On D.F. Wallace

An excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my friend Pat Kelly in Oaxaca:

David Foster Wallace, an author whom I both liked and disliked, committed suicide Friday. Now I kind of feel bad for talking shit about him all this time, although I'm almost 100 percent sure nothing I said had anything to do with his suicide. When I read Infinite Jest, I thought, "At last! An important literary work from a Midwestern author is getting some attention!" I hated the way fiction had become so New-Yorky and Ivy League. (To be honest, it's just really hard to compete with that sort of thing, so I always press for some kind of Western literary renaissance that doesn't have to do with those I Was a Teenage Polygamist tell-all shockers.)

Then I learned a little more about Wallace, and discovered that he was born in Ithaca and graduated from Cornell. And then, six months after I read Infinite Jest, I realized the book may not have been as important as I thought; it was less life-changing for me than the sense of personal accomplishment I felt in being able to slog through it, footnotes and all. Although, if you do decide to read any of his stuff, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is probably the most entertaining; Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is self-indulgent and reads like it was meant to impress fellow grad students. The Broom of the System is actually really good, although if you like that sort of thing, Chuck Palahnuik does it better. And, as far as I know, Palahnuik is still alive. So, enough of badmouthing dead authors.

Wallace feared sentimentality, and this was meant as a nonsentimental tribute. Now, I guess, it's time for me to feel guilty again.