Saturday, September 13, 2008

David Foster Wallace, dead from suicide at age 46

Author of Infinite Jest, numerous essays, hanged himself at his home in California.

You can count me as a semi-fan of David Foster Wallace, in that he satirized America as it is unravelling. I read Infinite Jest numerous times through my teenage years, but began to out grow it, along with other writers of this kind, in that it seemed that mere weight of reference was becoming a substitute for substance.

It's a disease that afflicts Pynchon and Stephenson now as well. I know we aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead, and I feel for his wife and others who he left behind. But I also know that the weight that crushed him under is crushing others as well.

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