We'd like to take a moment to recognize the hastily shortened life of the writer David Foster Wallace, who hanged himself in his Claremont, California, home on Friday night. A master of both fractured, mind-rattling fiction and reasoned, thought-provoking nonfiction, he could pen poignancy with as much vigor (and absurdity) as any of his contemporaries. The Times has a proper obituary here and a nice afterthought here, though neither gives space to Wallace's staggering post-9/11 essay "The View from Mrs. Thompson's."Our thoughts are with his wife, his friends, and his family. Here's a clip of the man reading from the eponymous essay from his 2005 collection, "Consider the Lobster."[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTLx_B7iOIMAny fans of Wallace's work should feel free to mention favorite chapters, paragraphs, sentences, or turns of phrase (or general thoughts) in the comments. We'll offer that, despite being arguably atypical of his work up to the point it was written (1999), "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" was chilling, darkly comic, and a sad treatise on just how devastatingly transparent we (men and people in general) can be.Very, very sad, indeed.
Share on Facebook
