RIP, DFW
Yeah, so that quote on voting that I never got around to attributing . . . it comes from this article, penned by one of my favorite authors. An author so famously verbose that I suspect many of his magazine articles could have been, left uncut, made into books.
David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008.
Rest in peace, sir. You are already missed.
September 15th, 2008
I have yet to read any DFW… not for any particular reason, although your descriptions of some of his books (the need for a bookmark to mark you page and the footnotes) may have played into that, but I digress. I heard mostly good things about his writing and am shocked to find out that he’s dead (by suicide?!?) at the age of 46… RIP indeed…
September 16th, 2008
Actually you’ve read the (I don’t know if it’s technically non-fiction or not) book he wrote about the history of infinity (the really big number). I loaned it to you. Irregardless, I’d say a good starting point for anyone would be “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, a collection of essays that’s pretty much got something for everyone.
If you want to be lazy about it, start here. ‘Shipping out:…’ and ‘Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes:…’ are personal favorites, and both available in ‘director’s cut’ versions in the book I referenced above.
September 17th, 2008
every time i read this headline, i think it’s about the complete demise of Dallas/Fort Worth and I keep hoping that there’s some new tale of destruction…
nope. just some literary bs…
hm…
j.
September 17th, 2008
Jake, for what it’s worth I assumed the same thing when I saw that phrase on my friend’s Facebook status. Of course, the hurricane was still in Texas, and her family lives in Houston… but still.
McSweeney’s is running rememberances, and if a tenth as many people say a tenth’s worth of things as nice about me when I go, as people are saying about DFW. Well, I’ll probably be surprised.
September 18th, 2008
Dude… If there’s one thing I learned in the music industry (and has to be applicable to the writing/publishing industry as well), it’s that we’re all one hit single away, too. So take your time to compose a number of thoughts, organize them in a way that makes sense, write a damn book or song, put it out there, get famous, and if you’re not happy with it, off yourself and trust me: people will notice and say nice things about you.
I probably will. Just leave me a couple albums, some quality movies, or rights to the royalties and you’ll get a nice eulogy from your old pal Jake.
ps. note to everyone else: I can be bought.
September 20th, 2008
woah. where have i been? i saw “RIP DFW” at the close of the latest sports guy article, and had no idea what he meant. that sucks– wallace’s prose style was incredibly refreshing. i always got more into his essays than the full-length books; my favorite is probably this one from the atlantic back in 2005.