I linked to his his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College before. A choice excerpt:...here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. I'd start with his non-fiction, the title essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again in particular. If you cotton to that, you can dip into and/or attempt to tackle his 1,000+-page novel Infinite Jest, which took me the better part of 5 years, on and off.
He was possibly the most articulate, compassionate and distinct contemporary writer we had. Our loss is great, his friends' and family's unimaginable.
A friend's recollection here; the article mentioned is another great one. To give you some idea of just how unique his writing is: while the piece was published anonymously, I knew on reading it just exactly who the writer was- and so did many others, as the letters to the editor in the next issue showed. He couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.
I'd start with his non-fiction, the title essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again in particular. If you cotton to that, you can dip into and/or attempt to tackle his 1,000+-page novel Infinite Jest, which took me the better part of 5 years, on and off.
He was possibly the most articulate, compassionate and distinct contemporary writer we had. Our loss is great, his friends' and family's unimaginable.
A friend's recollection here; the article mentioned is another great one. To give you some idea of just how unique his writing is: while the piece was published anonymously, I knew on reading it just exactly who the writer was- and so did many others, as the letters to the editor in the next issue showed. He couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.
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