This was the headline on September 14, 2008 in the Sunday Times. David Foster Wallace had hung himself at his home in Claremont, CA.
I read David Foster Wallace's (I wish I could call him David) book Infinite Jest. It took me about three months, and I read pretty frequently and some times for long periods of time. Dave Eggers, who writes the forward in the edition I have, said it took him a month to read it. The book is 981 pages long and has 388 footnotes, the footnotes take up 96 pages and one footnote is 15 pages long and itself has 12 footnotes. This is all stuff of myth now, and you have probably heard it before. I read the book before David Foster Wallace committed suicide.
Why read such a monstrosity? Well, i guess, first, it is a huge challenge, something to accomplish. Plus lot's of people told me it was great. Many people I didn't know wrote in some publication or another that it was not to be missed. So that influenced me, too. Hearing about the footnotes thrilled me although I didn't really read them, occasionally, when I really wanted to know something, but certainly not religiously. But anyone who could write an incredibly critically acclaimed book that was 981 pages long and featured 96 pages of footnotes, well I couldn't resist.
So I started into the beast. Immediately it was obvious that this book was different. One reads most books staring straight ahead; this book was written from an odd angle, way off to the left, and it captures the shadows made from this odd angle, and it captures these shadows in such brilliant detail that you don't know they are shadows, a simple shadow of a man's face e.g.; you read for 30 pages and are blown away by the detail and specificity and intellect and have absolutely no idea what's happening. I just want to know what is happening to whom. But it's not clear, so. You learn to let go. Much like getting into a car in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a place I have visited twice (my best friend from college is Bangladeshi). When you get into a car in Dhaka, you must accept that the car will travel much much faster than you would like it to and the car will rocket launch into the road and you will be terrified as the car weaves through lanes filled with large trucks, buses with people riding on top of the buses, other cars, small taxis, motorcycle-powered rickshaws, human-powered rickshaws, all variety of burden beasts, frequently cattle and goats e.g., and so you go forward into the speed and the insanity of the Dhaka street aware that you may not live through the experience. But in putting on your "seat belt" you have come to terms with the universe and it's infinite, hollow, shameless existence. You are one with the bottom of the earth, the center of all things, you are free. This is how I read Infinite Jest, I just said okay, I'm going to read 130 pages and maybe then understand what happened. I learned to let go.
But that's not why the book still resonates deeply, strangely, weirdly for me today. It resonates because of the simplicity. A paradox! When David Foster Wallace finally gets through covering the splinter terrorist group of a splinter terrorist group attempting to free Quebec from Canada's evil grip by getting a hold of a film called "Infinite Jest" made by the father of an up-and-coming-and-yet-still-limited tennis star, a father who committed suicide by sticking his head into a microwave, a movie that once watched compels the watcher to only want to watch the movie again ad infinitum until the watcher either dies from dehydration or some other reason that can be attributed to the watchers inability to do anything other than watch the film; when David Foster Wallace finally gets through the radically overgrown foliage, he brings you to a patch of clear space with finely cut grass, a round clearing where the sun shines down and you can see the radically overgrown foliage all around you, but this a place of such simple and straightforward truth, it's a bit mindblowing.
In one scene, the up-and-coming-and-yet-still-limited tennis star who's about 18 or so, and is having what we might call mental health issues, produced in part by the suicide of his father, and is seeking out "help." He arrives at an elementary school in the evening where a group of men are meeting, a men's group. The young man opens the door and walks into the classroom and sees about 10 men described as basically suburban men in khaki shorts and polo shirts in basic colors. The men are all holding teddy bears. The leader of the group is a very overweight man with a beard and a pony-tail. He is also holding a teddy bear. The young man walks in and sits down at a desk outside the circle and isn't really noticed by the men. The men are seated in a circle, sitting with their legs crossed. One man is clutching his teddy bear vigorously close to his chest and sobbing. He sobs with such vigor, he very quickly falls to his side and proceeds to convulse in masculine-shattering howls. The leader of the group says (I'm paraphrasing to a point of absurdity), "John, you love your parents very much, don't you?" and John whimpers "yes!", and the leader continues, "but when you were a little boy, your parents weren't there for you, were they?" and John continues to whimper no, no, no, they weren't there, ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! and the leader asks John what he would like to say to his parents, and John cries out, " i just want to be hugged!" and continues to slobber and sob and emote savage waves of childhood pain and sorrow.
I have re-created this scene with an obscene lack of regard for David Foster Wallace's text. But it makes the point. David Foster Wallace is aware of how incredibly cliche this scene is; we've all heard this story before, if we haven't ourselves lived through some version of it. But David Foster Wallace also accepts the truth of the pain of childhood and the truth of each of our parents' mistakes no matter how wonderfully they/she/he loved us. The inability of parents to meet all the deep needs of their children. Throughout Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace comes to these moments of clarity and is able to narrate the cliches of childhood loss or addiction or mental illness or 12 step programs or family in a manner that captures the simplicity and beauty of the truth. These are the moments that compel me to discuss the book tonight.
I don't recommend or not recommend reading Infinite Jest. It is your choice. For many, it will not be worth the time and energy and for others it will become a kind of life-guide, a very bizarre life-guide to this very bizarre life.
In 2005 David Foster Wallace gave a Commencement Speech at Kenyon college. I recently learned that Kenyon College is in Ohio and has a rich literary tradition. I do recommend you read the speech published by the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html
David Foster Wallace suffered from brutal depression for his whole adult life, as I understand it. It is also clear that his brilliant mind was a bit too much to suffer at times, too much going on, not enough space. Medication helped him participate in the daily activities of a normal life. In the months before he killed himself, he had gone off one of his medications and then gone back on only to find that it had lost its efficacy. He committed suicide on September 12, 2008. He was 46.
with love,
Anthony
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