David Foster Wallace
Being away from the internet all weekend, I learned on Sunday morning, by way of a friend, that David Foster Wallace committed suicide (by hanging). It was a shock, (slightly less keen than when I learned on a Sunday morning in 1993 that River Phoenix was dead). I didn't know him at all, and certainly haven't read everything he's written. I am a big fan of "Good Old Neon," which is in Oblivion. But it is his commencement speech at Kenyon that I re-read most often. For it changes my perspective, makes me think. And though it's hard, I decide how to see the world, and react to it. Thank you, David, for your words. I wish we would have had more of them.