David Foster Wallace Found Dead

It's like when Hunter Thompson killed himself, when he was on the phone with his wife no less, a cowardly act that hurts the people he loved doubly. His wife came home to find him hanged.

My cousin killed herself in our house. I was 17 and found her, a 15 year old girl, hanging from a rafter in the garage. Death is horrid and messy under the best circumstances, someone who hangs themselves? Google will tell you more than I care to. Her death annihilated her parent's marriage, devastated her sister and brother and haunts me to this day. I loved her very much

But she was a selfish idiot.

Suicide is shameful, cruel and craven. You hurt the people you care about and care about you so deeply it's almost incalculable in it's impact.

Whatever his contribution to literature, substantial it might be, I can't help but see him as a selfish prat.

Ingrid:

I completely sympathize with that, more than I care to admit, and someone who is deeply disturbed likely can't find the way to ask for help, but mental illness isn't lke a lightswitch, it doesn't simply flip on and rob you of reason and responsibility in an instant.

There is so much help out there, more every day. For an otherwise healthy person to choose oblivion, to put their loved ones through pain by choice? No, it's cruel and selfish.

ditto that pantagrapher, well said.

Why is there always some ignorant prick who has to make sure everyone knows how selfish he thinks suicide is?

Because some people simply like to hear themselves "talk."

Nice thoughts, Ward. What a sad story. My thoughts to the Wallace family and his readers and students.

Can we steer this away from a discussion of suicide and depression and maybe share any thoughts you had on DFW?

Why, Tankboy? This is an open forum, isn't it? A place where we can share our thoughts and ideas. If this isn't the proper place, what is? As long as it is kept civil, what's the big deal?

Yes, you are a lonely voice of reason in this crazy world. We should all be thanking you for swooping in and making this important announcement. People need to see things your way and the world will be a better place.

Talk about cruel, selfish impulses.

I suppose I shouldn't feed the troll. I'll leave it at that.

I'm a huge fan of DFW and had the good fortune to meet and speak to him several times while I was an English student at ISU. I'm saddened that we won't see more of his work, and truly admire the fact that he successfully overcame his demons for many years, thus giving hundreds of students the opportunity to learn the craft from him before those demons finally took him down. His influence on his students and on modern literature will no doubt live on.

Albany: In fact, I woke up this morning with plans to fuck myself, perhaps after lunch, though I may have some errands to run. So, your polite suggestion seems unneeded, though I thank you for the good thoughts, as always.

*Yawn* Sorry. What? I heard rustling in the leaves, sounded like the naive attempt at wit perhaps? Or perhaps flatulence on the breeze?

Christ, you really don't think most people here get that suicide is a selfish act with long-lasting implications? You really feel that such knowledge is so rare that you must use this story about Wallace's suicide to draw attention to yourself?

And you need to try and start a fight, another losing battle of wits you come to unarmed, with me. Go on, dazzle me with your insights.

Yeah, Tankboy, you make a good point. Albany is acting like an uncivilized prick.

Albany, I stand by what I said, and I was being sincere, and if you read any of my previous posts on this site, you would know that I am sincere. You opened the door by throwing your feelings out there. You made your feelings everyone's business, by telling us your thoughts and giving us your experience when you saw your cousin hanged at the young age of 15. Now you want to those feelings and make them your own business again. You can't have it both ways.

You are the authority on this subject, I am sure. Your post speaks for itself, and I am not going to debate you.

Have a nice day.

Now you want to those feelings and make them your own business again. You can't have it both ways.

Thank you. Truth and brevity.

Yeah, Tankboy, you make a good point. Albany is acting like an uncivilized prick.

Always with the clever.

You made your feelings everyone's business, by telling us your thoughts and giving us your experience when you saw your cousin hanged at the young age of 15. Now you want to those feelings and make them your own business again. You can't have it both ways.

Not at all. I just don't need diagnosis from someone via the internet about my "feelings". I'm talking about consequences here. And feel free to say I'm just as guilty of such a think in regards to DFW, but I'm not trying to understand his illness, that I sympathize with deeply, it's sad and horrid and awful and I pray that he had gotten the help he needed. But he's still a selfish bugger for what he did.

I know you've departed the conversation, but think on this if you will. An alcoholic drives his car into a crosswalk, maims a pedestrian. He pleads to his illness in court. If he's lucky, a reduced sentence, but he's still liable and accountable. He's punished for his actions, made to face his poor choices, perhaps face down his illness.

Suicides are cowardly because they leave a mess with no one to hold to account. Families are destroyed trying to figure out who was "to blame" and recriminations echo across generations.

The raw, ugly fact is that a woman came home to find her husband dead by his own hand and had to face that stark and horrid sight. What a shameful, cowardly and vile thing to do to anyone, let alone someone you love.

Illness does not abdicate all responsibility, we are not simply bags of chemicals, stimulus and response machines. We are more, whether divinely crafted or simply endothermic happenstance. To shred that, to force your illness into the hearts of others, to make it their burden.

Cowadice, writ large and loud.

But for you to offer such certain judgement in this case, and do so based merely on your own experience that you absolutely had to share in order to call attention to yourself,

*sigh* Really, you don't even get the stopped clock level of being correct.

I shared what little I did because it's germane and it deeply informs my experience. So now you would have use speak only from perfected insight derived from what? Osmosis? Enlightenment by revelation?

seems like a rather leaky case to me. I find it more than a bit brave of you to, over and over again, pretend to step inside someone's heart and mind and emerge with something you pretend is wisdom, but is more often than not trite lessons straight out of the Dr Phil notebook.

I don't claim to have any special insight, no moral lessons, no knowledge other than that which can be observed and experienced.

You seem only capable of calling on others to better their observations while not making a single cogent point of your own. You've added nothing to this thread save your attempts to bait me.

You bring nothing to the table but half-assed rhetorical questions and suppositions that don't stand even passing scrutiny.

Now claim this is all insult, ask me if I have, at long last, any decency and attempt to play it off with humor or dry wit, or rather attempts at the same.

Oh, but you do. The wretchedness of your arrogance is matched only by that of the numerous, glaring assumptions you make on the way to your preordained conclusion.

There's an english major striking out if I ever saw one. "Preordained conclusion" isn't that a bit redundant?

Then you pretend to know how others think by first placing them into templates so painfully trite that even Jackie Collins would clutch her pearls in horror.

Ah, there we are. Let me guess, small liberal arts school, got "Infinite Jest" about sophomore year, saw Wallace speak at Printer's Row, or maybe some McSweeney's wine-swilling self-importance fest? Jackie Collins? I'd go more for the hackery of a James Patterson. Maybe a Laurel K. Hamilton with a touch of the macabre.

Then you rationalize the entire, pitiful exercise with a sneering appeal to authority and the thin veneer of concern. Ugh.

A thin veneer. As opposed to a thick one? You realize you've accused me of being trite and yet you've spoken entirely in cliches?

Let it go, man. Let it go.

What did I have to start with? An observation? A point? An anecdote and some comments. Tie yourself in a knot if you like, but I'm not holding your strings.

Oh, but you do. The wretchedness of your arrogance is matched only by that of the numerous, glaring assumptions you make on the way to your preordained conclusion. Then you pretend to know how others think by first placing them into templates so painfully trite that even Jackie Collins would clutch her pearls in horror.

Albany, I admit I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but the above from an apparently more intelligent commenter than I pretty much sums up your typical argument here.

I shared what little I did because it's germane and it deeply informs my experience.

Key phrase here is "my experience." Learn to step outside yourself more often. Learn to consider more closely the experience of others.

don't claim to have any special insight, no moral lessons, no knowledge other than that which can be observed and experienced.

Your constant reckless assumptions--as signaled by your habit of labeling, smearing or insulting others who disagree with you--says otherwise. You set yourself up as some superior intellect, and when challenged, you usually sink to name-calling.

You seem only capable of calling on others to better their observations while not making a single cogent point of your own. You've added nothing to this thread save your attempts to bait me.

Perhaps, but I simply dislike weak ideas peppered with insults. I cannot stand assumptions disguised as critical thought, especially when those assumptions are fortified with unearned arrogance. You don't do it all the time, but you do it often enough, and you are an obvious target, as you tend to have insults and assumptions about nearly every issue, and you challenge others with a persistant energy that you clearly dislike being used against you. That you think I am baiting you--an oddly personal way to put it--makes me wonder if you are a bit paranoid, or if you somehow think this really is personal, even though we are Internet strangers.

You bring nothing to the table but half-assed rhetorical questions and suppositions that don't stand even passing scrutiny.

Perhaps, but unlike your kind, I try my best to avoid assumptions about anything about anyone or any issue. I have no idea if you are male or female, for instance, nor do I guess at your core political values. I know only what you write here and what you defend here. What you call "rhetorical" questions usually are attempts--some better than others--to see another side of the issue, to consider all the different perspectives. Based on your writings here, you seem much more comfortable with certain judgments, even those based on one of your many assumptions, despite how shaky they are.

Ah, there we are. Let me guess, small liberal arts school, got "Infinite Jest" about sophomore year, saw Wallace speak at Printer's Row, or maybe some McSweeney's wine-swilling self-importance fest? Jackie Collins? I'd go more for the hackery of a James Patterson. Maybe a Laurel K. Hamilton with a touch of the macabre.

See, sweetheart, another assumption, another attempt to put into a neat little category something you cannot counter with a real idea. Do you seriously not realize this? And don't play the game of acting like you don't care, that you do this only to get some laughs. I am skeptical that anyone but the especially lonely or the mentally ill would post as much as you do without being serious about the comments left here. I doubt you are lonely or ill, though, of course, I have no proof either way.

We are, in fact. Very postmodern. A fitting half-assed tribute to Wallace, though without the brilliance or gift for language.

No. Dice.

Wow--melodramatic use of periods. Now I can take you seriously.

Sparky: If that was meant as a tribute to the footnote fiction of Wallace it failed, if only in it's brevity.

Let me guess, small liberal arts school, got "Infinite Jest" about sophomore year, saw Wallace speak at Printer's Row, or maybe some McSweeney's wine-swilling self-importance fest?

Yet again, your assumptions manage to be both trite and completely incorrect. But what should make this puerile ad hominem particularly embarrassing for you is the fact that I've already revealed where I went to college and how I came to meet DFW earlier in the comments.

But whatever.

At the suggestion of one of my writing professors—C.S. Giscombe, I believe—I met with DFW and got him to read a portion of something I'd written. He gave me some advice and let me sit in on one of his classes. He was helpful, funny. He wore several nicotine patches. He was more forthright than my writing professors, which I appreciated.

I didn't read any of his work until a couple years after I graduated (I graduated about a year after IJ was published). It was then I realized just whose brain I had access to. I regret not paying more attention to contemporary lit back then.

Anyway, I have a first edition of IJ that I picked up several years ago. I've long been waiting for him to swing through Chicago for a reading or something, so I could get it signed and thank him for what little help he gave me years ago. And to tell him I would have enrolled in his class if only I'd known who he was.

But what should make this puerile ad hominem particularly embarrassing for you is the fact that I've already revealed where I went to college and how I came to meet DFW earlier in the comments.

Assuming I read your posts, which, I didn't. "Puerile ad hominem". Really, please tell me that you're putting us all on with this, it's too rich at this point. This must be a put-on, an invention of some kind? I mean, I've met U of C lit grad students who could barely struggle through the doorway due to their exagerrated self-importance, but if you are truly this full of yourself you must require a rascal or a flat-bed to be carried about.

At the suggestion of one of my writing professors—C.S. Giscombe, I believe—I met with DFW and got him to read a portion of something I'd written.

Were you on the quad, or perhaps round Haw-vard yaw-d, at the time? Perhaps taking in the curious workers, the labour (proper spelling) hard at work while you and your professor-G.S Chiselbottom of the New Hampshire Chiselbottoms, strolled and talked of Proust? Was it autumn, when the light is so precious just coming through the dying trees reminding you of mortality and meaning and-

Ugh. I can't even go on with it. Pretensions to erudition and trite, dead, vocab exercises. Another reason to reinstate the draft, the cleaning-out of America's English departments.

Were you on the quad, or perhaps round Haw-vard yaw-d, at the time? Perhaps taking in the curious workers, the labour (proper spelling) hard at work while you and your professor-G.S Chiselbottom of the New Hampshire Chiselbottoms, strolled and talked of Proust? Was it autumn, when the light is so precious just coming through the dying trees reminding you of mortality and meaning and-

Ugh. I can't even go on with it. Pretensions to erudition and trite, dead, vocab exercises. Another reason to reinstate the draft, the cleaning-out of America's English departments.

Sounds almost like envy from someone who tried to write but failed. Or some blue-collar schmuck who, despite ascending to white-collar status, feels guilty about it. Then again, those are just assumptions, so I am sure they are all wrong.