Mike Scalise

Well, David Foster Wallace took his own life the other day. I don’t want to get too mushy, but this is sad news on all fronts. DFW wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. He wasn’t even mine sometimes. His fiction meant a lot to me in my very formative years as a writer, but in recent years, his nonfiction–essays, dispatches, various errata–was exemplary: personal pieces that always skewed the universal, asking surprising, complicated questions with both rare wit and a true voice that’s inspired tons of low-rent imitators (essayists who make liberal, ironic use of footnotes: this is you. And you know it).

Anyways. Rather than eulogize DFW–which Blake Butler did perfectly, and Michiko Kakutani did a fine enough job of–here’s a list of some of Wallace’s best nonfiction offerings on the web. If you want to waste time at work, or just spend some time with a writer who had too much left to offer, I can’t think of a better way than to click these links:

Roger Federer as Religious Experience: In August of 2006, when Swiss tennis player Roger Federer entered a blistering, Jordan-like period of professional tennis domination, Wallace–a longtime tennis devotee who’d authored an illuminating review of Tracy Austin’s autobiography, as well as a piercing look behind the scenes of the qualifying ranks of the ATP Tour–wrote this methodical dissection of the “expression of human beauty” that was Federer at his best for the New York Times.

Sonny Takes a Fall: During the 2000 primary season leading up to the worst election in American history, Rolling Stone sent Wallace on “Bullshit One,” the nickname for the press corps that followed then-”maverick” John McCain on his ill fated quest to beat intellectual invalid George W. Bush to the republican nomination. The result was “Up, Simba,” a 70-some page dispatch from the campaign trail that not only zigzagged through McCain’s history, grapple-hold on the American public, and stunningly conservative policies, but issued a hard, prescient call to disenfranchised US voters to “stay awake.” Later included in 2005’s Consider the Lobster (see below), This American Life asked DFW to recite an abridged version for their “Character Assassination” episode in May of 2000. Forward to the 10 minute mark to take a listen. (Link to extremely abridged Rolling Stone piece).

Deciderization 2007: DFW explains how he assumed the “decider” mindset of intellectual invalid George W. Bush to helped Robert Atwan assemble last year’s Best American Essays collection. The result was more journalistic, political, and acerbic than previous editions, or as DFW puts it, essays that are “at once informational and instructive. That is, they serve as models and guides for how large or complex sets of facts can be sifted, culled and arranged in meaningful ways–ways that yeild truth instead of just adding more noise to the overall roar.”

Commencement Speech, Kenyon College 2005: Selected for 2006’s Best American Nonrequired Reading, Wallace’s speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College is both timid and ambitious, but is mostly biting and hilarious. DFW: “That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

The View From Ms. Thompson’s: One of his more contained, personal essays, Wallace dispatches for Rolling Stone from Bloomington, Indiana on the morning of September 11, 2001, and comes to a precise and heartbreaking (yet still somehow funny) understanding of our complex role in what he calls “the Horror.”

David Lynch Keeps His Head: Like “Sonny Takes a Fall,” this is another example of the hyper-intellectual gonzo journalism Wallace mastered (think: Hunter S. Thompson’s dorky cousin). Over his career he attended state fairs (see above video), adult film award ceremonies, and high-end cruise trips. But here’s a situation where his essayist’s interest in the subject (David Lynch) collided with his brash journalistic description and inquisition of it. Originally published in Premiere magazine and later collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Wallace delivers a nuanced, near-successful attempt to explain Lynch’s elusive genius, while at the same time lambasting the inane Hollywood BS that surrounds him on a daily basis.

Consider the Lobster: Gourmet magazine originally ran what became the title article of Wallace’s last essay collection, where he goes to the Maine Lobster Fest and does exactly what the title says. This essay was included in 2005’s Best American Essays collection as well. In graduate school I led a discussion about this piece for a course on the anatomy of the personal essay. I hoped to examine DFW’s tactical use of humor and information, and nearly everyone in the room hated the essay. I don’t.

So there you go. If you want to read more visit The Howling Fantods for links to his online fiction and fan-fiction, as well as some essays not included above.

Thanks, DFW. You will be sorely missed, etc.