I'm still sort of reeling from the announcement about David Foster Wallace's death. People close to me know that he was my favorite living writer, and that I severely regretted leaving ISU before he started teaching there. Had I known I could have taken a writing class with him I would have toughed it out just to spend a semester under his tutelage. Friends of mine were lucky enough to hang out with him and by all reports, personally, he was a funny generous guy.
But his writing was what did it for me. I had just gotten into Mark Leyner when I picked up Infinite Jest, and while I admit that the book somewhat flummoxed me, I finally saw that writing could be whatever you wanted it to be, as long as it was good. That sounds simplistic (and this seems to be a week of me touting simplistic writer's workshop-ish phrases) but he really did open my eyes to just how far I could stretch things. He also led me down the path to discover writers as varied as William Gaddis to Judy Budnitz. I use those two as an example to identify the vast sea of writers between them that DFW also led me towards.Ultimately he taught me how to imbue writing with great intelligence, sharp humor, and deep insight into human interaction. Sometimes his writing frustrated me, and sometimes it filled me with great satisfaction, but it never failed to amaze me.
We've lost one of the greatest literary voices in the last century, and what makes it even more sad is the fact that I believe he was getting even better as he grew older. We hadn't seen DFW's best work yet, and now we never will.
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