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RIP David Foster Wallace
The writer David Foster Wallace was found dead at his home in Claremont, California on Friday evening. His wife told authorities that he hung himself.There have always been two fairly well-populated camps of opinion about Wallace and his work.
There are those who consider him brilliant and perhaps the most important literary figure of his generation. And there are those who find him unreadable.
Cases can be made for both schools of thought.
But whatever you think, it's hard to deny that Wallace's was a unique voice in a literature that has grown somewhat homogeneous in the past decade. Whatever you might think about his opus, Infinite Jest, Wallace's work within shorter forms, in stories and essays, more often then not succeeded in blending absurdest observation with insightful comments on our culture and the way we live now.
And since this is a travel blog, I'll mention my favorite piece of Wallace writing, his hysterical lampooning of cruises and those who take them in the essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." It's a masterwork of reporting and as a piece of travel writing -- which it most certainly is -- it's an example of just what the genre is capable of if given an imaginative writer bent on breaking new ground.
I just took his essay collection of the same name off the bookshelf and want to re-read the piece this afternoon as a sort of quiet tribute. For this essay alone I'll miss Wallace.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Willy Sep 15th 2008 8:53AM
Oh, gosh. I was just telling my wife last week how much I loved Wallace and how much I was looking forward to his (hopefully) contributing to Rolling Stone again in the future. This is sad news. I think he was one of the most gifted writers in modern American fiction.
I read Infinite Jest while I was in the Peace Corps. It was a very time-consuming, difficult book to read. But it was very much worth the work. Thanks for the challenge, DFW. You'll be missed.
Rob Sep 15th 2008 4:55PM
This seems unreal. I've never met him, but to me he was one of my two favorite living writers, the other being Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I felt them (Wallace and Marquez) to be behind only Dostoyevsky.
If anyone reading this has not read Infinite Jest, I swear to you - you will not regret it. It is almost unbelievable that a person could write such a masterpiece. He understood people perhaps better than any writer I've read; maybe my feeling is a function of how his writing combined with my personality/intellect, but it's a startlingly promising feeling to discover someone else out there is on the same wavelength. Or was, at least.
You know, he actually could be my favorite writer of all time...
Fare thee well, fare thee well; I love you more than words can tell.
mark Sep 21st 2008 10:52PM
that's beautiful. i agree. i've only read a couple of essays but you describe his sensibility very well. i also agree with your pantheon.
thanks.
rarely does the death of someone i dont know personally make the world seem a lonelier place, but this does. very, very sad.
Timothy A. Bear Sep 16th 2008 4:27AM
A memorial portrait-
http://faithmouse.blogspot.com/2008/09/david-foster-wallace-memorial-pancakes.html