Wednesday, October 24, 2012

I missed it

and I'm strangely sad. 

I missed the anniversary of David Foster Wallace's death. With all the trauma that surrounds the day, it's no wonder but I still wish that I had paused for a brief second on September 12 to recall the life of this relatively young (He was my age. Hey! No chuckling I am too young---ish) and brilliant writer. 
 I wasn't an English major in college (although even if I had been, we read a LOT of William Faulkner and James Baldwin and frankly had I been an English major, I might have quit with such a meager fare of modern literature) and I didn't read literary fiction until I met Mo (he's very well read). He called me at BnN where I was working at the time and told me about Wallace's passing (sadly, he killed himself after having suffered with depression for 20 years)
The death of a writer is always sad and of course I vaguely knew that he was one of the best of a generation. And then I read 'The Pale King' and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men'... brilliant, both of them brilliant! 'Interviews' was dark- scary realistic dark but amazing nonetheless and 'The Pale King' was wide open, loose ends all over the place, but gripping and compelling- it had little cultural/social references in that made me feel like I was reading a book about my past. I loved it. There's a new biography on him- well, relatively new. It came out about two months ago. I plan on reading it along with Infinite Jest. I think they will make nice companion pieces.  Anyway, just sharing a bit of my reading history and future with you. And here's a flower for Mr Wallace (next year I'll try to remember).
How about you? Do you have any great reading schedule?
 

3 comments:

  1. Always very sad to hear about people who suffer from depression. My heart goes out to this writer and his family.

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  2. I have never read DFW. I guess I should change that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My sister loves him, was very sad when he died. I tried to read Infinite Jest but couldn't get through it :(

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