David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)
Come on, man, why did you have to hang yourself? You are one of my favorite writers. You were the one who wrote about the effects of Illinois wind on junior championship tennis--which I was familiar with from my own extremely amateur tennis days in junior high--and made me fall in love with Roger Federer. You were the one who wrote about suffocating Arizona cockroaches beneath drinking glasses and suspended my disbelief so that, for a moment, I believed in ghosts, even if they were the ghosts of avant-garde filmmakers. Seeing your name on the masthead was the last straw in turning me into a Harper's subscriber.
Man, you were the reason I decided to write my first novel. And now you're dead, you succumbed to the abyss and you did it yourself, you fucking genius you.
My novel isn't very good. It's no Infinite Jest, which I read half a life ago when I had dropped out of college and was working part-time at a big box grocery store in Kalamazoo, had just moved in with two people I didn't really know, and my life had gotten to a point of absurdity that I had to disconnect. So I spent $28 of my 100 or so dollar weekly paycheck on this mammoth, hardcover (oh, the luxury!) tome, and spent two weeks doing nothing but working and reading in various places around that unfamiliar apartment.
I cried reading that book. I hadn't cried in a long time. Even more important, one of my roommates was watching me read, was a witness to this complete absorption of attention that I was capable of, and was taking notes. He is still one of my best friends. I have one of my best friends because of that book.
Even more, after my brother enlisted in the Navy, he asked me to send him books on the ship when he was stationed in Japan. I tried to think of good books with a large quantity of pages, and ended up sending him Infinite Jest. Not only did he read it, he got several of his shipmates to read it, too, and that particular copy took on a life of its own, getting hidden in electrical equipment and being read by those who hardly ever read on shore. It turned out to be a great book for the sea.
You were the one. You were the one who made me think that maybe writing nonfiction essays would be a good idea--you made me realize that I had my own sense of self, to a point, with A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I cheered you for your MacArthur grant, and you gave me hope. Yes, hope. That someday, I might be able to write this well. That I might be able to meet you. That I too may someday be capable of this greatness.
But if this greatness, your particular kind of greatness, means I end up putting a rope around my neck and kicking a stool out from under me, I'm going to have to think again. Why, man? Couldn't you have held on for just a little bit longer?
You know, for me?
