He Was Just a Bellhop on the Elevator to Hell
Written by John Erianne on October 1, 2008 – 11:10 am -I received an email recently from a guy who I hadn’t heard from in awhile, asking me why I didn’t mention David Foster Wallace’s recent suicide on my blog. “I know you weren’t exactly a fan,” he wrote, “I thought you’d have something to say about it.” Well . . . no, I hadn’t planned on it precisely because I’m not a fan of DFW’s writing. But since you mentioned it, guy, I’ll put my two cents in.
Probably, the major reason I’ve never been a fan of Wallace’s work has less to do with him than with postmodernism in general. Postmodernism is one of those things that makes for great chatter in the confines of a graduate school classroom, but has little appeal to me outside in the real world. I’ve always thought of David Foster Wallace as a terribly clever stylist but an ultimately empty storyteller too easily lost in the minutia of “words, words, words ….” And really, as far as DFW was concerned you were either in my camp or otherwise a fanboy. He wasn’t a writer who inspired indifference — which is, I suppose, the closest thing to a compliment I can express. I kind of feel the same way about DFW’s writing that I feel about coffee. Everyone I know drinks coffee, but I’ve never acquired a taste for it. I mean, I’ve tried to like coffee — I’ve tried it about four times since I was four years-old (which rounds out to about once a decade) and I’ve never enjoyed it. By the same token, I’ve tried to read and enjoy Wallace’s writing over the years and couldn’t manage it. I’ve often thought that his so-called masterpiece, Infinite Jest was actually a joke played on the reader. I only actually know one person who’s read the thing cover-to-cover and claims to have enjoyed it and even he said that he didn’t get into it until about “page 700.” I’d say that after 700 pages of a 1000-plus page opus, you’re already pretty well into it, so if it takes you that long to feel as if you’re into it . . . well, I rest my case.
As for David Foster Wallace, I don’t think I could write a glowing obituary of the man. I didn’t know him. I didn’t enjoy reading his work. And it’s not like this guy came to some heroic or otherwise brave end. The fucker hanged himself! Don’t get me wrong, I can embrace the notion that suicide is sometimes a noble thing — like when a unmarried soldier throws himself on a grenade to spare the life of a buddy who’s married with six kids so that guy can go home safe to his family. Or, when a terminally ill woman is face with a choice between dying after much suffering or dying in peace wit some dignity. David Foster Wallace’s death wasn’t such an occasion. I can’t feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for his poor wife who discovered his body. I feel sorry for his parents. I feel sorry for those fans who will miss his presence in the literary world. But sorrow for him? Since David Foster Wallace was a self-proclaimed truth-seeker, here’s a little truth: His life and death don’t amount to spit in the grand scheme of the universe. And I think that’s ultimately what drove him to suicide. In his 2005, commencement address at Kenyon College, he said, “Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. ” I think he was talking about himself. Just my humble opinion. I think the truth of his own existence ate away at him. I think it made him unhappy. I think he couldn’t carry his own luggage spiritually, emotionally or intellectually and it did him in. But it’s politically incorrect these days to call a suicide a coward. We’re supposed to blame society or something. Treat the suicide with deference rather than with shame. Pity that I’m not a politically correct individual.
What I know is this: though a star in his short life, David Foster Wallace will be forgotten. His books, will sell well for a time because of his death, but will eventually fall out of fashion. His writing and his death will just be more chatter for the graduate writing programs. He has become a cliche and not a proper example for the next generation of writers to follow.
