DFW...as the dust settles...

I really tried to avoid posting on the passing of David Foster Wallace. I have read nearly everything he ever wrote...much of his codex more than once (the bad habit of rereading is one I've never been able to quit). I spent a summer, some time ago, (re)reading Infinite Jest, Finnegans Wake, The Wasp Factory and A Void (Perec's, La Disparition as translated by Gilbert Adair, keeping the original's avoidance of the letter "e") (I was in a masochistic mood). I am fond of complex, convoluted and challenging text. It is not always rewarding...and it is often quite painful...but there is always a chance of running across *greatness*. I do not think it is possible to find *greatness* in the easy to consume.

DFW never held back from playing with his craft. There was greatness and there was crap...and one person's greatness was often another's crap and vise versa (as is often the case, The Independant declared Bank's first novel, Wasp Factory as one of the 100 great novels of the 20th century, the Economist declared the same work "Rubbish"). I just finished rereading Girl with Curious Hair (a collection of short stories, first published in 1990). I first read it...well...about 18 years ago and again around 1996 when it was reprinted. It was interesting how different my sense of the collection is now vs. my "memory" of it.

There has been much written of him since his passing, and I include a few notated links that I think are interesting...and one counterpoint:

Howling Fantods - cornerstone DFW fan site, extremely detailed listing of related articles;
McSweeney - "Timothy McSweeney is devastated and lost" - remembrances by McSweeney writers, etc. (including Dave Eggers);
Harper's Magazine - is providing every article DFW wrote for them as downloadable .pdfs (if you read nothing else, read Shipping Out);
SFGate - Mark Morford offers a personal and *very* praising recollection;
and as a counterpoint...because it is useful, sometimes, for perspective -
Hackwriters.com - agree with it or not, David Schneider's review/critique of Girl With Curious Hair (and Post-modernism) is a good read.

I hate when a great mind goes away...more so where, as here, its passing is tied so closely to that subtle line between insanity and genius. The loss here is greatest for what might have been written...what we have lost by his passing, comforted only in that we will never know what we have lost. There are so many writers who could never write another word and I, personally, would not care one whit [e.g. (and while acknowledging that the following is completely inappropriate) does the world really need another novel by Nicholas Sparks?]. Though I had not read him recently until his passing, I really can't find the construct to voice my sense of loss. I think I will just go reread some essays and short fiction and be annoyed.

Speaking of rereading, tragic writers and...well...broken minds; I am rereading a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's short fiction and had just (re)started Call of Cthulhu when I heard of DFW's passing. Its opening appears to be a fitting close:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.