Wednesday, September 17, 2008

R.I.P. D.F.W.

[1]



[1] David Foster Wallace was a seminal influence on The Normal School. To hear of the passing of such a monumentally talented and darkly comic mind, one so unabashedly unafraid to speak truth to power while at the same time investigating not only that mind’s own motives for doing so but also at the same time our own complicity in any gross abuses of power, leaves us trembling for the future. However unsettling this death is, David Foster Wallace was a writer who left behind a corpus of work that will always be with us. The Normal School takes solace in books, and David Foster Wallace’s books are some of our favorites. A book may be of little consolation to family and loved ones left behind, but for those of us unfamiliar admirers from afar, David Foster Wallace is immortal.

2 comments:

Steven Church said...

I like to think he gave everyone something like what his writing gave to me. When I read his work, I want to learn more, read more, write more, travel more, obsess more, and just plain live more. More. Not every writer cracks open the world and makes it bloom. DFW did that for me. I'll miss him.

SWC

T. Marlin Normal said...

From Publisher's Lunch:

New York DFW Memorial

Friends and fellow writers will speak in remembrance and appreciation of the life of David Foster Wallace in a memorial service held by Little, Brown and open to the public, scheduled for Thursday, October 23rd, at 4pm at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU.