FUG!
Oh man, this just sucks so bad. The Infinite Jest was a measuring
stick I used for the longest time in comparison to my own work when I
was in my twenties. Wallace was a true genius and unfortunately I think
he used Infinite Jest as a measuring stick to his later works as well.
Author David Foster Wallace is dead. The self-effacing, hilarious, bitter genius behind Infinite Jest hanged himself at his home in Claremont, CA. His wife found his body late last night. He was 46 years old.
Here’s an excerpt of Wallace discussing Infinite Jest and what drove him to write it during an interview with Valerie Stivers in the late 90s. It’s as resonant a statement today as it was then, and far more heartbreaking:
I wanted to do something sad. I
think it’s a very sad time in America and it has something to do with
entertainment. It’s not TV’s fault, It’s not [Hollywood's] fault and
it’s not the Net’s fault. It’s our fault. We’re choosing this. We are
choosing to spend more time sneering at hype machines, [while still]
being enmeshed in them, than we are living.
[My] secret pretension…I mean,
every writer wants his book to change the world, but I guess I would
like to know if the book moved people. I assume that the future the
book talks about, while it might be amusing, wouldn’t be a fun future
to live in. I think it would be nice if the book could maybe make
people think about some of the choices we are making, about what we pay
attention to and give power to, so maybe the future won’t be quite
that…glittery but cold.
Mission accomplished, man. Wish you could’ve stuck around. The future still needed your help.
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