RIP David Foster Wallace.

[JayB]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/15/david.foster.wallace.brilliant.talent

 

Very sad indeed.

 

 

 

 

[olyclimber]

definitely a huge loss

 

http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf

[billcoe]

Jayb, what do you find to be an ultra compelling, must read, of Wallace's?

[JayB]

I've only read some of his stuff, but I don't think that you'd be too far off the mark if you read "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again," in a short-story collection with the same title, or "Mr. Squishy" in another short-story collection entitled "Oblivion: Stories."

 

If you read through some of the stuff in either collection and it appeals to you, then "Infinite Jest" will be worth plowing through for sure. I read that one about 11 years ago, so I can't recall all of the details but the basic plot-line is as follows:

 

All of the countries in North America have coalesced into a homogenous mega-state and are know organized into something called the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N. for short). The boundaries between political life and commerce have become so blurry that the rights to calendar years have been sold to corporate sponsors (which leads to chapters with time/date headings that read "June 14, Year of the Trial Sized Dove Bar"), and the populace has largely abandoned any pursuits other than those that revolve around momentary amusement and supine leisure. The only holdouts against the encroaching commercial homogeneity are a band of burly Quebecois terrorists (many of whom also seem to be parapalegics) who dress in Hawaiian garb to symbolize their status as a unique subculture about to be subsumed beneath an the encroaching homogeneity of the larger culture.

 

When they discover that a half-made American film-maker has created a movie so entertaining that all who view it fall into a trance like state in their barcoloungers and can no longer stir themselves to eat, defecate, or any other vital functions they embark on a quest to get their hands on the cassette and distribute it via the Interlace entertainment network and get the megaculture to implode when its citizens OD on the fix they've spent most of their lives in pursuit of. For some reason, most of the action revolves around characters in a 12-step program and an elite tennis academy.

 

Some of the reading required a bit of will-power and stamina, and I had to keep a dictionary on hand as I was reading it, but some of the passages were so vivid and hillarious that I still laugh when I think of them ten years later. In hindsight, some of the major plot themes seem prophetic in hindsight.

[rbw1966]

I've read infinite jest twice and will likely read it a third time. Its easily one of his best works. He has a few collections of essays and short stories that are all compelling reads.

 

Sad news.

[joblo7]

nobody will ever back up Celine like he did.... the depth of the man....

[olyclimber]

uh...yeah....different dude

[rmncwrtr]

Such a loss. If anyone wants to read some of his essays, this article has links to various pieces available on-line.

[joblo7]

uh...yeah....different dude

 

i KNOW! THATS WHAT I LOVED ABOUT HIM.ORIGINAL, DIFFERENT, UNIQUE.HE HAD A WAY TO MAKE ME FEEL LIKE NO ONE ELSE....

[Couloir]

Fresh Air replayed Terri's interview with him from 1997:

 

NPR

 

Interesting cat.

[dan_forester]

Bill, I second Jay's recommendation for the essay "A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again" as an introduction to DFW. "Infinite Jest" is incredible, one of the few books I reread over and over - mostly for the (sub?)-plot around Don Gately and the rest of the 12 steppers - but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to someone to read first. It's like someone expressing an interest in Joyce & handing them Ulysses.

 

Right now I'm reading the collection of essays "Consider the Lobster" which is very entertaining - there's a piece (which I've also read somewhere on the web) in there about the 2000 McCain primary campaign which is really interesting to read in the context of the current presidential campaign.

 

McSweeney's has some great anecdotes and memories of DFW on their site.

[olyclimber]

The McCain piece:

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub

[rmncwrtr]

An article from the WSJ adapted from a commencement address DFW gave in 2005: linky. Here are a couple of passages.

 

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

 

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

 

 

[rbw1966]

He was a fantastic writer. RIP