply put, David Foster Wallace's suicide is fucking heartbreaking.

Posted by bethamsel at September 15, 2008 12:10 PM