Projectile Weeping

Last Friday night, David Foster Wallace killed himself at the age of 46. I didn't hear about it until Sunday afternoon, and it took me at least five minutes to fully register the news. Sometimes when famous folk die, us plain people often feel like we've been punched in the gut. It depends on the individual, and the context, but I'm willing to bet that we've all felt it before. It is slightly embarrassing to admit: that a person you've never met, were never going to meet, know next to nothing about, is long gone, and now their loss is plucking at the strings inside your own heart. I mean, it can't be real sadness, right? But, for me, the loss of DFW was a genuine gut-punch.

I read Infinite Jest last summer exclusively during my breaks at work. It took me three weeks and several re-starts and one library renewal to finish, but once I had slogged through to the end I felt the familiar twinge in my stomach: I knew that this book was going to be one of "those books" for me. His language play, his muddle of characters and time periods and content, and his often three-page-long run-on sentences were all difficult to get through, but as payoff the book made me reconsider where I wanted to head with my own writing. It encouraged me to take more risks with style, to think smarter, to try harder. In short, it made me want to be a better writer.

David Foster Wallace had the rare ability to impress and destroy and rebuild and entertain and touch, all in just one sentence. He was less a "writer" and more simply an artist, a builder of intricate webs of words and thoughts. He was one of the best voices of this generation, and I can only hope that other talented wordsmiths will take up his mantle in the years to come. Here's to a truly unique voice, a thousand perfectly penned pages, and a legacy of gut-punches. Rest easy, DFW.

"We're each deeply alone here. It's what we have in common, this aloneness."