David Foster Wallace

This is part one of three:

Until I started flipping through an old New Yorker (those are the hand me downs that the library is willing to part with (for which I thank them)) two days ago, I didn't realize the approaching anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace, laudable author and recipient of the prestigious MacArthur genius award. One year ago marks the day when he marched out to his backyard patio and hanged himself.

I first came across David Foster Wallace not through his prose but through an interview between he and Terry Gross; it aired eight years ago but was brought back to life the day after Wallace was found dead. Any pursuer of vocal pedagogy would've winced at the abundance of verbal faux pas and extracurricular fillers: the 'um,' the 'ah,' and his inclination to header the majority of responses with a disclaimer -at face value the small phrases are not unlike those employed by our president; however, the denotations differ greatly -'well, look' or simply 'look': a tactical approach that precludes him from seeming cliche -a feat of ventriloquism that distances himself from the question at hand, not unlike a former president of ours, only Wallace does it in a much more articulate and graceful manner.

But his perseverance to circumvent his own convictions and tiptoe around his own beliefs and opinions on these issues -be it as it may spawning from a fear of sounding trite -attracted me to the writer. At base level, I could relate to his intense desire to avoid sounding ordinary. As some are diseased with a fear of failure; others even with a fear of success; the author and myself share the same clinical diagnoses of a fear of being -or at least coming off as such -ordinary. And underneath it all: the endless quest for that idealized individuality.


But even after his attempts to eradicate himself (or his sense of self) from his answers while simultaneously sifting through anything that has the potential to be platitudinous, his finer particles of sincerity and honesty still filter through. One feels as though, even if it has been said before -reiterated many times before by many people, it hasn't been stripped to quite the same flavor of simplicity and watchful hesitance -like a shy child afraid to come out from behind the swing set yet not content with being alone. And Wallace's writing attempts to anatomize and reconcile the ideas of meaning and true value with "being raised in an era when really the ultimate value seems to be...I mean a successful life is, let's see -you make a lot of money... and you have a really attractive spouse. Or you get infamous or famous in some way so that its a life where you experience as much pleasure as possible which ends up being sort of empty and low calorie."


I'm too lazy to do WOD today.