RIP David Foster Wallace

[grammargirl]

I don't usually mention celebrity deaths here, but I just learned that David Foster Wallace hanged himself last night and I find myself surprisingly distraught. Not for the loss of David Foster Wallace himself (I've never met him, or heard him speak) or even his writing talent (I really enjoyed some of his essays, but Infinite Jest made me want to throw it against a wall), but for strangely personal reasons. DFW will always remind me of my favorite college roommate and my favorite ex-boyfriend, one of whom is halfway across the country and the other of whom is literally on the other side of the world. All the technological communication innovations the 21st century has to offer and I can't seem to find anyone to commiserate in realtime about the loss of a writer whose brilliance and occasionally infuriating erudition helped, in some small way, make the second-worst year of my life more bearable. Or at least more full of endless digressions and footnotes.

RIP, DFW. The thought of your passing gives me the howling fantods.

(This is as good an excuse as any to link to one of my favorite Onion articles ever: Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter At Page 20)

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

I haven't read anything by him, but I'm still shocked.

*hug*

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

Wallace is one of my fiancé's two favorite authors (the other is Dostoevsky) - when I asked him if there were any book in the world he would want me to read, he gave me A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (I gave him In Memoriam, A.H.H.).

I feel at such loose ends, because he's still in Iraq - I started reading the Wallace essays this summer as a way to feel connected to him (my fiancé), so this feels sort of stunning

[minsies.livejournal.com]

We share the Infinite Jest hate (if only the ending hadn't been such a hack job) but ...

I've got the howling fantods too.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

That Onion article is pure brilliance.

[raptorgirl.livejournal.com]

Off-topic, but did you ever get my e-mail about the copy test?