John Moe: I Did Not Read Infinite Jest This Summer

John Moe is a writer and public radio host now living in St Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of the book Conservatize Me and his short humor pieces appear in several anthologies as well as on McSweeneys.net.

I’m still upset at the author for being a thief. Ever been robbed? Like had your house burglarized and your stuff rummaged through and stolen? There’s this period right after it happens when you can’t believe that someone got into where you live, the space where you sleep and bathe and eat, and just took stuff you had bought and taken care of. David Foster Wallace hanged himself and robbed us of all the work he would have produced in the future. Our homes were stocked floor to ceiling with the promise of the best goddamn writing people could make and Wallace fucking ripped it off. I’m still walking around wanting to punch someone. Don’t bother calling the goddamn cops, they won’t do anything.

Or, okay, different analogy. We’re an urban metropolis that’s collapsing under the weight of corruption and moral degradation, gangs are everywhere and no one collects the garbage. Dystopia, right? But! We do have this one super hero who occasionally rescues us and occasionally he can’t quite rescue us but even then he provides us with the idea of hope, the idea of salvation and redemption being possible from our little hell. Only now David Foster Wallace has hanged himself and so our superhero has just announced that screw this city, I’m moving to Australia and you’ll never see me again and so we’re just left with rot and sorrow and no one will even collect the garbage and the cops are shooting people for no reason and everything’s on fire. Wallace left us. I hate that guy. And I love that guy, of course, but you know that by now. Fucking guy. Fucking Wallace. I should explain. On April 4, 2007, I got a phone call at work from my wife. She said my brother Rick had shot himself in San Diego where he was living. I was sucked up out of my chair (never to return fully to Earth) and calmly asked if he was dead. She didn’t know. Within a few hours, I was on a flight from Seattle to San Diego and drove straight to the hospital where Rick was. His brain was already gone, his body soon followed. The next several days were spent performing small tasks that all weighed a ton: collecting his personal effects at the hospital, figuring out what was to be done with the apartment he shared, all his books. I had to get a ride to the gun range where he had shot himself, talk to the manager who had been on duty about what happened, he told me about the employees who were on duty that day who still hadn’t come back to work. I had to drive my brother’s car from there back to the hotel where I was staying, leave it in the parking lot, and figure out what the hell was to happen next. Some tasks weren’t so straight forward, like getting to know the ex-girlfriend who would, in three months, give birth to a daughter Rick would never hold.

After a few days, I returned home to Seattle and all I was left with was, essentially, research material. Accounts of friends and co-workers. I also had my memories of him. The early ones were all viewed through a lens of him being The Greatest Guy Ever because he was my older brother and that’s how it works. The later memories are more painful: Rick being high at family gatherings, Rick asking for money, me not allowing Rick to meet my kids because I simply didn’t trust him any more, coming to the beginnings of a reconciliation with him months before he died, confident there would be years and years more time. The thing is, when someone decides not to go to work one day and instead puts a bullet in their head, everything else they do is a prologue to that act. So every camping trip anecdote, every story told by a trucking company co-worker about Rick’s penchant for adopting injured animals, every joke shared by a fellow volunteer at the sobriety hotline where he dedicated his time, it all leads up to what he did and that’s how you understand it. Their lives read like a suicide note. The howl Kurt Cobain produces on “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” from the Unplugged in New York album is terrifying to me, or would be if I could listen to Nirvana anymore. I picture every Wallace book I see on a shelf as being soaked in tears. David Foster Wallace and Rick Moe, born just six months apart, were completely different people. I know that, but I have pretty hard time drawing distinctions sometimes. They both had brains that didn’t work in the same way as most other brains. I admired them both in ways that transcended any other admiration I had felt. With Rick, it was, again, the golden glow that older brothers have, on their bikes and skateboards, with their strength and jokes and cars. With Wallace, it was reading some of those Harper’s essays and experiencing Shea Stadium Beatlemania and a kind of loving fear all at once. Oh, so that’s a writer, I thought, sweating, screaming on the inside. As someone who wanted to be a writer, it was incredibly inspiring and absolutely soul crushing. Being a writer in a world that features Wallace would be like playing basketball in a world that has Michael Jordan, only none of us even know how to play basketball and we’re all injured toddlers with broken lacrosse equipment. A few years ago, I was working on a narrative non-fiction book and had a chance to go on a cruise as part of my story gathering. I knew not to bother. Maybe someone else could dare write about cruise ships, but what kind of sucker do I look like, you know? I loved my brother and I loved Wallace.

Then on September 12, 2008, fucking Wallace fucking killed himself. Look, I know well that depression is a disease. I know he fought it like a gladiator his whole life. I know, too, that he didn’t get the help he needed from the rest of us. I know that if we as a society approached depression and mental health with the same dedication and persistence with which we approached drunk driving or smoking or, hell, littering in the past, we’d bury a lot fewer of our brothers and daughters and heroes. It is important to address these issues with the help of professionals – find more information about them, here. We might have new Nirvana albums and Elliott Smith albums to enjoy. But I’m still angry at the events that took place and I’m still angry with these two heroes of mine who killed these two heroes of mine. I’m still angry for having my house burglarized. Wallace’s death brought for me a fresh version of the dread I was already experiencing after Rick’s suicide, this knowledge that life will never be like it was, it will be weirder and darker and happy at times and always always always more sad. I know now that everything Wallace wrote will be different for me than it was before. Even memories of his funniest writing include memories of the sorrow and desperation packed in there. My struggle when I do reach back into Wallace’s words will be to see beyond the shovel to the gut I felt when I heard he had died. I’ll need to get past the anger I feel for fucking ripping us off and denying us those future tomes. I’ll need to see David Foster Wallace for more than just the last thing he did. I need to remember wrestling with my brother in the rec room and going off jumps on bikes instead of his body hooked up to machines in a San Diego hospital. A few months after Rick died, I was given a notebook that he had kept as part of his ongoing recovery program. It was a journal of his fight to stay straight, to make a new life for himself that wasn’t built around drugs. I kept this notebook on a high shelf in the back of my closet for weeks, eyeing it once in a while as I passed through the room, thinking about it constantly. I had to know that there was something to Rick that I had not yet discovered, maybe some insight, at least some humanity. Finally, I took the notebook down, went to a Starbucks for some reason, got a big cup of coffee and entered his loving and terrible world. Then closed it, went to my car, and wept. Then ran some errands.

Infinite Jest is on my shelf now. Sure is big. Man, look at that thing. I hope to get to it soon. I hear it’s really great.

Comments

70 responses to “John Moe: I Did Not Read Infinite Jest This Summer”

  1. good old neon Avatar
    good old neon

    Wow, just wow.

    1. Julia Avatar
      Julia

      Me too. I signed in to write ‘wow.’ Wow, John.

  2. Eric Avatar

    Keep coming back.

  3. Sorrento Avatar
    Sorrento

    I had already resigned myself to crying all weekend. May as well get started.

    Thank you for this post.

  4. Maria C Avatar

    Great post. Now here’s what I want you to do: please write yourself some new stories about your brother and DFW. You don’t even have to believe them right now, but just go on and write them, please.

  5. Andrea K Avatar

    Just waking up every day and going to sleep at night and waking up the next day, that’s heroic. Just living to tell about it. Sticking around to see how it all turns out.

    I am so sorry for your brother, and for your loss and profound grief, but so glad that you’re here to tell us his story.

  6. Michele Avatar

    This is a magnificent piece. It reminded me so powerfully of the way emotions collided and merged and boiled when I lost two of my own heroes — my dad, who died suddenly and young, and, one year later, JFK. I cried for five days straight when JFK died. It was all one thing.

  7. Motley Fool Avatar
    Motley Fool

    John thank you for sharing this nearly unbearably painful experience and best wishes as you continue to cope with the pain of your loss. Though I’ve never experienced a comparable personal loss, a few years ago I had to watch my best friend deal with his sons suicide and all the second guessing that entails. There simply are no words to express what you must have felt since the loss of Rick.

    Wallace’s suicide is truly the first time I was moved by the loss of a public person that I did not know personally and his death still haunts me a year later for many of the reasons you mentioned. By all means, read Infinite Jest and read it slowly. There’s much in there that helps.

  8. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    That was beautiful, thank you.

  9. Kendall Joy Avatar
    Kendall Joy

    Thank you.

  10. Joan Avatar
    Joan

    Thank you so much for sharing your story – please keep writing it. You write that you “wanted to be a writer” but I think this piece shows that you truly are. And as a fan – it’s great to “hear” you here – I miss Weekend America!

  11. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    Thank you, John. I’m very sorry for your loss.

    From a fellow former Federal Wayer, all the best…

  12. Maria Bustillos Avatar

    I’m so sorry about your brother. Thank you for this.

    Here’s the one mildly comforting thing about it, is that we’re all going through that door after them, one way or another.

  13. rf Avatar
    rf

    “Shovel to the gut” is right.

    Awesome piece of writing.

  14. Shawn Stufflebeam Avatar
    Shawn Stufflebeam

    Powerful. Your honesty is greatly appreciated – you’re doing more good here than you know. Thanks.

  15. marie Avatar

    Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I too wish we lived in a world where we took depression and mental illness more seriously.

  16. Yen Lai Avatar

    That was a really wonderful read.

    Much thanks.

  17. Jim Coudal Avatar

    Thank you John.

  18. Jennifer Deyo Avatar
    Jennifer Deyo

    Thank you for writing this piece. Your honesty is appreciated.

  19. Katie Avatar
    Katie

    Great piece. I am sorry for your loss.

  20. Reid Avatar
    Reid

    (From a Salon story about DFW’s last days) heartbreaking but also healing:

    His sister Amy described emotions ranging from disbelief to sadness to acceptance, of a sort. “Inevitably our thought was, if only he could have held on a little bit longer,” says sister Amy. “And then we realized, he did. How many extra weeks had he hung in there when he just couldn’t bear it? So we’re not angry at him. Not at all. We just miss him.”

  21. Todeswalzer Avatar
    Todeswalzer

    As someone who once fought a long battle with depression myself, reading your story struck a deeply personal note that almost brought me to tears. Thank-you so much for sharing.

  22. Jesse Avatar
    Jesse

    Love that you gave us this.

    As someone who’s been through a lot of depression, my favorite part was where you noted that, after crying, you ran some errands.

  23. mich Avatar
    mich

    Heartbreaking.
    It’s Friday night where I am now, the weekend has just started. And yes, the first tear I shed was while reading this.

  24. whitt Avatar
    whitt

    I’m moved. Thank you

  25. Stephanie Avatar

    Thank you. In your struggle to understand your brother, know that he was not the disease (whether that was depression, bi-polar or other mental illness). He was a man with a disease that turned terminal. He did not chose to kill himself. He had no choice. Could it have been prevented? Yes. But clearly those resources were not at hand. I am so grateful for your words. You gave voice to how I felt when I heard of Wallace’s death.

  26. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    John,
    Thanks for telling your story. I’ve loved reading your words since I first saw them in the Pio at Whitman. Today your words moved me deeply – thank you.

  27. Jim Harper Avatar

    Thanks John Moe for your words.

    I started Infinite Jest this summer but will have to finish it this winter when I can combine stationary biking with catching up on books. So, figure it will be a 3 month read, just in the winter and not summer.

  28. Jane Quigley Avatar

    Sometimes forward motion gets you some healing, sometimes only a step forward and sometimes just other people’s momentum.

    Thanks for this.

  29. […] might have come and gone without me remember if a friend hadn’t tweeted a blog entry reminder to me earlier today.  This is powerful stuff. Example: Then on September 12, 2008, fucking […]

  30. Kate Avatar
    Kate

    Thank you for your beautiful writing and for your support of those who struggle with mental illness.

  31. Jess Avatar
    Jess

    …okay, time to pop off the cork.

    I am so sorry to hear about your brother. My brother Adam also died last year. This post reawakened me to those emotions. And although they are powerful and sad, I am still so glad to have read this. Somehow, I feel like another piece of me has just healed. Thank you.

  32. Joe Nava Avatar
    Joe Nava

    Mr. John Moe, I understand you were invited here to speak on the subject of suicide, considering the anniversary of DFW’s untimely and tragic death. However, with all due respect, your anger towards the suicide of DFW strikes me as inconsiderate for what his work means to all of us. I find it difficult to understand how you can be so angry about his suicide when you haven’t even read his great work, Infinite Jest.

    I know you’re tying this to your anger and loss and resentment toward your brother’s own suicide, (by the way, thank you for sharing and I’m sorry for your loss, I’ve lost a cousin too who literally drank himself to death) but I don’t see how you can compare the two. One was your brother and the other was an acclaimed writer who you probably didn’t know personally and whose work you’re somewhat familiar with.

    To say that you feel “robbed” of the books he could have read seems disrespectful to DFW as well as to the many readers who have devoured his entire works. If DFW lived a full life and wrote many more books that changed the very face of modern literature, will you have read them while Infinite Jest sits on your bookshelf?

    I might understand this “anger” more if you had read Infinite Jest or if you were somehow close to DFW. But may I suggest that you read his masterpiece first. Then perhaps you may feel that even though he died too soon, he has still given the world something extraordinary. There’s no anger here on my side. Infinite Jest allowed me to work that out. Instead, I feel grateful that he even lived long enough to write the books he did.

    Respectfully,
    ~Joe

    P.S. I hope this comment is posted not to incite anger but to provoke conversation about DFW’s death.

  33. Prolixian Avatar
    Prolixian

    Wow. Awesome. Thank you very much.

  34. brent Avatar
    brent

    Important post. We knew it was coming. Thank you. I work as an RN on a psychiatric emergency ward where we have a 24 hour suicide crisis line. Every day of my working life for the past six years someone has told me that they want to kill themselves. One of the things you come to understand in doing this type of work is: you can’t save anyone. Not: You can’t save them all, but: You can’t save anyone. If you don’t believe me, I’ll ask you to go ahead and try, with all my blessings. I don’t view this as an existential bummer or nihilistic grimness. I see it as a kind of Buddhist humility akin to the Buddhist precept: Life is suffering. Once you begin to understand and accept this the paradox is you suffer a whole lot less.
    In re to suicide prevention, what we can do, especially over the telephone, to affect someone’s life is radically limited. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but we try with this understanding firmly in hand. That Life is Suffering seems inarguable. Take a look around. That we want to get out of this or don’t want to admit it seems predictable.
    My Psych Emergency job is almost exactly like my former job in the ER, ie, the fatality rate is high. The patient population incredibly high risk. Infants who have stopped breathing, gunshot victims, head traumas come in all the time and quite often they are already dead by the time they roll off the ambulance. To do this work–Psych Emergency/ ER–you have to accept this. You understand that what you can do, realistically, is to just be there and offer your help without being too attached to the idea of success or failure.
    Having finished IJ weeks ago–I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it–I am left not only with a wonderful and eternal (I suspect) puzzle and a miraculous knee-bending gratitude but also the fact of the author’s suicide. IJ, as we all know, is loaded up with suicide and every time the novel touches on it we have a kind of double reading experience to try and make sense of. I have written a rather lengthy (4 page) piece re: my take on IJ’s ending, drug withdrawal, and suicide simply because I had to, because reading IJ and falling in love with DFW has been fairly all consuming–in that way that’s not pathological but pleasantly dizzying and fun. If anyone’s interested (or if there’s an easy way to do it, I’d be glad to post it.

    1. Bill Coan Avatar
      Bill Coan

      Brent,

      Thanks for this hard-won perspective. Yes, please post your piece on IJ’s ending, or let us know where we can go to read it. Thanks again.

    2. ec Avatar
      ec

      Yes. Please post.

  35. Tom Harris Avatar
    Tom Harris

    First off, John, thank you so much for this beautiful story. I am as sorry to hear about your loss as I am glad that you bravely decided to share it.

    Secondly, I’d like to say that I’m not currently reading IJ–that was my spring this year–but, I still think about it *every single day.* Its life-affirming sense of understanding has profoundly affected me, as I can see it has for many others here. And every time I see that there’s a new essay up on this site, I read it and am consistently moved by how honest and open and giving and thoughtful both the writers and the commenters are. I always leave here on the verge of tears and ready to laugh at the same time.

    Sorry if this is trite, but we all have our own AA of sorts here. DFW has blessed us all. Keep Coming.

    1. stephanie Avatar
      stephanie

      Not trite at all. It’s really on target. I finished IJ in August and am still thinking about it everyday, and I suspect that’s going to be how it is for a long time.

  36. […] Shared Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » John Moe: I Did Not Read Infinite Jest This Summer […]

  37. stephanie Avatar
    stephanie

    I wish I had a better response but thank you, good to hear you. Thank you.

  38. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Awesome, brave, timely and necessary writing– thank you John

  39. James Avatar
    James

    It’s been said above, but I believe it needs to be said again: this is beautiful, thank you for sharing.

  40. jackd Avatar
    jackd

    Add two more hands to the applause for this post.

    John, I hope you’re able to read IJ one of these days. And I’ll feel very fortunate if you decide to tell us about it when you do.

  41. claire Avatar
    claire

    Like everyone before me, Thank You. Good luck with your writing. If it approaches anywhere near the honesty of this piece, you’ll find readers. Or, readers willl find you.

  42. Tina Rowley Avatar
    Tina Rowley

    To Joe,

    How can you make your sign-off “Respectfully” if you didn’t read John’s piece carefully enough to understand that he hasn’t read Infinite Jest because the damn thing is soaked with tears for him? And that that DFW’s tears are stand-ins for his brother’s tears! It’s like you’re only somewhat familiar with this piece John wrote, but you’re commenting on it anyway.

    Sorry to jump on you, but John is my friend.

    1. Joe Nava Avatar
      Joe Nava

      I understand that John is your friend and we feel the need to protect our friends. I’ve read this piece several times and I take my own meaning from it. My point is that maybe John’s “anger” might be easier to understand if he has read Infinite Jest. I understand DFW’s suicide reminds him of his brother, and he’s made a similar connection with other artists that have taken their own life (rendering Cobain’s and Smith’s albums almost unlistenable to him). The difference is that unlike Cobain or Smith, John is not familiar with DFW’s best work and the fact that it reminds him of his brother’s death is a total human emotion but one I feel is not fair for those that have read IJ. Nevertheless I sympathize with John on his loss.

      I wish John can find the courage to read Infinite Jest soon and overcome the anger he has toward DFW taking his own life. It might also help him continue to heal from his brother’s suicide. But what do I know about how he feels? I don’t know John personally. I can only express how his piece made me feel.

  43. brent Avatar
    brent

    IJ: The Comedown

    Today (9/12) is the anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s suicide. As a nurse who works on both Psych Emergency and a locked in-patient ward, I have a unique perspective on suicide: every day of my working life for six years someone has told me that they want to kill themselves, sometimes over the phone, often in person. Suicide, as we all know, pervades IJ. Its characters suicide, attempt suicide, contemplate suicide, and deal with the aftermath of suicide. Every time it comes up in the novel–and it comes up a lot–we can’t help but be reminded of its author’s demise, a strange kind of double-mirror. At times, I want to credit DFW with killing himself in order to set up this unique mirror-reading until I realize how sick an idea that is and that I am only doing so because such a thing would convert his painful death into a performance art piece, the kind which usually only exists in Don DeLillo-type novels.
    As we wind down Infinite Summer perhaps no topic seems more discussed than the book’s ending, which both makes sense and is problematic: uh, how and where does IJ end, exactly?
    In a previous blog reply over at Infinite Detox, I clumsily stated that I didn’t like the ending (okay for my purposes here I’ll say the ending is the last 80 pages of the novel even as it makes me wince to say it. And I’ll add that after re-reading the first 17 pages and then adding another 200, I liked it a whole lot better) and postulated a theory about it being very similar to going through withdrawal. The book makes a departure from its humor, cast of characters, and sometimes goofy plotlines to focus in on big Don Gately, who lies in a hospital bed either dying or recovering very slowly—it’s often hard to tell. The prose here is fairly unrelieved. For me, it was like torture: page after page of Gately’s suffering and misery, past and present, physical and psychic. Jesus, can I get a “Halation”? No, no I can’t.
    This folks, is the comedown, and one that surprised me since as an experimental poet I’m not exactly given to things making sense. But of course we’re hardwired for the comedown. We feel disappointed when the weekend’s over. We cry when it’s time to say goodbye to our grandmas. When our lover leaves for a book sale or an art opening or a business trip, we mope around the house feeling a little lost, at least for awhile. The comedown sucks because it leaves us knowing that the cycle of pleasure/pain, desire/dread, drug/withdrawal pervades our lives and is virtually inescapable.
    The characters in IJ are all at various points in an arc in the comedown cycle. Just like us they come down (or not) and then try to make sense of it (or not). The comedown’s a bitch, and moreover it is perpetual. The substance or situation which was come down from is forever replaced by another substance or situation: alcohol by A.A., which is itself another addiction ( I think the novel says this) though, clearly, a much healthier one. And it’s another addiction not because it’s a cult or because it asks its members to be mindlessly obedient to its principles but because it has no choice in the matter, it merely takes its place in the biological nexus of human life on this planet. Here, you might object “That’s simply going too far,” that there has to be some distinction made between being addicted to heroin and what happens when we go to an N.A. meeting. You might be right, but again, IJ itself seems to ask if there’s really as much difference as we might think? If establishing this difference and clinging to it isn’t a means of warding off an uncomfortable, all-too-human truth?
    If one suffers from a mental illness like bipolar disorder or depression, this can become the ultimate comedown, the comedown which obliterates everything.
    One of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths states: Life is suffering. Or we could put it another way: a prolonged comedown. Buddhism points to the material structuring of our existence as the culprit, and counter-intuitively says that to “get out” of suffering we should embrace suffering, and not masochistically but rather via acceptance and understanding. Isn’t this what the last 80 pages of IJ asks as well, in it’s own way?
    For a variety of reasons, some people have a lower tolerance for the comedown or more difficulty seeing the reality of the basic phenomena inscribed as it is in our lives. These are the people who come see me at Psych Emergency. The work, part bricoueler Buddhism, part cognitive behavioral therapy, is then an attempt to help them understand suffering in a way that gives them some peace and a little hope.
    As a reader of IJ I am left not only with a puzzle and a whopping knee-bending dose of gratitude, but also with DFW’s suicide, which enters my life in a way his work can’t. This is a fact I don’t want. I wish I could avoid it. Almost involuntarily I say that I can never conscience, morally, what DFW did to himself. And not because I don’t think he was in tremendous pain but because he elevated that pain over and above the pain he caused the people who loved him (his family), which of course is a failure of the worst kind. But, see, I’m still trying to get out of it. Grasp/avoid, desire/revulsion. I get out of it by being angry or righteous or taking a stand against immorality. It all of course lessens the blow as opposed to just being with it, in all its dumb, artless, pain.
    Comedown/substance, avoidance/fantasy, how does it ever end? It doesn’t, and that might be one of the infinite lessons of IJ. The journey of self is never resolved. We arrive only to start out again. I accept that I am powerless…and in this acceptance a perceptual shift is possible: I see myself as connected to all things, and given this interconnectedness DFW’s “failure” is my failure. And it is. It’s all of ours. We don’t like to admit it, but we’ve chickened out a hundred times. And we will again. We’ve been in great pain and wanted to blame someone. We started using again, started smoking again. We gained back all the weight. We didn’t say what we should of. We didn’t take the time. We were in a hurry. May this bring us compassion.

    1. itzadrag Avatar
      itzadrag

      Thank you, Brent– and John. Also in the suicide survivor club (special intimate relation award). Aren’t we all?

      This is life. This is water. To resist is to depend on that resisted. This writing keeps me mindful, and i am grateful to you both.

    2. Maria Bustillos Avatar

      Thank you brent for these valuable observations.

      I’ve got a cousin who is pretty much catatonic with depression, just now. Because you interface with similar cases all the time, I was so surprised and interested to see you call succumbing to hardcore depression a “failure.” I get it, but on the other hand, the sight of these people at the very end of their rope and no relief in sight is such a sobering one. They seemingly lose not only the will to fight it but everything right down to the capacity of will itself. They’re just pithed, when it gets to that point, there’s no “me” left to fight for … it’s incomprehensibly debilitating.

      If we could figure a way for them to return to themselves!

      Anyway I loved all you’ve written and will look forward to more.

      1. brent Avatar
        brent

        Hey, thanks Maria. With posting and prose in general, I have this feeling that I am doomed to fragmentation and contradiction (like I’ve suffered a head injury or something) which is probably why I’m a poet where these qualities are more often (?)virtues or at least something I can work with. So, yeah, calling a suicide a failure seems perverse/ cruel, like What do you know abut it? and Nobody needs that and Where’s the compassion? Again (and again and again), with DFW I am conflicted. On the one hand I want to say There are things we just don’t understand, things we should refrain from passing judgment on. Alternately, I believe we have to make a choice given the stakes and what this choice means. With the work that I do, I almost have to come down on the side of suicide as a “failure” or at least some kind of negative (death drive, etc) because if I don’t I am left with the fact that intractable depression somehow leaves one no other choice than suicide, which is a determinism I simply can’t live with,ie, I have to believe that no depression is untreatable even as I recognize the long odds. Probably what I need here is an easier, more gentle term than failure. In the end I’m pretty sure my judgments don’t amount to much. My heart goes out to DFW and his family. God, does it ever. And man oh man is this stuff hard. I mean I feel it. I also recognize that I am leaving something important unexamined: the possible merits of suicide and how to respect that the “choice” is utterly personal and perhaps ought to be off-limits to outside moralizing/speculation. Thanks for the conversation and the chance to process all of this which I think is so important.

  44. […] John Moe on not reading Infinite Jest this summer: But I’m still angry at the events that took place and I’m still angry with these two heroes of mine who killed these two heroes of mine. […]

  45. thisiswater Avatar
    thisiswater

    Everyone is in here.

  46. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Nominated for Post Of The Month.

    Wait, this just in; it’s official, nominated for Post Of The Season.

    Are there anti-fantods? If so, this piece of writing gave them to me. Thanks for playing.

  47. Jason Avatar

    This was incredible. Thank your for sharing this story.

    // Jason

  48. naptimewriting Avatar

    Thank you. Thank you for the love, the anger, the fear, the humanity of this post.
    As with a previous comment, the “shovel to the gut” struck me. When I first heard of Wallace’s death, on the second 100 miles of a 500 mile move, I was shocked (and my jaw literally dropped open) but I was not overwhelmed. When I found out it was suicide I definitely felt the shovel to the gut. In a culture that clings desperately to the idea that life is important, suicide’s taboo is almost inviolable. That’s why there are people commenting that you don’t have the right to certain feelings. Well, I guess they have their right to that opinion, frustrating as their need to dictate to you how to see things and what to feel is to me.
    What struck me most about your post, as part of the honesty, was: “Being a writer in a world that features Wallace would be like playing basketball in a world that has Michael Jordan, only none of us even know how to play basketball and we’re all injured toddlers with broken lacrosse equipment.” Man, you’re not kidding. What a great line, made even more pointed in the truth of its awkwardness.
    You’re one hell of a writer. Never compare yourself to Wallace. Obviously, writing worked out for him, way beyond well, but it also didn’t really work out for him, you know what I’m saying?
    Good luck in everything and thank you for this post.