David Foster Wallace dead at 46

[blp]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...,4713013.story

I haven't read any of his books. They seemed too jokey to me. Still, it's sad.

[Idril]

I just read about that on msn. I did read Infinite Jest and loved it, it frustrated the heck out of me sometimes and I'm still not sure I "got" everything but it was a brilliant book. It is very sad.

[mortalterror]

That is sad. He seemed like a nice intelligent man on Charlie Rose.

[aeroport]

I just started my first DFW book - Consider the Lobster - a few weeks ago, and have been really enjoying it. He seems like a massively intelligent writer. Shame.

[NickAdams]

I've been away from Litnet for some time and decided to see what was posted about Mr. Wallace after hearing about his death this morning. I began reading Wallace's Brief Interviews two weeks ago and stopped in the middle of the story The Depressed Person, because my wife had finished her Sedaris book and she originally wanted to read Brief Interviews. It's a shame.

[monad]

I was hoping someday he would produce another work to match the genius of "Infinite Jest"... too soon, too soon for this tremendous talent.

[Virgil]

I had never even heard of him. I was tempted to post this too. Anyone read anything by him? 46 is young. Hey that's my age.

[mortalterror]

He was sort of one of the leading lights in the newest wave of contemporary American literature. He wrote Infinite Jest, which isn't quite to my taste, but my friends who read post-modern lit swear by it. He was part of that new crew just coming up like Dave Eggers and I guess Ellis or Palahniuk maybe. I don't read a lot of the new stuff, so I don't know exactly how good he was.

[Jozanny]

My post is going to come off as ego-centric, but I feel compelled to add, akin to Virgil's thoughts but not entirely identical to them, that I feel diminished as a writer because of Wallace's decision. Unlike Virgil, I knew of Wallace's reputation, but I am not yet ready to enter the world of Infinite Jest just yet, in the exploration of another difficult novel.

But like Virgil, I am but a few short months of Wallace's age, a still struggling and still more obscure writer than he became, and I have fought so long, and so hard, through personal trauma, poverty, career, and integration, and its failure, and what keeps me going, at least for another 10 or 15 active years, I hope, isn't the hope of fame, or wealth, like a few lucky writers get to achieve, but the hope, that I still have something to say, and that I will continue to find a readership that finds my voice relevant.

This is why Wallace's choice makes me so uneasy. He has been called a genius who happened to be a writer, and most writers aren't, but are simply compelled, like me, to write. I am a writer who needed a tremendous amount of strength, a strength, despite everything, worth celebration, and I can only hope, in the choice this man made, that it wasn't a choice of his strength having deserted him. My deepest sympathies follow that choice, where ever it leads him. Go in peace.

Joanne

[Idril]

I don't read a lot of the new stuff, so I don't know exactly how good he was.

He really was quite outstanding, Jamesian's guess was right, he was a very intelligent writer. I've only read Infinite Jest but that's enough to know that he was a great talent. That book was just a monumental tome, the notes at the end of the book alone were 100 pages of just the most minute details about drugs, tennis, little asides about characters that gave you a little more depth. I also had to be sure to have a dictionary with me every time I picked up the book because almost every page had a word I had to look up...annoying, yes but still, illuminating. The satire of the book was sublime as well as deathly serious and his dark, very dark humor was such a treat. There were also scenes in the book that was so raw, they were hard to read...a glimpse, perhaps, of a tortured mind.

[Mortis Anarchy]

WHAT!!!!! NO!!!! I love his writing style!

I really love his book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men...Infinte Jest was also extraordinary. Aw man, I'm sad now.

Wow.

RIP.

[qspeechc]

What can I say about the man. His pop-science book "Everything and More" sealed it for me-- I knew then that I wanted to study mathematics. A side-splittingly funny novel, very intelligent, captivating. This is very sad news.

[eric1172]

This is too bad. He joins Plath, Douglas Adams, Raymod Carver & John Kennedy Toole as Modern writers who died with things still left to say.

[JBI]

This is too bad. He joins Plath, Douglas Adams, Raymod Carver & John Kennedy Toole as Modern writers who died with things still left to say.

He didn't think so.

[Jozanny]

He didn't think so.

We can't really know JBI. I have been reading a good deal of obituary material from editors, even from Joyce Carol Oates, of all people, and no one can know, but it does seem he lived too much in his own mind. I heard a segment of a radio interview he did with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, produced here in Philadelphia, and he seems to be one of her few guests who wasn't comfortable with her; he even came off as somewhat grating, correcting her even when it was simply a matter of nuance.

Laurel Speer, a poet I have gotten to know through correspondence, would admonish me here, but I cannot help taking his suicide somewhat personally, as I posted previously. I have reached a point in my life where I am struggling not to give up what I've wanted to do all my life, and I don't know where I'll land. I've never had what Wallace and Dubus and Carver had, the damn post-graduate coddling and retreats. I could apply, just like anyone else, of course, but even if I got the nod to go sit in a cabin and just work, most of these places don't have to comply with ADA standards.

I have to remember, however, that it is not my place to judge his choice simply because my life has been harder. I am not done feeling pissed yet though.