David Foster Wallace (1962 – 2008): A Belated Obituary

I knew you as David Bananas Foster, or David Popcorn Poppin’, in fun, for the wackiness of your ideas and the sprawling ambition of your work. I knew you as the author of the most beautiful piece of writing about a sport I have ever read. I knew you as a fellow lover of tennis and writing and a fellow critic of our culture. I knew you as a reluctant teacher of writing (if your interview with Charlie Rose is to be believed) and divided about it, as all writers must be and I certainly was.

To me, you were a reason that I began writing essays. And because writing essays over the last year of my life has made me so happy and fulfilled me as a writer in a way that I could not have imagined, you made me that happy. Or your work did. And for a writer, really, what is the difference – we are our words, and our words are us. There is no other way.

What I felt sad about on the Monday morning back in September, after you killed yourself somewhere in California with a rope, is that I never got to meet you. It brings up the same feeling I have about my dog, Oso, who died without me there. We always believe we’re coming back. We always believe there will be another time, there will be time, there will be time. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there is not.

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I am starting, just now, to know why David Foster Wallace was so sad. I understand it on a level I try to reach every time I sit down to write. Every time. You try to access a sorrow – not necessarily be sorrowful – on a regular basis, it does something to you, yes. What is there to be so fucking sad about? Not being understood by others. Really, I guess you could sum it up with that. It’s probably what makes me write – the attempt, the consistent, subterranean effort to reach them, to explain myself, to make a connection. I’m sure it was missing all those years in Jersey, or at least radically disconnected, hanging on by one bent prong in the outlet of life…I was hanging on by music. Another form of connection, but one not operating on quite so deep a level, for me. “The writing. It is what will get you through. It is what matters, it is what will not go away.” A mantra for my life, added to only recently with “Keep going…”

This is important. David Foster Wallace, a lot of people loved you. A lot of people who actually knew you, or were taught by you, or who were able to finish Infinite Jest – I was not, but I will try again, I promise. My thing is your essays. My thing is your soul. My thing is your thin turtle shell and your humility in the face of such awesome talent. My thing is knowing that I won’t read anything by you again, and that I will never get to meet you, to shake your hand and say, “Hey, thanks for the words. They made a difference.” Isn’t that all that matters. Isn't that the saddest thing.