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REMEMBERING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE.
David Gates' appreciation is well-put:
I suspect that Wallace was a genius who happened to be a writer, rather than a writer who happened to be a genius—Hemingway, for instance. You can't imagine Hemingway writing, as Wallace did, a treatise called "Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity" (2004)...If the endlessly self-analytical Hamlet had been a writer (aside from that "speech of some twelve or fifteen lines" he composes to insert in "The Murder of Gonzago," the play within the play), he would have written far more like Wallace than like Shakespeare. Hamlet says that "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams"; it's a line that the author of "Infinite Jest" must have taken deeply to heart.You can see that side of Wallace reflected here, in this animated reading from his book Consider the Lobster. These are the words of someone who finds the world a bit cacophonous for his tastes, and can't quite shut down the part of his brain that is quietly repulsed by humanity. He talks, in this passage, about being unable to fulfill his dream of floating outside and above this loud and dirty realm. The pity is that what made his writing rare is that his genius did remain outside and above, even as he shouldered his way down city streets like the rest of us. Had he lived totally off the grid, he would have had nothing to say. Had he simply accepted civilization, as most of us do, he would have had little to write. But he did neither. And that made him a voice worth hearing.
COMMENTS (6)
Nice observation at the conclusion.
Posted by: slickdpdx | September 16, 2008 1:57 PM
thanks for this post, ezra. i've been seriously bummed out about his death. this post makes me feel better in some way. (not that it's all about me, but, i mean, to me it kind of is...unfortunately...)
Posted by: winer | September 16, 2008 3:56 PM
Very good. Here's mine.
winer - it's not about you, but it is? Yeah. That's the kind of thing he got right, righter than anybody ever has.
"Good Old Neon" always made me shiver a bit; now I don't know if I can read it again for a while.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 16, 2008 4:11 PM
...of course, my link didn't work. Sorry.
http://mattdesmond.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-billowing-shapeless.html
Posted by: Matt | September 16, 2008 4:15 PM
Genius?
That term gets thrown around way too much.
Wallace was a busy writer, and a complicated one, but genius?
Me thinks that is a bit of a tall tale, one that will probably be easily debunked in the footnotes.
Posted by: Neuromancing | September 16, 2008 4:25 PM
Very sad. The result of suicide is so large that people think its planning must have been commensurate, that it is a long determined destination. Sometimes it can be the mistake of a day, or of a short lasting mood. It brings such a particular sorrow to its observers. We don't live only unto ourselves -- I say this not to blame that poor man, but just remember.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 17, 2008 9:11 AM