I never read "Infinite Jest".\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 A driver might say, "there but for the grace of God…", but you need a poet to get it right.\u00c2\u00a0 Joni Mitchell nailed it in "Song For Sharon"…\u00c2\u00a0 "We all live so close to that line, and so far from satisfaction."<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 The line was held up for ten minutes, twice, by people who just couldn’t understand the basic principles of mail delivery.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Seeing this non-moving queue, I retreated to my automobile, to retrieve some reading material.\u00c2\u00a0 And all I found was an old "Citybeat", the cover of which featured the deceased David Foster Wallace.\u00c2\u00a0 Worse, when I got back in line, a woman had snuck in in front of me.\u00c2\u00a0 I just about raced in front of her, I know I could have beaten her, but how chivalrous would that be?\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
I’d forgotten my BlackBerry.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just that early.\u00c2\u00a0 But others were calling people on their mobiles.\u00c2\u00a0 But most people were just staring into space.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t get this.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really want to waste this much time?\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 As I was, ultimately enraptured by this obituary for Mr. Wallace.<\/p>\n
He hung himself on his patio.\u00c2\u00a0 Using his belt.\u00c2\u00a0 He duct-taped his hands so he couldn’t save himself.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really want to leave no escape?\u00c2\u00a0 But David Foster Wallace was depressed his whole life. His meds weren’t working.\u00c2\u00a0 Made me wonder if he was getting good help.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s almost impossible, especially in a culture where toughing it out is revered.\u00c2\u00a0 Better to kill yourself than admit you’ve got a problem.<\/p>\n
But most people knew Mr. Wallace had problems.\u00c2\u00a0 And according to this article, Mr. Wallace was God in literary circles.\u00c2\u00a0 Inspiring, almost bringing the concept of the Great American Novel back to life.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, that was the precursor to the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Writers ruled before musicians, in the fifties.\u00c2\u00a0 But writing’s been eclipsed for decades.\u00c2\u00a0 And so now is the album.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is to create a great YouTube video, or a social-networking site.\u00c2\u00a0 Albums are for oldsters.<\/p>\n
And I don’t think that Mr. Wallace was bringing the novel back.\u00c2\u00a0 I wish so, but today reading is for pussies.\u00c2\u00a0 Readers aren’t famous, they’re not rich, you do it alone, what kind of loser are you?<\/p>\n
But maybe we’re all losers in this society of supposed winners.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Mr. Wallace was writing about, that’s what made him so great.\u00c2\u00a0 He could admit to being lonely. And overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
"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.<\/p>\n
Not his-it is heartbreaking to say-but ours.<\/p>\n
And plus he was funny doing it.<\/p>\n
R.I.P.D.F.W."<\/p>\n
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