RIP, DFW.

David Foster Wallace died by apparent hanging on Friday in his California home. He was discovered by his wife.
I developed my writing by reading sharp essayists in my late jr. high/high school years, marveling at their style and pressing myself to shape a strong personal narrative voice that was true to “how I talk,” rhythmic and at best inimitable. In this formative time no other writer influenced me like David Foster Wallace. I happened upon him by chance; at 16 I discovered a markdown first edition copy of his debut book of short stories, Girl With Curious Hair, at a Barnes and Noble. I think I bought it for four dollars. It enveloped me: I was so enamored with the weird freedom, the disturbing tone, the creepy social satire of the title story especially, the tale of a bigoted businessman on a date with Hollywood punks who dropped acid and went to a Keith Jarrett concert. In the music / skateboarding fanzine I published from ages 16-18, I signed my editor’s letter by the moniker Gimlet, the name of the free-spirit protagonist in the “Girl With Curious Hair.” I didn’t know it was a vodka drink; I thought it was an intense, free alter ego. (I guess, in a way, DFW also got me into alter egos.) My love for his refined work (the tennis essay, the amusement park essay, the short story about being on Jeopardy) so overshadowed anything else he wrote I neglected to read his hallowed 72-lb. opus, Infinite Jest, leaving me in the minority among most of my generation and anyone who has attended a liberal arts school since its publication. I’m not too concerned. I own it, I skimmed it and read some of the footnotes. After it was published, everyone wanted to do footnotes. He really was sculptural in his writing, wasn’t he? But I just wanted to read the shit out of his 10,000 word pieces. He was much better when his word count didn’t allow him to be verbose.
He co-wrote that bumbling stranger-in-a-strange land / academic hip-hop book Signifying Rappers (id est “we, ur-white folks clad in topsiders and preppy pleated Dockers, are en route to Dorchester to meet a gentleman by the name of Benzino”) and I read it and still I admired him.
Why did he end his own life?
Gimlet dreamed that if she did not see a concert last night she would become a type of liquid, therefore my friends Mr. Wonderful, Big, Gimlet and I went to see Keith Jarrett play a piano concert at the Irvine Concert Hall in Irvine last night….