“DFW was a favorite of mine, and often I turned to his brilliant work to recalibrate my sense of challenging writing: the intelligent, the unexpected, the hilarious, the exasperating. Wallace’s stuff didn’t always work, but it was the real stuff.” To what base uses we may return, Horatio: As broke during my SC sojourn, Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace chose, for whatever reason, to take arms against his sea of troubles this past week, and by opposing end them. (1962-2008.) I can’t say his voice ever really spoke to me — in fact, much like the output of Paul Thomas Anderson in the film world, I often found his essays wrongheaded and his sprawling, self-referential style actively irritating — but that doesn’t mean his loss isn’t tragic and depressing, and all the more so for being avoidable.
Ed Champion, much more of a DFW fan than I, has compiled a worthy list of authors’ remembrances of the man and his work.