The news of David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s sui­cide came as a shock. 46, supreme­ly tal­ent­ed, and gone. We’re not left with much. His books, his essays, and the under­stand­able desire to find some link between his writ­ing and his end. Here’s a line that caught my atten­tion from David Stre­it­feld’s blog. (He’s a for­mer books edi­tor at The Boston Globe, and now a reporter for The New York Times.)

Fic­tion, [DFW once said], is “one of the few expe­ri­ences where lone­li­ness can be both con­front­ed and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud par­ties — all these chase away lone­li­ness by mak­ing me for­get my name’s Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no oth­er par­ty can pen­e­trate or know. Fic­tion, poet­ry, music, real­ly deep seri­ous sex, and, in var­i­ous ways, reli­gion — these are the places (for me) where lone­li­ness is coun­te­nanced, stared down, trans­fig­ured, treat­ed.” Maybe he asked too much of fic­tion. Maybe it failed him in the end, and there was noth­ing left.

Hor­ri­ble sto­ry and loss. Appar­ent­ly sui­cide. Obit here. More exten­sive NY Times look back at DFW’s career here.

Below, we have a clip of him read­ing a piece that he wrote for Harper’s. Also see our pre­vi­ous item: David Fos­ter Wal­lace: Decider­iza­tion 2007 Online, which includes a link to the essay he wrote for Best Amer­i­can Essays 2007. You can get yet anoth­er piece of short fic­tion online here as well.

In the lat­est install­ment of The New York­er Fic­tion pod­cast (iTunes Feed Web Site), Tobias Wolff (author of Old School) reads Stephanie Vaughn’s short sto­ry “Dog Heav­en.”  If you’ve nev­er heard him before, Wolff gives his own work and oth­ers a very good read (see our ear­li­er piece.).

Though the pod­cast is not yet avail­able on iTunes, you can lis­ten to the mp3 right here. Also, I’d encour­age you to check out the var­i­ous New York­er pod­casts found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed