I first got the news that David Foster Wallace was dead from a Laila Lalami post on Facebook, and perhaps because it was on Facebook, I instantly went into denial and thought it had to be some kind of sick joke.
But it’s not. His wife came home last night to find the 46-year-old Wallace had hanged himself. Edward Champion reported the news of the death quite early, before major news outlets had picked it up. The suicide brings a terrible significance to the post by Champion in August of 2006, in which he speculates that Wallace is washed up and has failed to evolve as a writer. But I don’t think a single member of the literary community isn’t stunned and saddened.
At The National Post, they quote a suicide-referencing speech given to Kenyon University’s 2005 graduating class:
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
But since he clearly believed that those who shoot themselves in the head are at war with “the terrible master,” it’s quite significant that he choose hanging. He didn’t want to blow his head apart: he knew how brilliant it was.
Over on the blog at Chicago Tribune:
He told me that after his first burst of fame that followed the publication of his debut novel, “The Broom of the System” (1987), and the short-story collection “Girl With Curious Hair” (1989), he’d entered a hospital and asked to be put on suicide watch.
Here’s the AP story, the LA Times story, and Michiko Kakutani pens a more reflective rather than AP-style report at the NY Times.
I have a song running through my head: Only the Good Die Young.
2 comments
I’m not the type to mourn celebrities. It’s always been like trying to mourn a distant relative. Can you really mourn a person when all you have to go on is a vague idea of him taken mostly from photos and hearsay? Maybe it’s different with writers. I’m a little surprised at how sad-making this loss has been for me. What he was trying to do in his writing was so rare. He’s been a sort of hero to me. Sad, indeed.
Yes, I’m definitely not the type to mourn celebrities either, but this has gotten to me as well. Maybe because I admired his talent so much.
Just a good reminder for aspiring writers that even when you’ve succeeded beyond your wildest dreams, with a soaring, praise-laden career, you can still be miserable enough to kill yourself.