david foster wallace, dead at 46
I can hardly believe this is true, but David Foster Wallace apparently eliminated his own map for keeps last night. [latimes / nyt ]
I guess the thing that we are passing around now is this commencement speech from Kenyon [marginalia], which, aside from the appropriateness of subject material, shows how well he captured the conflicted thinking of a complicated uncertain existence and the crushingness of noticing everything within the limited constraints of American English. There is really no writer whose work I loved or respected more. This is just downright awful, really bad news.
I guess the thing that we are passing around now is this commencement speech from Kenyon [marginalia], which, aside from the appropriateness of subject material, shows how well he captured the conflicted thinking of a complicated uncertain existence and the crushingness of noticing everything within the limited constraints of American English. There is really no writer whose work I loved or respected more. This is just downright awful, really bad news.
kertwang
[1] I didn't really like any of his stuff besides Infinite Jest well enough to re-read (or read it all of the way through the first time, in many cases) -- Brief Interviews is among the very few books I lost which I don't miss terribly, and the same goes for A Supposedly Fun Thing... his stuff is more fun to have read and be able to draw on (excluding Infinite Jest, which is rich and wonderful and which the post office lost in the mail on my trip to Portland, otherwise I'd be rereading it) but I was always expecting a second wind from DFW, or a third wind... I watched his epic be-handkerchiefed Charlie Rose interview from the 90s a month or so ago, and his appreciation for the things he loves is so rich in that... it's just never enough, is it.
Fuck.
Re: kertwang
that is sad.
i loved brief interviews with hideous men.
As someone on Wallace-l said: "The worst part of this awful thing is that we thought he had those demons, at least in part, exorcised, for himself and for all of us. Apparently he had not, and now we are scared."