Sep 15, 2008

Goodbye DFW

David Foster Wallace - one of the great contemporary writers dies today by his own hand. It is strange - I just had a conversation with a literary friend of mine the other day - we wondered what Mr. Wallace might be up too. We assumed he was busy working on his next Magnum Opus, that is some sort of follow up to Infinite Jest.

I lugged that dictionary-sized book around for months when it first came out and it made a huge imppresion on me. It seemed that here was a young author with all of the command of narrative and language of the old masters , and yet he was able to write, hilariously, freshly and  completely in the now, in the hyper-modern moment.

To read someone is to come to know their voice , and so in a way it is to get to know them. I always felt some kinship with DFW if for no other reason than from bonding with his writing style for 1,000 plus pages. One of the brightest stars in the constellations of writers has gone out.