David Foster Wallace
I grew up in a medium-sized small town (it makes sense, if you’ve been there) that is pretty much cornfields, State Farm insurance, schools and Illinois State University. At ISU there was a sort of famous professor. He taught writing, and he was a writer. He had written a few very successful books, and it was always cool to know a guy like that lived in our town, not New York or Chicago.
I played a show tonight here in town, it was good and loud, and I always have to take some time to wind down afterwards before I can go to bed. I was surfing the internet and found a headline about that author. He committed suicide two nights ago at the age of 46.
I don’t know him, never met him. He used to rent videos from my friend Billy, who was the guy who actually read all his books. I think I still have one of them. I should probably give that back.
It’s pretty weird. I wrote a little bit about it. Don’t know if it’s any good, but death always catches us off guard, especially a suicide, and I want to make sure I spend a few minutes with it, to give it the gravity it deserves.
David Foster Wallace lived in my hometown
he wrote novels, thick and heady,
that only my friend Billy
ever read.
Amid the cornfields and insurance buildings
it was good to know
there was a genius in our midst,
the New York Times had told us so
I read one book, it was giant,
it is somewhere on my shelf
all footnotes, witty run-ons
and some deep thoughts I am sure
And tonight I could not sleep
I was bouncing round the internet
when I saw the buried headline:
David Foster Wallace died
He had moved to California
this I had not known
there he tied a rope inside his home
and laid rest any hope
and for a man I did not know
and only barely knew of
I am sad
the genius in our midst,
saw what we can’t comprehend
has made his final statement,
and I still don’t understand
September 15th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
There’s a great commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave here: http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html