Sunday, September 14, 2008

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

Friday night, (in Claremont, CA, about 30 minutes west of where I live) the author David Foster Wallace committed suicide. The NYT has the obituary.

I first read A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again in college, and ended up reading a number of his works after that. Even if I ultimately didn't like everything I read of his, I always appreciated the technique, the sheer power of his virtuosic writing (I do disagree with the many people who thought Infinite Jest was in need of editing; to me, the sprawling, expansive length seemed almost necessary to the project as a whole). In any event, author deaths are always strange to me, especially under circumstances like this one.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the phrase "zeitgeisty buzz" in the Times article.