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The cruise-ship piece ["A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"] ran in [Harper's in] January 1996, a month before [Infinite Jest] was published. People photocopied it, faxed it to each other, read it over the phone. When people tell you they're fans of David Foster Wallace, what they're often telling you is that they've read the cruise-ship piece...
It's heartbreaking, this lengthy article in Rolling Stone about David Foster Wallace. Reading the tributes and memories of DFW over at McSweeney's, you can't get away from the impression that he was just a regular guy who, oh, happened to be a genius and literary phenom of the sort that won't come along for some time again, if ever. Let's say ever. Reading the Rolling Stone article by David Lipsky leaves you with the same understanding. All people are normal, or, here, this is better, all people are the same distance from normal as anyone else since there is no such thing. I was just a reader, so how was I to know he actually seriously suffered from depression, legitimately, fatally. His distance from normal was in the wrong direction, I think the point is.
Though, to convolute my claim, I didn't realize how normal I was. Just last year I photocopied the cruise-ship piece and sent it to a friend who wanted to know why I liked Wallace. That essay was my own entry into the world of purposeful reading, if you really want to know.
Thanks to Beej, of the Purdue Beej's, for sending me the link.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
That article brought tears to my eyes. Really captures the struggle with clinical depression of a human being, not just the loss of a great literary talent...
Posted by: Jennifer Ouellette | November 3, 2008 8:57 PM
I read the article in the back of a cab, while in route from Chicago O'HARE to my hotel in the city. It was a devastating article, sad on so many levels. My heart aches for DFW and his family.
Posted by: Matt Evans | November 4, 2008 7:46 AM