David Foster Wallace

As I was finishing up the foregoing about loneliness, I read the very sad news that David Foster Wallace had died. The sadness of this occasion is obvious. Wallace was a writer all of whose work I admire, and some of whose work I love. For me, he was a writer who also typified the loneliness of the essayist -- I remember reading his greatly enjoyable Everything and More the same semester as Infinite Jest, and being struck powerfully and for the first time the way an authorial voice could sound so much like itself, but so stripped, when moved from the world of his created characters to the world direct address to a reader.

I don't presume to know anything about the real-life loneliness of David Foster Wallace, the real human being, but I do want put up here one of his many brilliant formulations, this one from Infinite Jest's litany of lessons learned at Ennet House. These can read like koans against loneliness, and this one is my favorite:

"That God -- unless you're Charlton Heston, or unhinged, or both-- speaks and acts entirely through the vehicle of other human beings, if there is a God"

Finally, when I graduated from high school, my mother sent a letter to David Foster Wallace asking if he had any advice to give me as I headed off to college. He sent the letter back, with his very practical advice written on in blue ink, along with his initials: Ave atque vale. In some small way, I wish I could say so back to him.