David Foster Wallace used his remarkable talent as a writer,
his frenzied, high-spirited writing style, his fierce abilities of inspection,
his gift to combine futuristic methods with traditional ethical genuineness, to
produce several impeccable representations of a country consuming too much
entertainment and intemperance.
The premature death of the author who proved an apparently inexorable
inquisitiveness, imagination and determination has left a dark mark upon the
literary world. His alleged suicide urged readers to look for his most famous
works, including his 1,000-page novel “Infinite Jest” and the essay collection
“Consider the Lobster.”
Showing a deep interest in “Girls with Curious Hair” and
“Hideous Men,” David Foster Wallace was capable of writing in his fiction and
nonfiction books about anything from lobsters to political figures and from the
miserable lives of drug addicts to the luxurious existence of the rich and the
famous, without lacking humor, dedication or vigor.
“He was the best of our generation, and his death is a loss
beyond describing,” Richard Powers, winner of the National Book Award in 2006
for the novel “The Echo Maker,’ explained to The Associated Press on Sunday.
“I am so sad — stunned — it reminds us all of how fragile we
are, and how close at hand the darkness is,” said writer A.M. Homes, whose
works include the novel “The End of Alice” and “This Book Will Save Your Life,”
according to the same source. “He was a wonderful writer, a generous friend,
and a singular talent.”
David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest,” published in 1996,
is by far his best known work. The novel was included by Time Magazine in its
TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
The book focuses on various and sometimes opposing subjects
such as tennis, drug addiction, recovery programs, depression, child abuse,
family, advertisement and entertainment. It depicts a unified North
America, known as the Organization of North American Nations, in
which some fragments of the old states have become massive hazardous waste
dumping.
The novel mainly focuses on two settings, a tennis academy
and a drug and alcohol recovery house and their students and staff,
respectively.
The “Infinite Jest” is a lost film cartridge that is so
“entertaining” that its ignorant viewers become unresponsive, being interested
in nothing else but the film.
David Foster Wallace was found dead at his home in Claremont, California,
on September 12, police said. He was 46.
The writer’s spouse discovered he had hanged himself when
she returned home at approximately 9:30 p.m. on Friday, said Jackie Morales, a
records clerk with the Claremont Police Department, The Associated Press
reported.
Wallace, who taught creative writing and English at Pomona College,
gained national attention with his 1987 debut novel, “The Broom of the System.”
The New York Times said that the back then 24-year-old author “attempts to give
us a portrait, through a combination of Joycean word games, literary parody and
zany picaresque adventure, of a contemporary America run amok.”
“We knew when we hired him what an accomplished writer he
was, but what we had no right to expect was what a brilliant teacher he would
turn out to be ... that’s what was so unusual about David, and that’s what
marks the extent of our loss,” Gary Kates, dean of Pomona College, said in a
statement.
