Tuesday, September 16, 2008

David Foster Wallace is dead





He killed himself on Friday. I can't believe it people. I can't believe it. I can't believe it I can't believe it. He was such a good writer. So brilliant and sensitive, so gifted in both mathematics and language, all these sos and sos. S.O.S. S.O.S. It brings up all kinds of thoughts-- was this inevitable? Is there anything that could have helped him, including himself? I mean, someone like that, you would think there is nothing you can tell him that he doesn't know. And not just cleverness-wise, but also in terms of insight. Check out the commencement speech he gave at Kenyon college a few years ago. There is so much there, so much knowledge of being human, of what is necessary to be human, both hard-earned and natural insight.

He was a great writer and a respected professor. He had every resource available to him. I know he'd been under medication for a long time and his depression was getting more and more severe. I read a quote from his parents that said he just couldn't stand it anymore. It sounded almost sympathetic, and that clues us into the extent of the misery he must have been experiencing. But god. It just makes me so sad. No one is infallible. Depression is truly a disease. Or is it? I mean, didn't he try everything? He must have tried other things like buddhism or yoga or the non-academic sciences of the soul. He must have, right? Someone so intelligent could not have failed to look into these other ways. So how is it that nothing helped? I don't know i don't know. It definitely makes me think the old-school thought of depression as something that can be overcome by sheer will or something is bullshit. I don't know if DFW was manic-depressive. Probably.

Oh man.


oh man. oh man. It is a huge loss for us. And it's scarier to think someone like that could be so lost to himself.

BUt what does "someone like that" mean? How do I know what he was like? I don't. And even his wife, his mom, his dad, probably are not a whole lot closer to what it was like to BE him. To be inside his head. And that is the great mystery and paradox of this life, of this consciousness. NO ONE CAN SEE INSIDE YOU.

Think about the autonomy! Think about the freedom! Think about the privacy.

No one knows what goes on inside you.





We answer to ourselves, ourselves only. To our own conscience. That is the ultimate judge, the ultimate god. But maybe we can get to know our god. Get to know how our conscience is formed (how much of it is the superego, paternal authority figure, etc),and if any of it is simply irreducibly There. The little voice inside you, your soul, etc. I don't know what any of those really mean but one option is to engage our sense of right & wrong in a dialogue. We do this all the time of course, with various frequencies depending on the person, but maybe a more conscious dialogue. A written one perhaps, with a particular situation from our life as a jumping off point. Alternately (or supplementarily) the Buddhists would recommend that we not engage in a dialogue but step back and observe the edicts of our inner judge and any reactions/responses we have to these. For me, observation is hard because I always think of it as a reporting position. As in-- okay, I'm in the field, collecting data on the mating behavior of these gorillas (which describes my mind quite well) and now that I have the findings-- who do I go to?

A scientist of the mind. I like that. Especially since Jane Goodall is one of my heroes.

And so was DFW. Maybe that's why it's sad. When your hero kills himself.

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