Another supposedly fun thing he'll never do again

Note: I am sorry that I've offended a lot of people with this post.  I was shocked and saddened by the news of DFW's suicide.  But I wasn't that shocked by it, because I always thought his writing suggested he was depressed.  I was not mocking him or making light of his talent.  I was trying to convey the effect of his writing on me--which was that I always felt a sadness in it, and that sadness fed my own.  I don't post about every famous person who dies only about those who matter to me or who I think matter to my readers.  I know that a lot of you admired Wallace's work.  Also my apologies and condolences to any of you who might have known him.  And by the way, being able to invent a great title is a talent I wish more novelists had.

One of my least favorite contemporary authors is dead.  I don't write that lightly.  David Foster Wallace hanged himself.  And I can't help thinking that what I didn't like about his writing was related to his suicide.  This is the honest truth:  I hated to read his stuff because it made me depressed.

Didn't matter what his tone was, what his subject was.  It ate into my brain like a worm.  Was never long before I would get furious with him and start arguing with him in my head, and usually over nothing.  It was like a contagion.  Or a temptation.  The case of a sad mind asking to think alike.

Bunches of people thought he was a great writer though.

He was great at thinking up titles, that's for sure.  The Girl With Curious Hair.  The Broom of the System.  Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.  A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

His longest book had his shortest title.  Infinite Jest.

Can't help wondering why he never published another novel after that one.

Here's an appraisal by Michiko Kakutani.

Here's a remembrance by Wallace's friend John Seery.

Here's Mark Caro writing in the Chicago Tribune.

Here's the New York Times topics page on Wallace.

Here is he being interviewed by Charlie Rose.  And here's an interview with him in Salon.

Comments

[Ian Gray]

Lance,

I read your stuff regularly. You're one of my favourite bloggers. And this is without question the cruelest post I've ever read of yours.

You didn't like his writing, fine. I have no problem with you disliking him, or saying so on the day he killed himself, or for saying that the melancholy that presumably led him to kill himself was why you didn't like his writing.

But giving the post a mocking title and sneeringly dismissing him as a no-talent creator of titles is low. Expressing contempt for a writer's talents is also to express contempt for his audience, and as a member of Wallace's audience I don't appreciate the contempt.

Forgive me if this is harsh. This post was the first I'd heard of it, and I will admit to being saddened and angered by the news.

[Apostate]

For what it's worth, Lance, I agree about Wallace and do not see your post as cruel or contemptuous.

You're writing of someone recently dead as you often write of writers who're alive or who are long dead. I don't see why your tone should be any different.

But then, I'm a weird person with few moral qualms about thoughts and actions that don't have the power to materially hurt people, so what do I know.

[julia]

No no no no no damnit no.

Oh, this sucks. I fell into Infinite Jest like a well and stayed there until I finished - called in sick to work - because there was something about the way he treated his grotesqueries that made me feel as if he was laughing, maybe not with them, but not at a level above them.

And I enjoyed the essay the post was named after. I wasn't always convinced, but I really did love the way the man put things. At least he took the things he wrote about seriously enough to work at disputing them.

[Apostate]

Ack, read the NYT news story. His wife found him. That just sucks.

One big reason I'm always deterred from suicide is the thought of my husband dealing with the aftermath.

[Rob]

Aesthetic preference is aesthetic preference, I doubt that Wallace would begrudge his critics a clever obituary title...

[Sabina's Hat]

Lance,

I am sympathetic of your perspective on Wallace. I'm a fan of DFW, a big one, but I recognize how his writing can be offputting. But yeah, my first impulse after reading your post was to just say, "fuck you."

[Sabina's Hat]

Lance,

I am sympathetic of your perspective on Wallace. I'm a fan of DFW, a big one, but I recognize how his writing can be offputting. But yeah, my first impulse after reading your post was to just say, "fuck you."

[MaryL]

So you're still angry enough with him that you took a couple of cheap shots in this post. He's past caring, but some of us aren't. Nice way to break the news to those of your readers who didn't read about it elsewhere.

A little more care and thought in this MetaFilter thread.

[John Onorato]

"It ate into my brain like a worm."

Would that so many writers could have that said about a contemporary.

That was his Point.

He was a genius, and I'll miss him greatly. He was the only author I'd had ever set an Amazon alert for new work. He was outside my "firepower," as he so often liked to put it, but with enough repetitious reads, I got him.

Genius lost is never a cause for cynicism.

[KC45s]

Even putting aside his fiction, Wallace was a really great creative nonfiction writer when he had his mojo working. His piece for Harper's on the Illinois State Fair remains one of the funniest things I've ever read (I say that without hyperbole).

A really, really talented guy, and clearly a brilliant mind. Not too many contemporary American writers his age have comparable chops, whatever you may think of the end results. I'm absolutely floored by this news.

[JDC]

KC45s,

Strongly disagree about that Harper's piece. Boring stunt reporting of sending someone who clearly hated state fairs to cover it. My favourite thing about it was the letter an issue or two later calling Harper's out for making fun of the rubes and their nose-hair rotary scissors while the magazine advertises the sophisticated set *electric* nose-hair trimmers.

But yeah, DFW was a great creative force.

[tbogg]

I've read Gravity's Rainbow twice, but I couldn't get through Infinite Jest once. Rainbow set out to dazzle the reader, while Jest seemed like so much graduate student showing off.

Having said that, I loved A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

Either way, still kind of sad.

By the way, I feel about T. Coraghessan Boyle the way you think about Wallace.

[Falstaff]

You know....

Honestly, I have no problem with what Lance wrote about Wallace. I pretty much agree with him, actually. I felt horrible every time I finished something Wallace wrote.

I'm not sad for Wallace, though. I mean, I feel bad for anyone who feels so crushed that they feel like they need to kill themselves just to get away from that feeling. I've been there, I know what it's like, and it's really awful.

But he hung himself in his home, and he must have known that what would happen did happen -- his wife finding him.

I'm sorry. That's just wrong. You don't do that to someone who loves you. If you're going to kill yourself, it seems to me that the least you can do is do it in a way that isn't going to inflict pain on the people who love you.

That probably isn't particularly elegant, but it's how I feel.

[Falstaff]

"Did happen" and "would happen" are reversed in my post above. Sorry for that.

[Apostate]

Falstaff, I see your point, but I don't think one can reasonably or fairly hold someone responsible for their actions once they've reached the point of consciously killing themselves.

The fact that we can worry about the consequences to our loved ones if we contemplate suicide shows, I think, that we're not truly suicidal, not that we have better morals.

[lisa]

Huh. I haven't read any DFW. Let me say that right up front. So maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what is cruel or nasty about what was posted.

I do know a small bit about suicide, though. And about unhappy lives. I also know that no one really knows what goes on inside marriages or families or deep inside someone else's mind.

Why Wallace did what he did, and where and when he did it, and who he expected to find him and what he thought or wished or feared his or her reaction would be ... these are things no one knows.

There was a really good article in the NYT (I think it was the NYT) fairly recently about suicide. It discussed impulsive vs. non-impulsive methods, and several people whose suicides failed talked about their experiences. I think the article focused mostly on people who jumped off bridges, and why the argument that "if you make it harder to jump of this bridge, people will just find another way to kill themselves" is not supported by the evidence. In fact, the evidence shows the opposite: The easier it is for many people to commit suicide, the less likely they are to do it. Because, in many cases, it is a strictly impulsive act.

Hanging yourself in your home seems to me an act that requires a bit of thought and planning; i.e., not impulsive, but very deliberate.

I knew someone whose husband did the same thing. Hung himself in the home. On the wife's birthday.

She found him when she returned from a party in her honor that he declined to attend.

That suggested he was sending a few messages, but did he think she was coming home from the party alone? Or did he think/hope she would bring friends inside, and she would find his body with an audience of her/their friends?

Who knows.

Apparently Wallace's wife was returning home from somewhere. Where? Was he expecting her to return? Was he expecting someone else, instead? Was he expecting her to be alone?

Who knows.

It's all very sad, though. It's very sad when someone you are close to decides it is time to check out. You never stop thinking about it. But how you think about it—your view on what they did—can change dramatically over time.

I know that is true, too.

[ep]

Melancholy, depressive, sure.

He had a manic thought process, though. Be awed that he caught some of the relentless flight of ideas and wrote.

People don't choose this for themselves. We each of us are who we are.

Difficult to comprehend the pain that precedes suicide.

Be gentle. May we all rest in peace.

[Michael Bartley]

Lance, you've got a lot of integrity. The ability to rethink, aplogize, and clarify shows strengh and wisdom. Wish we would see it more of your attributes in our national life.
Falstaff, I've know the shock of loved ones and suicide. I understand your anger. I'm always torn between anger and sympathy in these awful moments. I guess we all are.
EP, very very beautiful. You brought tears to my eyes. Thank you.