Comments on: John Moe: I Did Not Read Infinite Jest This Summer

By: Edward

Edward — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:41:30 +0000

You’re right that suicide is a lot more coincidental than many people think, but we as a species seek teleological interpretations for events. Especially those that affect us very much, like the loss of a loved one, or even just a much-liked author.

By: the imbroglio » Blog Archive » What would David Foster Wallace say?

the imbroglio » Blog Archive » What would David Foster Wallace say? — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:56:56 +0000

[...] We will never know, and that is very sad. It’s so sad it’s almost infuriating. As John Moe recently put it: David Foster Wallace hanged himself and robbed us of all the work he would have produced in the [...]

By: Tab Dump « 24 Percent

Tab Dump « 24 Percent — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:15:21 +0000

[...] moment” reading Life Inc. – McSweeney’s regular John Moe has what might be the best eulogy for David Foster Wallace I’ve ever read, or at least the one I identify with most. – [...]

By: kliphgordon

kliphgordon — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:54:14 +0000

Man guess I’ll post on this too. It’s been a pleasure reading with ya’ll.

By: Linkdump for September 14th at found_drama

Linkdump for September 14th at found_drama — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:03:53 +0000

[...] I Did Not Read Infinite Jest This Summer by John Moe at Infinite Summer (via DF): 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. (tagged: InfiniteJest writing depression essay ) [...]

By: Alanna

Alanna — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:03:21 +0000

Thank you for this deeply moving piece.

By: brent

brent — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:14:13 +0000

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.

By: quinn

quinn — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:37:07 +0000

suicide is an accident. a state of mind, circumstance and equipment, a confluence. in a way it’s no different than falling asleep behind the wheel. a life may end there, but it didn’t lead there. it could have been completely different if someone had chanced to walk in at the right moment. how could something that arbitrary define a whole human life?

By: Monday Medley « No Pun Intended

Monday Medley « No Pun Intended — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:06:28 +0000

[...] about the one-year anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s death this weekend: Infinite Summer ran a great piece, and found the best DFW to sum up how the feeling of his death; McSweeney’s has a bunch of [...]

By: Maria Bustillos

Maria Bustillos — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:35:08 +0000

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.