David Foster Wallace is dead and I am in utter shock and despair over it. After I read “Infinite Jest,” I wanted to write, and even though that desire ebbs and flows in me now, there wasn’t a time that I sat down to write where I didn’t reflect on the genius of him. What a mastery of words. What a profound power writers can have – writers as good as he was. I am saddened in a deep and overwhelming way. What a true genius. What a true loss.
If you haven’t read it, you should. I fell into that book like it was a bottomless well of knowledge, artistry, cleverness, beauty, tennis and compassion, no other writer has affected me quite as deeply. No other. Please no matter how bad things get, never kill yourself. When you kill yourself, you kill us all.
I wanted to say, you inspire me. You set boundaries to be different and beautiful and self confident. You are a true vissionary, I watch your show all the time and you help me be empowered. I’m only 21 and still all my life struggling with my beauty inside and out. I have low self esteem and watching your show and learning about you , you are older and wiser then me, but we have gone down the same path of negative people and energy. Just thank you for showing me how beautiful life can be.
I read about David’s death and was shocked by his age. I haven’t read his work but I definitely will go to the library soon and pick up one of his books.
His death comes at a time when I am struggling with depression. I know your words about suicide are true and I’ve struggled with depression and suicidal impulses all my life (and my mother before me). I’ve worked as a crisis counselor on a suicide hot line even. But it’s hard to remember those words when the bottom falls out of your life. Depression causes distorted thinking, that’s the bottom line. Depression kills people and they make the choice to take their lives under its influence. Survivors need to remember that the suicidal person was not their usual self and not thinking rationally. I’d like to see the stigma erased and for people to realize that depression is a serious and often fatal disease, and to react to suicide victims the way they’d respond to a death by pneumonia or heart disease. At the same time, we need to provide many more avenues for getting help because with help these deaths can be prevented. I suggest that in his name and memory we donate to our local suicide crisis lines.
I’m am not familiar with his work, but may pick up his book some time in the future, just to check it out.
I love when I find a book I can’t put down, so if you’re raving about him, it’s worth a look.
So sorry to hear that he commited sucide.
I wonder why he did that.
I have a hard time understanding suicide but when I was depressed, I noticed that I didn’t care about anything.
Maybe he felt like that too and didn’t feel he had an out.
I don’t know any thing about the man, but I’m sorry for everyone’s loss.
I had a friend who also commited suicide by hanging.
I was very angry with him, and later felt so sad. 🙁
Ms. Cho – You never cease to amaze me. At first I was giddy that you had read Infinite Jest, and know it’s more like, OF COURSE a cool-ass chick like her would be a DFW fan. Infinite Jest is still up there in my head rollicking around years later, Pemulis and Hal and Himself and Moms and Gately, such an effing terrific book.
You must have heard that the Steve Lady passed away on this day as well. I thought I’d see an RIP entry for him as well. He was only the fiercest tranny to ever grace the Trannyshack stage…. I thought you would have known each other, especially since you are pals with Austin…
The news was devastatingly sad. I am still upset that such a genius is gone from us. I began re-reading Infinite Jest this week as a tribute and a pleasure. But I can’t get over the fact that his voice is now silent and there will be no more books and essays from him.
I suffer from depression, so I totally understand how it can lead you to kill yourself. It’s just a fact that it can distort your thinking to the point of utter hopelessness. I am so sorry for his family and friends that they lost him.
Isn’t it sad? I have not read Wallace’s work, but on your recommendation, I will. I feel so deeply sad when I learn of someone’s suicide. I have had suicidal feelings and ideation before, and thank something bigger than me that I got help. I have had odd and tangential connections to three people who have killed themselves. It really left a mark on me. It is so heavy. It is like an existential statement to the world, saying the struggle of life is not worth it. And damn it, no matter how bad it is, I think there is some little glimmer of hope on the other side (and I don’t mean death when I say “the other side”, I mean on the other side of the darkness of hopelessness and depression and pain). I feel so badly that people who get that lost and feel that desperate don’t find the hand to hold or whatever they need in that moment to hold on. And those poor people they leave behind, like Wallace’s wife. Dear God. Tragic.
P.S. One of my favorite books is The Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Sadly, he also killed himself.
When I was a boy my grandmother drowned herself. This past June, I answered the phone on a beautiful Sunday morning to recieve the news from my broken mother that my only sister had shot herself in the head and was gone. I often think the only thing separating the suicides from the borderlines is a moment of insanity and the quick means to the end, whether that’s a pistol or a large body of water. We’ve all been there at one time or another; okay, well, I’VE been there at one time or another, perhaps not truly suicidal but depressed anyway. It hurts when artists kill themselves, especially if you connect with that person’s work in a deep and meaningful way, when you “get it” while everybody else bitches about how sad it is and “No wonder you’re depressed. listening to that.” No, you idiot, it’s called human empathy, the fact that I UNDERSTAND what’s being communicated here, in all its staunch unmarketability, like listening to late-era gravel-voiced Billie Holiday or enduring Charlie Parker’s technically-embarrassing-yet-unequaled-in-pathos playing in “Lover Man” or “Gypsy.” I hear the beauty inherent there, not the imperfections, not the bad notes. I recall how crushed my sister was when Elliott Smith died. Both us being music fanatics, we both admired and loved his music and couldn’t understand how someone so gifted couldn’t appreciate his own talents. It didn’t make sense. But depression and suicide defy sense. And that’s why they scare me. I almost called my sister the night before because I’d heard an interview with Quasi on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) and wanted to tell her about it. Then I thought, ah, screw it, I’m tired, I’ll call her tomorrow. That decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I was really shook up to hear about David Foster Wallace… I loved Infinite Jest… I couldn’t put it down and it definitely messed me up forever, sort of like Requiem for a Dream. Which I guess makes me understand how someone so intimately in touch with the dark side might have trouble with enjoying life enough to stick around. Seriously, has anyone ever wrote depression so well?
Thank you for this post. I’m still reading blogs about his death almost daily, because I just can’t get over it. Like yours, mind mind still rolicks in Wallace’s words. I felt closer to him than any other writer—other geniuses, like Joyce and Barnes and Faulkner wrote of another time and another place. Wallace wrote us, right now, right here. And he wrote with empathy and anger and frustration and hilarity. How painful that he won’t continue doing that.
Thanks for leaving the comments open. (And thanks for an SF show more than a decade ago… I enjoyed your performance immensely.)