Remembering David Foster Wallace

You may have heard that writer David Foster Wallace committed suicide in September. The author of several critically acclaimed (although "rapturously acclaimed" might be more accurate) books and essays hanged himself in his home at the age of 46. Apparently he had suffered from severe depression for over two decades. Antidepressants, two hospitalizations and even a series of electroshock treatments, the depression treatment of last resort, had not alleviated the depression and anxiety.

I have to confess that I didn't know anything about David Foster Wallace or his writing before reading about his suicide. Despite a Bachelor of Arts in literature, I'm not much of a straight fiction writer, preferring genre fiction (mysteries, sci-fi and fantasy, thrillers, etc.). But once I started reading about him, three things clearly and poignantly stood out in the stories people told about him: he was funny, sweet and self-effacing.

One story, told by his mother to Salon magazine in their article The last days of David Foster Wallace, actually made me think of my own son, who is very sweet and thoughtful, even at age 5:

"When David was 5, his mother recalls, he decided that he had two careers to look forward to. He would be a professional football player, for one. In the off-season, while the other players were recuperating or doing whatever it is that pro football players do when they're not running or passing or slamming their bodies into each other, he would be a neurosurgeon. His mother has no idea how, at 5, her son might have heard about neurosurgeons or what they were or did, but he had. The first day of his medical career, he promised his mom, he would take out all of her frayed nerves and fix them. "Somehow he knew about neurosurgeons," she says, "and he knew that my nerves needed fixing."

On my forum for people with depression, a member who knew him as a friend wrote about how he seemed genuinely surprised when he saw her reading his novel Infinite Jest (that she had bought with the bookstore gift certificate he had given her). So the impression that I formed is that the world has lost someone who not only enriched many lives with his writing, but someone who was able to connect to other people, either in person or through his work.

In the articles and accompanying comments I read online about Wallace's death, the consternation and shock was evident. People were searching for an answer to the "why?" question that always accompanies a suicide. It became clear fairly quickly who understood why Wallace killed himself, because they've experienced that unique despair themselves and who (fortunately for them) have no clue. One commenter talked about Wallace "snapping." Yes, some people kill themselves on impulse, so you could classify it as "snapping" in that it's a sudden decision. But that does not seem to have been the case for Wallace. His depression was a terminal disease, one that had been present for years, and which he had sought to conquer with every treatment available, even electroshock, which is considered the treatment of last resort.