David Foster Wallace
I never read "Infinite Jest". But when anyone takes his own life, I get creeped out, I slow down and pay attention, like a rubbernecker on the freeway, who just can’t help but creep slowly and look at another’s misfortune. A driver might say, "there but for the grace of God…", but you need a poet to get it right. Joni Mitchell nailed it in "Song For Sharon"… "We all live so close to that line, and so far from satisfaction."
They say socialized medicine will be akin to health care delivered by the post office, and this has scared away even the uninsured from believing in it. But I’m not so sure we’ve got to blame our postal workers, for as inept as they can be, the general populace can frequently be just plain stupid. I know, I waited for thirty five minutes at the satellite post office, where they sell no stamps and collect no letters, in order to pick up my vacation mail. The line was held up for ten minutes, twice, by people who just couldn’t understand the basic principles of mail delivery. Like you must bring the note to pick up your held item, and that the counter person cannot deliver to you what the carrier in the field has in his truck.
Seeing this non-moving queue, I retreated to my automobile, to retrieve some reading material. And all I found was an old "Citybeat", the cover of which featured the deceased David Foster Wallace. Worse, when I got back in line, a woman had snuck in in front of me. I just about raced in front of her, I know I could have beaten her, but how chivalrous would that be? Karma ruled, however, because when this woman went to pick up her vacation mail, she’d forgotten to fill out the reinstatement form, and I got to jump in front of her.
I’d forgotten my BlackBerry. It was just that early. But others were calling people on their mobiles. But most people were just staring into space. I don’t get this. Do you really want to waste this much time? In the printed word is the key to the ages, insight into life, you’re missing out by watching television, staring into space, drink from the elixir of words, you’ll be informed and elated. As I was, ultimately enraptured by this obituary for Mr. Wallace.
He hung himself on his patio. Using his belt. He duct-taped his hands so he couldn’t save himself. I thought of those people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and survive, who realize just as they hit the air that this is a stupid mistake. Do you really want to leave no escape? But David Foster Wallace was depressed his whole life. His meds weren’t working. Made me wonder if he was getting good help. It’s almost impossible, especially in a culture where toughing it out is revered. Better to kill yourself than admit you’ve got a problem.
But most people knew Mr. Wallace had problems. And according to this article, Mr. Wallace was God in literary circles. Inspiring, almost bringing the concept of the Great American Novel back to life. Yes, that was the precursor to the album. Writers ruled before musicians, in the fifties. But writing’s been eclipsed for decades. And so now is the album. The key is to create a great YouTube video, or a social-networking site. Albums are for oldsters.
And I don’t think that Mr. Wallace was bringing the novel back. I wish so, but today reading is for pussies. Readers aren’t famous, they’re not rich, you do it alone, what kind of loser are you?
But maybe we’re all losers in this society of supposed winners. That’s what Mr. Wallace was writing about, that’s what made him so great. He could admit to being lonely. And overwhelmed.
"He created that excitement by giving us ‘the intense concentration of self in such a heartless immensity’ that Melville talked about in Moby Dick. Now the heartless immensity, these days, is Total Noise culture, or, as DFW put it, ‘a culture and volume of info. and spin and rhetoric and context that I know I’m not alone in finding too much to absorb, much less to try to make sense of or organize into any kind of triage of saliency or value.’ It’s a culture so commercialized, bureaucratized, advertised, media-tized, so addicted to entertainment, success, and good old drugs and pharmaceuticals that the sound of the witheringly alone self is like the squeak of a broken toy beneath a garbage dump. Yet Wallace gives that squeak the intense concentration of his talent, and gives us back representations of human beings who are laden with the seriocomic struggles of solitary characters trying to hear the redeeming little squeak of self under the garbage, and trying to connect desperately with other squeaking selves. The intense concentration of self in the heartless immensity. Who can tell it? Dave Wallace could. He told it, he did, and in doing so, he gave the private despairs and awful solitudes of Total Noise culture a public voice and thus showed us a way out of loneliness.
Not his-it is heartbreaking to say-but ours.
And plus he was funny doing it.
R.I.P.D.F.W."
You see today’s musical acts are just dying to be a part of Total Noise culture. They want in. They want to e-mail you, get taken for a ride by the media giants, they want to sell out to the system and make it. Meanwhile, you’re home alone overwhelmed. There are new records every day. Too many movies and TV shows. And everybody wants to make a buck.
Used to be the artists were on our side. They were talking about our condition. But now they just want access to a world of luxury, private planes and champagne, where they can be separate from the riff-raff that pays their bills.
I feel like a squeaky broken toy. I don’t care much about the people trying to sell me things, just more about the people like me. Who are overwhelmed and can’t make sense of our culture. You can’t keep up. And most stuff is not worthy of attention. And there are no honest filters, because everybody wants to make a buck. Don’t trust anybody over thirty? Don’t trust anybody with something to sell. There are no longer any limits. The buck is our religion. It trumps everything. Even human emotions.
This article said David Foster Wallace might have offed himself because he could no longer write, so fucked up in a haze of drugs and depression. It’s hard to lose your muse. But what about all those people perpetrating random violence? Who’ve lost their jobs, who’ve got no love life, who can see no answers in a world that just wants to sell them what they don’t need? We need people who try to make sense of an incomprehensible world. We used to rely on artists for this. But artistry seems to have expired with the last century. We do it for money, not love. But there’s less money to go around, and there was never enough for the masses. It was a pipe dream. Like owning your own home. And if you can’t trust Wall Street, and even Bruce Springsteen, if everybody chases the buck, which seems unavailable to you, it gets pretty depressing.
But I wasn’t depressed reading this article. It made me feel positively alive. Because someone saw it the way I did. I was not alone. We lost a great soldier in the battle, but this writer had picked up the flag. You succeed most when you get in touch with the common folk, the human condition. But, that’s for losers. And we live in a society of winners!
Right.
