Sunday, September 14, 2008

David Foster Wallace

In the last day, three of my friends1 alerted me to the suicide/death of David Foster Wallace. First it was shocking, then it made me extremely sad. I own two of his books and have only read one2. Today I will start the other one.

RIP, DFW. You've been a good to me3.


This is the first image of DFW I ever saw, the one on the back cover of ASFTINDA.

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1. I've shared DFW stories with Audrey, Tristan and Ross. Maybe we should all go see the John Krasinski's film together. 

2. I started my relationship with DFW some time back in college when I got an offer in the mail from QPB (Quality PaperBack) for 5 or 6 books at a dollar a piece. Even though I had never heard of DFW before, I thought A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments was a charmingly long title so I bought it. Why not? It was only a dollar. I also order some art reference books that I've never attempted to read. Once I received ASFTINDA, it sat on my shelf for a loooooong time. I didn't quite have the ambition to tackle the lengthy book, most of which was set in tiny, tiny type via footnotes. 

After reading it, there hasn't been a televised tennis match where I don't think of DFW. Last year I bought Infite Jest when it was released at a reduced price of only $10 (!!). It hasn't been read yet, but I will make time for it.

3. DFW's stories have kept me company while waiting to be called for jury duty and rekindled my interest in David Lynch which led me to buy his films at inflated prices on eBay.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nicely done.