Noted: DFW’s Death

Sad.¹ David Foster Wallace², along with perhaps only William Gibson, had a reader in me for everything he wrote.  So dedicated was I to his Infinite Jest that I carried it in planes, trains, and autobuses over three continents.³ If you’ve never read any of his work, maybe you could start with this brilliant 2005 essay on political talk radio.⁴

¹And I say sad in some weirdly personal sense that comes from both finding his writing deeply compelling in itself, and identifying his work with a period of time in my life which is not missed, but stands out as significant in recollection.

²David Foster Wallace (or DFW, as he is popularly known among fans) also provided (albeit completely unknowingly) some of the reason that Blacknell.net exists today. The blog that inspired me to start my own was written by an alumnus of the law school I had just started in.  He, in turn, had been motivated to write online (in a format once known as an “online journal”) while he read Infinite Jest (nb. This same author once had an essay published in the same collection as DFW). An early autobiography of this online journal community is available here (it is amusing to consider how much energy was expended on the subject of diary v. journal, only to have blog become the accepted appellation).

³ A massive tome of a book with 1200 pages of writing to be relished and consumed (in addition to being read) I took two years to complete it, taking it to Panama, Venezuela, and Britain. I’ve since reread it (in sections, while it wasn’t lent out).

⁴Even though it isn’t entirely representative.

Update: If you’re a DFW fan, and have not seen this 1997 Charlie Rose interview, set aside an hour and watch it. If you’re not a fan, or new to him, you might be interested. I suspect, however, that the first few minutes will be offputting. But I’m 20 something minutes into it now, and found it so interesting that I had to stop and insert this update.

Earlier, a friend responded to my note about DFW’s death and signed off with “feeling like an ass for not understanding why the grieving hordes were so bereft when Cobain and Diana died,”. Now, I don’t think either one of us pretends to think that he was even sort of the same public figure or voice. But the depth of his influence, or . . . presence? . . on some of us is probably similar. I am sort of amazed at the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about this, today.