David Foster Wallace – R.I.P.

I am by no means an expert on the work of David Foster Wallace. In fact, I’d only managed to get through half of his most famous novel, Infinite Jest. My failure to finish this novel stemmed not from my inability to understand his prolific and brilliant style, but because I considered it so damn good. His prophetic portrayal of American consumerism manifests not in a cumbersome and condescending tone of academic self-interest, but through a cadre of memorable characters presented bluntly in descriptive form, albeit within the context of Wallace’s linguistic virtuosity:

“The medical attaché sits and watches and eats and watches, unwinding by visible degrees, until the angles of his body in the chair and his head on his neck indicate that he has passed into sleep, at which point his special electronic recliner can be made automatically to recline to full horizontal, and luxuriant silk-analog bedding emerges flowingly from long slots in the appliance’s sides: and, unless his wife is inconsiderate and clumsy with the recliner’s remote hand-held controls, the medical attaché is permitted to ease effortlessly from unwound spectation into a fully relaxed night’s sleep…(pg. 34)”

The above passage is at once humorous, entertaining, and telling of modern industrial living. The arrival of technology has not brought us any closer to moral, spiritual, or aesthetic perfection, but functions clearly as a vehicle to amplify, expedite, and accommodate humankind’s underlying desire for idle distraction in the face of overwhelming and senseless occupational responsibilities. David Foster Wallace, however, intends to convey more, and he accomplishes this by weaving competing tapestries of narrative using a diverse range of verbal play to express the simultaneity and absurdity of existence. It is for this that many critics have lambasted Wallace, often describing his style as exemplary of the overly wrought and needless trickery of post-modernist writing. I couldn’t disagree more, and in my humble opinion, history will more than prove these critics wrong. Wallace’s style embodies and reflects modern society as few contemporary authors have: as an era whose hyper driven citizens must contend with rapid technological innovation within the stubborn vagaries of an antiquated bureaucratic system.

Sadly, David Foster Wallace hung himself on Saturday 12, 2008 for reasons as yet undisclosed. The best that we can all do to honor this great writer and thinker, is to read his book. Tonight, I will begin Infinite Jest anew.