David Foster Wallace commits suicide

pure_mercury · 09-14-2008, 02:54 AM

Writer David Foster Wallace found dead at home - Yahoo! News

I haven't read his stuff, although Infinite Jest has been recommended to me before. This is sad to hear. Too many of our great writers go out this way. His family is in my thoughts.

Haight · 09-14-2008, 02:59 AM

Well I'll have to admit that Claremont would be a really crappy place to live.

V Profane · 09-14-2008, 03:01 AM

Never read him myself, either, but that title, Infinite Jest, always stuck in my mind. From his Wiki page, he sounds like a guy who was too smart and too conscientious for modern life (which is rubbish).

OK Radio · 09-14-2008, 03:44 AM

I haven't read Infinite Jest, but for some reason I have seen that title recently. I can't remember why or how or in what context and that annoys me. Deeply.

Jae Rae · 09-14-2008, 03:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pure_mercury

Writer David Foster Wallace found dead at home - Yahoo! News

I haven't read his stuff, although Infinite Jest has been recommended to me before. This is sad to hear. Too many of our great writers go out this way. His family is in my thoughts.

Thanks for posting this Merc. I never heard of him and should have. Three library reserves for Infinite Jest already.

Hideous Man and A Supposedly Fun Thing (about taking a cruise) were also recommended.

Algora J · 09-14-2008, 05:20 AM

What a tragedy. I loved his work and seen him at book readings.

Wow, we lost a genius to suicide. Incredible.

Jae Rae · 09-15-2008, 12:23 AM

From The Nation:

"One of the most vexing frustrations of the human condition is the fact that we are forever caged inside our own minds. Love, romantic and familial, and friendship, bring us as close as we ever get to inhabiting the soul of another, to see the world through others' eyes.

Reading is only other thing that comes close. A lot of reading is done to acquire information, to satisfy curiosity, to while away time, or engage in escape. But the rarest and most elevated experience a reader can have is to feel, briefly, in contact with another mind. To see one's one inchoate sentiments articulated so precisely, that our own inescapable and endemic solitude momentarily lifts. It's a profound connection. We can probably all name authors we feel this way about, and for me David Foster Wallace was that first and foremost. That's why I cried last night when I learned that he had committed suicide at age 46.

I read Infinite Jest, the summer between high school and college and it blew my mind. I loved it so much I returned to it again while living in Italy in 2000. I devoured his short story and non-fiction collections. (Stop what you're doing and go read the title piece in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.) My senior year of college I adapted his brilliant (and under appreciated) book, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for the stage. One of the actors in it was John Krasinski (of TV's The Office), who is now making a movie version of the book. As much as any single writer and thinker, Wallace shaped my own sensibility. And I always held out hope that I'd meet him one day.

Wallace's project, which he lays out pretty clearly in this 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, was empathy. And as a hyper-brilliant mind, the path he took towards it, in his writing, was to use his raw intellectual horsepower to achieve a kind of moral enlightenment. There was, in this way, a merging of form and content: his writing worked because he was able to achieve this kind of brilliant, self-conscious, painfully self-aware, but nonetheless robust and heart-breaking empathy for his characters and subjects. And as a reader, the prose itself made one feel a similar kind of soul connection to both the writer and the people the writer described. He felt close. His characters felt close. And reading him I found that the prison bars of my own embedded subjectivity, my own selfish "default setting" was shaken, bent, expanded just enough to be able to glimpse something eternally, capital-T True. Something sublime.

His loss is an unimaginable tragedy."

kuranes · 09-15-2008, 02:04 AM

Bad news. I read "Infinite Jest" and an interview he did with David Lynch. He was a bright articulate guy.

OK Radio · 09-17-2008, 06:20 AM

I just figured it out. I bought Consider the Lobster on sale at Barnes and Noble at the end of August without knowing anything about him. He wrote a great essay about the McCain 2000 campaign.

Sarcasticus · 10-09-2008, 01:58 PM

So what was his MBTI type?

09-14-2008, 02:54 AM	#1 (permalink)
pure_mercury Order Now! Join Date: Feb 2008 Type: ESFJ Location: Hollywood Posts: 4,598	David Foster Wallace commits suicide Writer David Foster Wallace found dead at home - Yahoo! News I haven't read his stuff, although Infinite Jest has been recommended to me before. This is sad to hear. Too many of our great writers go out this way. His family is in my thoughts. __________________ Who wants to try a bottle of merc's "Extroversion Olive Oil?"

09-14-2008, 02:59 AM	#2 (permalink)
Haight Doesn't Read Your Posts Join Date: Apr 2007 Type: INTj Location: Baltimore Posts: 3,547	Well I'll have to admit that Claremont would be a really crappy place to live. __________________ "The only time I'm wrong is when I'm questioning myself." Dr. Haight

09-15-2008, 12:23 AM	#7 (permalink)
Jae Rae Free-Rangin' Librarian Join Date: Nov 2007 Type: INFJ Location: California Posts: 897	From The Nation: "One of the most vexing frustrations of the human condition is the fact that we are forever caged inside our own minds. Love, romantic and familial, and friendship, bring us as close as we ever get to inhabiting the soul of another, to see the world through others' eyes. Reading is only other thing that comes close. A lot of reading is done to acquire information, to satisfy curiosity, to while away time, or engage in escape. But the rarest and most elevated experience a reader can have is to feel, briefly, in contact with another mind. To see one's one inchoate sentiments articulated so precisely, that our own inescapable and endemic solitude momentarily lifts. It's a profound connection. We can probably all name authors we feel this way about, and for me David Foster Wallace was that first and foremost. That's why I cried last night when I learned that he had committed suicide at age 46. I read Infinite Jest, the summer between high school and college and it blew my mind. I loved it so much I returned to it again while living in Italy in 2000. I devoured his short story and non-fiction collections. (Stop what you're doing and go read the title piece in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.) My senior year of college I adapted his brilliant (and under appreciated) book, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for the stage. One of the actors in it was John Krasinski (of TV's The Office), who is now making a movie version of the book. As much as any single writer and thinker, Wallace shaped my own sensibility. And I always held out hope that I'd meet him one day. Wallace's project, which he lays out pretty clearly in this 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, was empathy. And as a hyper-brilliant mind, the path he took towards it, in his writing, was to use his raw intellectual horsepower to achieve a kind of moral enlightenment. There was, in this way, a merging of form and content: his writing worked because he was able to achieve this kind of brilliant, self-conscious, painfully self-aware, but nonetheless robust and heart-breaking empathy for his characters and subjects. And as a reader, the prose itself made one feel a similar kind of soul connection to both the writer and the people the writer described. He felt close. His characters felt close. And reading him I found that the prison bars of my own embedded subjectivity, my own selfish "default setting" was shaken, bent, expanded just enough to be able to glimpse something eternally, capital-T True. Something sublime. His loss is an unimaginable tragedy." __________________ Proud Female Rider in Maverick's Bike Club.

09-15-2008, 02:04 AM	#8 (permalink)
kuranes Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Type: XNXP Location: Chicago Posts: 1,042	Bad news. I read "Infinite Jest" and an interview he did with David Lynch. He was a bright articulate guy. __________________ "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Reichsfuhrer Herman Goering at the Nuremburg trials.

10-09-2008, 01:58 PM	#10 (permalink)
Sarcasticus Senior Member Join Date: May 2008 Type: xNTP Location: Atlanta Posts: 457	So what was his MBTI type? __________________ Work is the curse of the drinking class. ~Oscar Wilde xNTP 5w4

09-14-2008, 03:01 AM	#3 (permalink)
V Profane Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Type: INTP Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, England Posts: 120	Never read him myself, either, but that title, Infinite Jest, always stuck in my mind. From his Wiki page, he sounds like a guy who was too smart and too conscientious for modern life (which is rubbish).

09-14-2008, 03:44 AM	#4 (permalink)
OK Radio Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Type: intj Posts: 72	I haven't read Infinite Jest, but for some reason I have seen that title recently. I can't remember why or how or in what context and that annoys me. Deeply.

09-14-2008, 05:20 AM	#6 (permalink)
Algora J Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Type: Posts: 122	What a tragedy. I loved his work and seen him at book readings. Wow, we lost a genius to suicide. Incredible.

09-17-2008, 06:20 AM	#9 (permalink)
OK Radio Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Type: intj Posts: 72	I just figured it out. I bought Consider the Lobster on sale at Barnes and Noble at the end of August without knowing anything about him. He wrote a great essay about the McCain 2000 campaign.

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