found drama

David Foster Wallace – whose memory I trust will live on as one of prodigious talent and unique wit– was found dead in his home by his wife.  He was 46.

DFW was a hero to me, a young author who moved fluidly with words through our ill landscape of postmodernity.  For every grammatical or lexical rule he seemed eager to enforce as “the rules”, there were ten others he felt free to break through style and substance.  His words could seem detached and aloof, running on for pages and pages of what felt like utter pretentiousness, only to annihilate that perception with some incisive, epigrammatic witticism that would make anyone smile.

I first came across his work in 2000 while working on a draft of a novel for my SMP at St. Mary’s.  While researching “voice” and “tone”, I had Infinite Jest recommended to me by a not-entirely-un-sadistic professor.  My first read of Infinite Jest took me the better part of those two semesters.  It was brutal and grueling ¹ and utterly rewarding – though maddeningly recursive.  The 1,000+ page novel ² was sprawling and ambitious and all-inclusive and inventive.  I was immediately smitten with his work and have since then devoured as much of it as I can.

Hell – every WordPress theme I’ve ever created has been named after Wallace’s characters from Infinite Jest, including the “Ortho” theme I have in place today.

Though I have wanted to be a novelist all my life ³, it was not until I started reading Wallace’s werk that I found the inspiration for which I had been searching.  It was not his style or his tone.  Those things belonged to him.  It was his Devil May Care approach that kept rules around simply to mock them; his inventiveness on the page was peerless.

Now I suppose he was more Himself than Hal than we will ever know.

• Farewell, David Foster Wallace
  Travel § @ LATimes.com
• David Foster Wallace, Postmodern Writer, Is Found Dead
  NYTimes.com
• David Foster Wallace: Two Stories, and the Fall of Videophony
  via OMNIVORACIOUS
• David Foster Wallace: 1962-2008
  via OMNIVORACIOUS – “…A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again was my hands-down favorite title to hand-sell to customers. I can visualize exactly where it was shelved in the far back corner of the store (where I always made sure to face out its bright yellow cover when I was shelving in the “W”s).”
• Breaking: David Foster Wallace Dead of Suicide at 46
  at Gawker (via DF) – includes a DFW quote on suicide
• David Foster Wallace Dead of Suicide at 46
  at Daring Fireball – Wallace was my favorite writer, period. amen, brother
• Writer David Foster Wallace found dead
  at Los Angeles Times (via DF) :: a more complete obituary

1. Especially when piled on top of the readings for my more “standard” coursework.[↩]
2. Give or take some pages for the footnotes endnotes.[↩]
3. Well, since at least 5 years old.[↩]

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