Last Friday, contemporary American author David Foster Wallace hung himself in his California home. All of a sudden, Google hits on his name and works increased exponentially, as did his book sales on Amazon.com. Literally overnight, Wallace went from being a cult favorite of whom most college students knew nothing about (and, sadly, had no interest knowing about) to a writer being hailed for his witty satire and postmodern genius across internet blog sites and the obituary pages of The New York Times. David Foster Wallace is dead, but what has really changed?
Wallace’s death strikes an odd chord within me, as I read his monolithic masterpiece, “Infinite Jest” in the not-to-distant past, which clocked in at over 1,000 pages. The book was loosely written around a movie that is so entertaining that its viewers die after watching it from sheer pleasure. In my opinion, it was a pretty good book. In the grand scheme of things, “Infinite Jest” merely reiterated my discontent with modern day American culture, as well as awakening an urge within me to play tennis. But this book was published in 1996, twelve years ago. It was hailed as a good book then. It is being hailed as a great book now, because he is dead.
What does it say about our culture when good writers is not considered great until they are gone? Why do we as a society have this fascination where we attach ourselves to a person or their work only when their time has expired? Wallace ended his life, for whatever reason, whether it be a lack of hope in the modern world, discontent with his family, unhappiness personally, or something deeper that we may never put our thumb upon. But, for some reason our culture holds on to his suffering and eventual death, and we interpret this end of life as a defining moment in his career that makes him great. This is not because we read his works, or admired his style while he was still here. It is because he is now dead that he is now great.
In a short story from one of his collections, the plot is fueled by the creation of a television station titled, “the Suffering Channel.” On this, the viewers’ watch, “still and moving images of the most intense available moments of human anguish.”
Now, Wallace is on the screen before us, the public. We feed off of the mystery of his anguish and speak praise of him now that he is gone. We treat it as if it was all for our own entertainment as a society. All that is left of David Foster Wallace is his prolific writing, acting as a prophetic obituary for himself as well as our decaying society. These writings went generally unnoticed while he was alive by the mass public as a whole.
Friday, September 12, David Foster Wallace hung himself. At that moment, in the eyes of the society he spent his career criticizing, he became a legend.