September 14, 2008

David Foster Wallace, Postmodern Novelist and Writing Teacher, Is Dead at 46

David Foster Wallace, a writer who was known for his sprawling postmodern novels and humorous, heavily footnoted essays and journalism, died on Friday in an apparent suicide. He was 46. Police officials in Claremont, Calif., said Mr. Wallace’s wife returned home Friday night to find that he had hanged himself, The New York Times reported.

Mr. Wallace, who won a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1997, taught at Pomona College, where he held the Roy Edward Disney Chair in Creative Writing. He previously taught writing and English at Illinois State University, in Normal.

He was perhaps best known for his complex, 1,079-page novel Infinite Jest, which was published in 1996 and was set in a future in which years are named for corporate products. The novel drew comparisons to the works of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon. Time magazine put Infinite Jest on its list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005.

Mr. Wallace’s short stories and essays were also acclaimed. In his travel essays, he had a knack for exploring ordinary cultural events — a Caribbean cruise, a Maine lobster festival — and finding the grotesque and absurd in them. The Boston Globe said that his essay about the Maine lobster festival, which was published in Gourmet, “ranks as one of the most extraordinary New England-themed magazine articles of all time. It is alternately jarring, disjointed, contrapuntal, maddeningly long, and enviably brilliant.”

At a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, in which he made a reference to suicide, Mr. Wallace told graduates that caring about people and being educated were keys to the only real freedom in the world.

“The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing,” he said. “I know that this stuff probably doesn’t sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. … None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death.” —Scott Carlson

Comments

1. My condolences to the Wallace family and friends. It is most regrettable that Mr. Wallace never found a life philosophy he could live with.

   — Red State University    Sep 14, 07:57 PM    #

2. Dear Red State University: Amen!

   — Georgia    Sep 15, 06:50 AM    #

3. What wretched irony that the first comments to this article make “Mr. Wallace’s” painful answer to “gnawing sense having had, and lost, some infinite thing” seem appropriate and necessary. What, really, is there to say? Just read his books.

   — BP    Sep 15, 06:57 AM    #

4. A genius mind living with a heart that could not find contentment. Very sad.

   — GT    Sep 15, 07:20 AM    #

5. My daughter Phoebe graduated from Kenyon in 2005, and our family attended the commencement ceremony. Having been an academic at one time, and having complied with required attendance at many a commencement, I settled into my folding chair and tried, in the hot sun, to find a position for my head where I could sleep behind my sunglasses while appearing to be attentive. A few sentences into David Foster Wallace’s address, I opened my eyes and said to myself, “Wait a minute, this is something different.” It was, in short, one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard, and by a mile the best commencement address—generous, insightful, funny, realistic, devoid of the usual platitudes and, best, obviously written and delivered with his deepest thoughts about what the graduates ought to hear.

   I couldn’t get an e-mail address for him, so I sent him a thank you note saying much of the above. He sent back a nice you’re-welcome note.

   The speech was published, by popular demand in the Kenyon community, in a bulletin, and several graduates circulated it on the Web. I’m going to dig it out and read it again.

   — Peter Plagens    Sep 15, 07:45 AM    #

6. I normally shrug off the passing of celebrities, but this one hurt. I hope that Peter Plagens will let the rest of us know where to find the graduation speech on the web.

   — Alex Liddie    Sep 15, 04:28 PM    #

7. The Kenyon graduation speech is easy to find. Just google David Foster Wallace commencement address, and it should be the first thing to come up. Quite a speech. My sympathies to his family and friends.

   — Dan    Sep 15, 07:25 PM    #

8. Yes, that Kenyon speech is marvelous. And easy to find, right in the link in the penultimate paragraph of this article.

   — A. G. Rud    Sep 15, 07:33 PM    #

9. Oddly, I want to read it on paper, in that bulletin from a while back.

   Also, I recommend the “appreciation” (as they call those things in journalism) by my Newsweek colleague and novelist, David Gates. It’s on www.newsweek.com.

   — Peter Plagens    Sep 15, 08:53 PM    #

10. Yes, I agree Bob that it is very difficult to comprehend such sadness, nevertheless, he will be missed.

    Best Regards,

    — Reva    Sep 16, 04:07 PM    #

11. having suffered from depression, i am with parker palmer who once said he understood completely why people took their own lives noting that depression is exhausting – within an episode you are stripped of any real hope – as palmer also then said it is not mere sadness it is an absence of all feeling, truly a living death – i am totally in awe of mr wallace’s courage and achievement in the face of this grotesque disease – amazing work becomes incredible in that light – so very sad

    — nick    Sep 17, 06:57 AM    #

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