09.12.09 | 30 Comments

You Are Loved

30 Comments

heeeraldo says:

September 12, 2009 at 12:22 am

.
heeeraldo says:

September 12, 2009 at 12:23 am

whoops, should explain: http://faq.metafilter.com/#4
Tizzle says:

September 12, 2009 at 1:00 am

Is this DFW? Should I know that already?
Dennis Lu says:

September 12, 2009 at 1:18 am

Missed and Loved, Loved, Loved.
John Bailey says:

September 12, 2009 at 6:37 am

What can be “weird” about missing someone who has taken us on so many journeys into his soul in his fiction and into the world outside through his essays? He is a companion and partner in an ongoing dialogue. When John Krasinski and I were making the film of “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men” it seemed as if every day of the shoot that the actors playing the interviewees were some embodiment of DFW– that a part of him was on the set with us. I have never had this feeling before about any “adaptation” of a book to film that I have photographed. I can’t begin to explain it as there’s no precedent but it is almost visceral to me. He touches some core place in our psyche that goes beyond literature and into life. That extraordinary photo of him by Steve Liss, DFW sitting in a big chair next to a shadeless lamp, has a degree of presence that seems as if he is next to us, a beer just off-frame, waiting for the US Open finals to start.
- Julia says:
  
  September 21, 2009 at 8:34 am
  
  I was thinking of him this morning. Couldn’t sleep last night. Got up at 2 and read some of IJ. I found some of my own thoughts there – stuff that I haven’t spoken aloud but that has looped through my brain. That’s been such a signature experience of reading Infinite Jest: the writing makes me pay better attention to my own life, to the massive everything inside and outside.
  
  He thought so many thoughts, this man. And he it down. All of it. Turn the clock back a year and two weeks…
liana vescovo says:

September 12, 2009 at 8:43 am

Thank you, David.
Grazie per tutto ciò che mi hai dato e continui a darmi…le tue parole, i tuoi pensieri, la tua anima, il tuo sorriso gentile.
Thank you for everything you gave (give) me…your words, your thoughts, your soul, your gentle smile.
Though I never met you, I love you.
(And thanks to everyone for this Infinite Summer)
Liana (Italy)
John says:

September 12, 2009 at 10:21 am

This title is probably the best way to say how I feel today….and of course DFW said it first.
Karin D says:

September 12, 2009 at 11:47 am

Thank you (so many thoughts and reasons are just gonna have be summed up in those two words).

And yes, that subject line says it all.
Sean says:

September 12, 2009 at 11:50 am

So it goes.
naptimewriting says:

September 12, 2009 at 11:54 am

Still no adequate words. A year later and I still can’t articulate the loss. It’s not really weird, as Bailey mentions above, because Wallace’s words enter us and take us places and grow synapses and chart new tributaries in our minds. And that map still lives in my head even though he eliminated his own. And knowing he was here was no big deal until hearing he wasn’t here anymore. And that stung deep in my brain where he had struck chords I didn’t know anyone would find. Still stings. I hope his family has found some peace.
mo pie says:

September 12, 2009 at 12:18 pm

Thanks for the reminder. You are missed, DFW.
dave10 says:

September 12, 2009 at 3:41 pm

.
Doubtful Geste says:

September 12, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Yes, you are missed.
Mike says:

September 12, 2009 at 4:40 pm

I can’t imagine any better way to commemorate the occasion than to read today’s IS-determined ration of IJ. The soul-communion that occurs when one mindfully reads something truly well-written is the best way we can keep the author alive.
Medusa4303 says:

September 12, 2009 at 4:46 pm

Yes, missed. Very sad today. Thank you for IJ and an Infinite Summer.
amber cunningham says:

September 12, 2009 at 5:32 pm

The first I heard of DFW was when I read his obit online in the NY Times (okay – I live in Perth, Western Australia – forgive me, it’s the upper-middle of nowhere). I bought Infinite Jest nearly six months ago and wrangled and wrestled for 200 pages before plopping into the warm honey that is this book. The first I heard of Infinite Summer was days after I’d finished reading IJ and was scrambling to understand the enormity and power of this experience I’d just had, all by myself, no-one to talk to or share with. I have since ordered every word ever written by this brilliant man, and I have been feeling weirdly bereft and bereaved in a kind of retrospect way, again, with no-one to talk to about it. I miss David Foster Wallace and the title of this post made me feel less strange, creepy and obsessed for feeling so. So thanks.
- Imo says:
  
  September 13, 2009 at 6:16 am
  
  This is exactly how I feel, thank you for articulating it better than I could.
Michael says:

September 12, 2009 at 8:12 pm

And Lo,.
- Dan Summers says:
  
  September 14, 2009 at 9:06 am
  
  Those words make me cry every time I read them.
  
  And lo, indeed.
mc2000 says:

September 12, 2009 at 8:14 pm

When I saw this post, I thought of this:

“What happens to people will never tell you how they feel; the alien observer misunderstands everything; only he understands a mind who can share its free and comic expression” George Santayana, -George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith, 250-51
Kari says:

September 12, 2009 at 8:48 pm

But what is it to you miss someone who knew you so well? It’s our own solipsism but he made us all feel less alone. And loved.
Prolixian says:

September 12, 2009 at 9:16 pm

Coming up on the end of InfSum, combined with this. These have has weighing on my spirit all day. I think my next read will have to be another DFW, not GravRain.
Percy says:

September 12, 2009 at 10:32 pm

Every single time that I’ve read a few pages of IJ (this summer) and put it down, I’ve been impressed by DFW’s genius and I’ve felt sad that he’s not around to weave more of his magic.
cin says:

September 13, 2009 at 5:24 pm

DFW – you are in here.
amber cunningham says:

September 14, 2009 at 4:54 am

“It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.”

A nail hit firmly on the head, by the man himself.

http://www.salon.com/09/features/wallace2.html
chris koenigsberg says:

September 14, 2009 at 9:46 am

well I DID read Infinite Jest over the summer, the whole thing, on my Kindle, from start to finish including all the footnotes.

and I hadn’t even heard of this website/blog, until I was more than halfway through the book and someone sent me a link.

and I’m sorry I didn’t check out any of DFW’s work while he was still alive.
Monday Medley « No Pun Intended says:

September 14, 2009 at 12:52 pm

[…] David Foster Wallace’s death this weekend: Infinite Summer ran a great piece, and found the best DFW line to sum up how the feeling of his death; McSweeney’s has a bunch of memorial pieces; Howling Fantods links to some others. We know […]
Testudines says:

September 14, 2009 at 5:57 pm

Through his words and his imagination both his lived and his considered experiences have come to life in me, and I imagine, in so many of us, and in us he lives on as some indelible dye will become part of great quantities of certain garments.
Reed says:

September 21, 2009 at 3:19 am

Ubi caritas est vera deus ibi est.