David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

David Foster Wallace has passed away. He hanged himself. The world has lost a spectacular writer. Already it seems as if some special portal of human intelligence has been closed off.

He was a colleague and friend. I have no mind to try to pay adequate tribute to him here. Those should soar and will come later. Nor can I speak to the circumstances of his death. What I want to note instead, just briefly, are a few personal recollections. I'd like the world to know, from my modest vantage, that he was a nice guy in person, and also as brilliant in conversation as one might expect from his dazzling prose. Frankly I had a hard time keeping up with him--I thought he was always two or three chess moves ahead of me. But as the keen observer of the human condition that he was, he seemed to take into account his interlocutor's shortcomings and made gentle accommodations for them, without being patronizing. So we talked.

For several years we had become workout partners of sorts at a local gym. I didn't dare divulge that fact to anyone in the vicinity. He called himself agoraphobic. I didn't want a bunch of people descending upon the gym. It was thus I had the privilege of getting to know him in a quiet space, while stretching and doing sit-ups, and talking and talking between sets. We hit it off, perhaps because he and I shared a few commonalities in our past and present lives: We both hailed from the Midwest, Illinois and Iowa; we both had studied philosophy at Amherst College; we both ended up teaching at Pomona College. I harbor no illusions that the similarities don't end right there. He was absolutely brilliant, a true talent, an original, a devilish and maybe tormented but also kind-hearted genius.

One time I told him that a student had come into my office that day and informed me that some of my work on irony had become standard research material for the high school and college debating circuit and that the local debaters were especially excited that David Foster Wallace had joined the Pomona College faculty because his work constituted the anti-irony position--and now the local team, getting an edge on the competition, could claim direct access to the authors of both the irony folder and the anti-irony folder. To which Dave quipped, "You mean like matter and anti-matter?" At that moment, I kid you not, I swear on whatever book you'd have me swear on, that Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" came on as the background music in the gym. We just glanced at each other and didn't acknowledge it. I had the definite sense, though, that I had just experienced right then and there a creepy-funny David Foster Wallacesque moment, something weird you'd read about in one of his essays--yet there he was in person, in the flesh, while it happened.

Another time he and I drove together to the gym owner's house for a special lunch. The place was packed with body builders with massive biceps, and we were the only two skinny-ass egghead types present. He turned to me and said, "I'm really glad you're here with me because I'm afraid these guys might force me to do their algebra homework." That joke was self-deprecating, not mean-spirited, just an acknowledgment of the plain fact that we were clearly overmatched.

He and I had an ongoing resolution to each other, going back several years now, to go watch tarantulas scurry across the Claremont fire trails in the late fall week when they make their mad dashes out into the open. When I first mentioned that phenomenon to him, he gave me an impromptu lecture on the different characteristics of various arachnids, especially the dangers experienced by the frenzied male tarantula on the make. He really wanted to go. Somehow we never made it. When such a strange opportunity presents itself, when a David Foster Wallace wants to go tarantula watching with you, you probably shouldn't let that one slip away.

He hadn't been coming into the gym for some time. I had a lot queued up to tell him. I wrote him a note inquiring into his whereabouts. He wrote back and said my note cheered him. My head swirls right now. He expanded our senses of infinity and oblivion and more, much more. My sincere condolences go out to his wife and family.

Comments

[MissMisk]

If you live with depression, read this:

http://d-o-cat.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-depression-and-yours.html

I hope it helps.

[bonitatortuga]

DFW weighed in on the 2008 election in this interview. It is very thoughtful, considering his work on the 2000 McCain campaign.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121218708445533979.html

[olmanrvr]

Thank God for Charlie Rose ...for on his web site you can find and enjoy a couple of interviews with DFW ...a chance to get to know him better ....his sensitive nature and his genius are plainly evident...I'm so sorry he's left us but he left us much to remember him by.

[DLSteinhardt]

I remember, first watching one of those Charlie Rose interviews, feeling the sort of thrill I hadn't felt from a writer since I was a teenager.

My own connection to Mr. Wallace was barely tangential: on the spine of McSweeney's issue #3, in which I had an article, there was a complete short story by David Foster Wallace. Maybe 70 words, printed in its entirety on the spine of the magazine.

He was unique.

[Norm deGare]

It took this terrible event to finally motivate me to create an account to post a comment, due to a pressing need to do something to mark the passing of this phenomenal talent. I see the litany of superlatives in readers' reactions and know this is the kind of thing you hear and read when just about anybody dies these days. But in this case it's all true -- he was one of my favorite writers and to read him was literally thrilling (yes, literally). I was shocked to hear of this; he wrote of despair and depravity and, y'know, life and the world, but he seemed to negotiate his way through it with the considerable power of his art. Thank God it's still there for us. I never met him, but I'll miss him.

[ohjohnnyoh]

David Foster Wallace was my mentor when I was in graduate school ten years ago. He was by far the smartest person I've ever met, but he was also a modest--even humble--man and a gentle soul. As a teacher he was witty and sometimes devastatingly insightful but never at the expense of the inexperienced writers of the class. He encouraged his students to think about the ethical aspects of writing, not to just revel in displaying their talent. In Infinite Jest he equated someone considering suicide with someone faced with the flames of a burning building at his or her back. "When the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. . . You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
I am sad and sorry that Dave Wallace (as he insisted on being called--David Foster Wallace was the bigname author..) felt the flames so keenly. My condolences to his family, his current and former students and all who knew this remarkable person, whether they knew him as a (very) private individual or through his writing. I will miss you, Dave.

[relmeligy]

Professor Seery,
I'd like to express my condolences for your--our loss. As someone who never personally met or took a class with Mr. Wallace, I can only comment that his passing serves as a jarring, and remarkably tragic commentary on the frailty of the human condition. I have no doubt that his literary legacy will live on and continue to be revered in the annals of Pomona academia. My deepest regrets.

[orifox]

Thank you David Foster Wallace, you changed my life, you changed the world. Thanks for hanging on as long as you could. I'm truly in shock. You were one of the rare Americans who gave me hope that there were people in America who understood America. I'll miss you alot.

[Foodguy]

And death shall have no dominion
Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

From Dylan Thomas: The Poems, published by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1971
Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1977 The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.

[geobushono]

John Kennedy Toole...........I don't remember when he passed in obscurity in fact, only his friends knew when he died..............I remember feeling 'what a terrible loss'.........
.and now it seems as though David Foster Wallace has left his admirers and friends.
Don't let this be marked by sadness...­......Life truly is a cosmic joke.
There are those among us who don't live. Oh yes, they breathe, but the flow isn't there, the highs and lows are not like other people's highs and lows......­........Th­ey can find nothing to midigate their funk...... they were born that way, and that's that.
I think that for people who live in their minds, the inability to change becomes overwhelming.
At that point, a surreal calm replaces the pain. Suddenly one recognizes the self as a vortex of energy in a really big, 14 billion year old universe....... and it's ok to go..........
Celebrate his life.

[chendri887]

Well said. Agoraphobia and anxiety disorders are a real pain though. I struggle every day, even with medication.

[saami]

geobushono, thanks for also remembering a Confederacy of Dunces. Both men had a special kind of creativity that defies description. David Foster Wallace made me fell OK about having a crazy brain that loved to get into the infinite detail (footnotes and all) about a tangential subject while jumping from subject to subject. Hunter S. Thompson’s digressions were as much fun as his topics. I am stunned that David Foster Wallace has taken his life and that there will be no more descriptions of the toilets on cruise ships and no more trips to the state fair where no ride or food is left unturned. My condolences to his family and friends for your great loss. We all have lost a special person.

[epski]

A heart-breaking death of staggering genius...

[MissCorvette]

Another great loss. My brother ended his life in February 1999 and I'm still not the same. I feel so terribly sorry for his wife, family & friends. Experts tell us to allow ourselves to grieve and then move on. I'm still grieving and I'm still moving on! I'm going to go check out those spiders in honor of both men!

[hudsuckerproxy]

DFW's commencement address at Kenyon University:

http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

Thank you for the lovely appreciation, Mr. Seery.

[GrainOSand]

I had never heard of the man. I read the speech at the link and now I know him and am thankful I do. Thank you for sharing.

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."

That is what is really going on.

[firewmn]

Rest In Peace..

[phoenixtears]

It is the ones who are left behind that question the why's of such an act. Death is the easy way out in a mind that can no longer find it's way. Living in this world of ours is the challenge for many. I ask anyone who reads this if you are one of those souls who feels lost please please just talk to someone anyone do not worry what they may think of you. I truly believe everything happens for a reason tho we may not see that reason right away, and everything is in it's time and place. For one to be able to be called a friend is an honor and a gift. One who keeps that intrusted to him is rare. You were blessed to have this friend, as he was blessed to have you a TRUE friend. be well, may peace be with you. Your journeys safe and reached with little obsticles.

[BcdErick]

I hope no one is offended but I found this very touching. I have seen suicide of a friend up close with my own eyes. It's a hard thing. Sometimes the abyss seems like the only choice. Then I look into my daughter's eyes and think, nope, that would be selfish. Gotta be strong. Just hold those you love harder tonight and never forget all the things you, we, have.