I knew him, Horatio.

Writer David Foster Wallace found dead - Los Angeles Times

Infinite Jest, to me, in 1997 or so when I read it, was a life-changing thing. It's this huge monstrocity of a book and I don't remember where I got it. I saw DFW on The Charlie Rose show (skip to the 23 minute mark) and he was just so undeniably himself and trying not to be false (particularly in his discussion on the effect that David Lynch's Blue Velvet had on him) that I went out and bought IJ and immediately started reading it and fell into it.

It was one of the things that helped keep me together during a couple of tough times. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again had me in stitches and his mathematical writing (A History of Infinity) is too smart for me, really, but totally fascinating.

It would be a mockery to say that I'll miss him -- I'm sure I've never been within 500 miles of him, don't even know anyone that knew him -- but his writing changed my writing, my perception of what writing could be and how you could put yourself in it. So the world is sadder and dumber without him in it.

Here's a PDF of his fairly short piece Consider The Lobster.
Here's his commencement speech at Kenyon.
Here's his review of a dictionary (yes, really).
His piece "The Depressed Person", in Harper's.
Here's the best fansite I've found: The Howling Fantods.

more proof i am a bad person

so eden calls me up. "your favorite person is back in miami." "would you be friends again...it was a long time ago, he's a different person, blahblhablhablhablah"

i don't care anymore. i mean, it would be cool if i could trust people again. it would be nice to be able to make friends without pulling fucking teeth. but nothing's going to undo that, so why bother? to pretend he wasn't a bad person? to act like I'm and he's OK and everything's cool? I might as well call the bee up and say lets play pool or whatever. which again, pa' que? i dunno. Eden's acting like he throws me into a rage, but it's really kind of worse because i feel nothing. He didn't care then, so why fake it now? I dont' get it. Indifference, which man...fuck I tried with that guy man. Afterwards, I mean. I tried the hardest and he just fucking threw it in my fucking face. So karma can take of that, I guess.

also, sun's mad at me now and i don't know why. but i guess i'm enough of an asshole that asking for a specific reason is kind of silly. putting me off for weeks with 'don't want to talk' which i know what it's like but then hangs with tai or mei? girl things, i don't know. and I don't even know if it's me or not. asking just makes it worse without explaining anything.

oh and laurachicken gets brain surgery soonish.

and i find out the sex this weekkkkkkkkkkkkk

finally three days later my leg stopped hurting although last night more stabbing pains. i think about vic, you know. i mean, he was fine that week. put in a full day and we said later and i left him working on some windows shit with W and poof he's gone. i gotta set things up for in case i shuffle off this mortal coil. I think of Dee and her bloodclot in her leg.

hills like white elephants

So I come in to the restaurant and sit down and say "Hey! Sorry I'm late, your tits look great!"
To which she says: "They should, I'm pregnant."

She had broken up with her boyfriend recently, just...differences, you know? and the short version is that one time a month ago they fucked up, and now my friend is getting an abortion, and is horrified and guilty and I feel sorrow for her. It's the right choice for her, and it's excruciating bordering on the unbearable for her to choose this.

I've had other people in my life who had them -- a high school friend during my Christian phase who was afraid to tell me because she thought I would take it poorly, another was someone I drove ~400 miles to see because of it^1,2 (and she'd gotten another one I wasn't supposed to know about, but we never spoke of it obviously) and then another who drunk on her birthday while talking about a mutual friend having a baby just dropped it in conversation matter-of-factly (in front of her current husband) about how she'd had one when 18. It's heart-wrenching, it really is. Necessary and liberating in a way, and in many cases, it's the only way that makes any sense. But still.

¹ If you're still reading: you know who you are. Are you still reading? I wonder sometimes. I stopped trying to check; I figure if you can't tell me, you just can't.
² Technically, I went to cheer her up because of heartbreak. The Legendary Pink Dots' song "Home" reminds me of this period, and I cannot listen to it more than once or twice a year (which sucks because it's on my favorite LPD album, "The Maria Dimension"), because listening to it instantly brings me back to waking up slowly with the light, dim in the morning and the traffic slowly waking up and my back stiff from the mattress on the floor, the cat freaked out.

"Murio con flores"

Vic's gone, heart attack at 35 on Sunday night/Monday morning I guess. Met his folks, the wake was really hardcore. "You were his friends to the end", the body didn't look like him at all but made it more real to me, it's stopped feeling like a bad joke all the time, like the most ridiculous thing that he's gone, forever.