A year ago tomorrow I sat at this computer and stared off at the moon and tried to wrap my foggy and furious brain around the fact that David Foster Wallace, the "greatest mind of his generation" and my literary hero, had tied a belt around his neck and stepped off of a chair in Claremont into infinity.  I'm sure the night down there was quiet, perhaps with coyotes and the steady shish-shush of traffic slicing its way through the Inland Empire, and surely the weight and sadness inside the nighttime of DFW's personal, internal world was pitch, was tar, was thick and inescapable that evening.  But I hope, because I struggle so much, because I wonder daily where the energy and boisterous lifeforce and incomparable wit of my deceased father has wandered off to these past six years...I Hope (with a capital A.A.-inspired "H") that what DFW stepped off into that night was the lovely lake-blue sky with its crowded canvas of cushiony cumulonimbus that we all, all of us who cherish Infinite Jest, know so well from its front cover. 

David Foster Wallace was the writer most deserving of wearing the crown Writer and yet the least comfortable with such decoration and adulation.  I love the story someone (Jonathan Franzen?  Mark Costello?) reported about how when Dave had the rattlings of a nervous breakdown, he dropped out of college and moved home and for a while drove a schoolbus for children.  Stop and think about that for a second.  Don't even get caught up on the fact that these little fresh-scrubbed, rosy pink elementary kids no doubt had no idea that their bus driver was probably the smartest, funniest, and most humane and determined writer of the last hundred years.  Forget that.  Instead, think of how blank and hardly there all the bus drivers you've ever sat on the yellow buses of are for you.  They simply can't be called up.  And but how vital.  Helping children arrive safely somewhere may, paradoxically, be the most pedestrian and most profound job anyone can perform.  If this doesn't speak volumes about David Foster Wallace's humility and heart, I'm not sure what does.

Tonight is Friday September 11, 2009.  It is 8 years after 9/11 the tragic event.  No one can even touch DFW's authorial grapplings with that impossible subject matter.  "The View From Mrs. Thompson's" is hands down, to this day, the greatest piece of non-fiction dedicated to that morning.  And it follows suit that "The Suffering Channel" from Oblivion remains the only fiction to do the aftermath of 9/11 and the resultant bloodlust, televisual need to be engaged and spectating and projecting, any justice.  If you want to feel 9/11, how it felt that day for the average American who might say they'd been hit with a 9 iron across the back of the head, re-read these two pieces.

On the page, DFW was a dazzler.  He was a gourmet chef, a hyperactive librarian, a samurai when it came to spinning similes that'd never been even dreamt of because who besides DFW would think to compare a drug-hangover to a psychic sponge being vigorously wrung out or a bunch of computer cords to a pot of drained pasta noodles.  He made metaphor that went on, literally, for a thousand pages: metaphor about waste and want, freedom from and freedom to, the agony and anxiety of technology.  DFW could re-animate OED flotsam and bits of knowledge, in ways that'd make your jaw drop (and go slack, to use one of his fave expressions).  And he made a character who invented the "phoneless cord."  Now that's genius.

DFW was an unparalleled magician when it came to turning the phrase on its ear or replicating dialogue that was erudite and slangy and confused and brilliant.  No one, NO ONE, can write about shadows like DFW.  If you don't believe me re-read Infinite Jest  or embark on your maiden voyage.  I'm on my second tour-of-duty and I still laugh out loud every third page.  Like stifle my laughter with a knuckle in my mouth, like Ralph Malph used to do on Happy Days.  DFW was the smartest kid in the class and the coolest and when he invited people to dinner he called it "supper" and he meant it; he didn't dabble in dickish sniping, he was sincere and honest.  He always struck me as the type of guy who'd never do it face to face, but would instead ask a girl to a dance with a note that said something like: "W/r/t Sadie's: I'd be flattered if you'd attend with moi!"

And damn he was funny.  He describes one kid's nose-picking as "positively strip-mining his nostril."  He describes A.A.'s chairs as "hemorrhoid-hostile folding chairs."  He faux-anachronistically refers to an "information turnpike" of the early 90's.  He could whip out these adverbs like "nipple-hardeningly" cold and "scalp-cracklingly" brutal Tucson heat.  It seems so easy to ape, but it's impossible and that was part of his genius.  He lapped any and all, but never made them feel bad about it.  He was the king of the high-low blur.  No one since Shakespeare.  And no quite as good as making it feel accessible.  He brought together what I like to think of as the bluntly cerebral and the breakfast cereal.  And so many millions of examples besides these. 

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"That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like hurt..." --David Foster Wallace. 

We are still hurting a year later, and we miss you Mr. Wallace, many of us who never even knew you though we heard you read funny stuff about fierce infants and shook your hands and got our novels signed and asked questions about the role of the effective creative writing teacher and tried to avoid the little splat of dip spit that kinda splashed up from your styrofoam cup.  We get the privilege of missing you too.  Just like your students and your friends and your family and colleagues.  And the vacuum you left behind is tough.  The heft of all your unwritten works and unperformed selfless acts and almost quaint sincerity and caring for other human beings is greater than all the oceans of this wonderful, troubled planet, full of fishies both sage and clueless.  This is water.  This is water.