{"id":6,"date":"2008-09-15T12:58:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T12:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/09\/testing-123.html"},"modified":"2008-09-15T12:58:46","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T12:58:46","slug":"testing-123","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/09\/testing-123.html","title":{"rendered":"David Foster Wallace, R.I.P. (testing 123)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news that David
\nFoster Wallace hung himself this weekend came as such a shock not only
\nbecause it was the news of great loss for literary and academic
\nculture–which it is–but also because it seemed like such a contrary
\nact for a man so life-affirming and life-giving. The line we often hear
\nabout postmodern artists is that they de-humanize everything–that they
\nsee people as parts, or whole machines at best, consumers who imbibe
\nbad burgers and Coke and sit-coms and experience the bulk of their
\nlives through video screens. Mostly, this is a misunderstanding–if
\npo-mo writers present people in this way, it’s often because they are
\ntrying to alert us that this is what postmodernity (meaning “consumer
\ncapitalism on steroids”) has turned people into. Many of the best po-mo
\nartists aren’t looking down on people; they are asking people to look
\nup.
\"08_09_14_dfw.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This is what we’ll remember about David Foster Wallace. He was fully
\nattuned to the complex difficulties of contemporary life, and, we know
\nnow, he was wrestling with his own demons of darkness. But again and
\nagain, his writing expressed faith in the goodness of creation (meaning
\nlife as we know it) and creations (meaning the artful stuff we make of
\nlife). <\/p>\n

\n

My favorite piece of writing by DFW is this piece from Harper’s Magazine<\/a>
\nabout dictionaries–yes, dictionaries! It’s a lively, funny,
\ninformative, intensely readable piece of work, and could only be
\ncreated by a man deeply in love with language. I read that thing seven
\nyears ago, and to this day I can hardly look up a definition without
\nremembering the experience of reading that essay. How’s that for a
\ngifted artist, aye? Someone who can change the way you look at a
\ndictionary? Heavens, what a loss. <\/p>\n

I’ll leave you with two uplifting DFW passages, the first (via Alan Jacobs<\/a>)
\nfrom a recent profile of tennis great Roger Federer, the second from a
\n2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. In Federer, DFW finds
\noccasion to celebrate the nature of inspiration, and what it does to us
\nall. In the graduation address (read the whole thing for a real shot in the arm<\/a>), DFW talks about how we all worship, and must carefully choose what we will give our worship to. <\/p>\n

On Federer:<\/p>\n

In the same emphatic, empirical, dominating way that Lendl
\ndrove home his own lesson, Roger Federer is showing that the speed and
\nstrength of today’s pro game are merely its skeleton, not its flesh. He
\nhas, figuratively and literally, re-embodied men’s tennis, and for the
\nfirst time in years the game’s future is unpredictable. You should have
\nseen, on the grounds’ outside courts, the variegated ballet that was
\nthis year’s Junior Wimbledon. Drop volleys and mixed spins, off-speed
\nserves, gambits planned three shots ahead — all as well as the
\nstandard-issue grunts and booming balls. Whether anything like a
\nnascent Federer was here among these juniors can’t be known, of course.
\nGenius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and
\nmultiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made
\nvulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal
\nway) reconciled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On worship: \n<\/p>\n

\n…in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such
\nthing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody
\nworships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling
\nreason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to
\nworship — be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess,
\nor the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles
\n— is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. <\/p>\n

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real
\nmeaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have
\nenough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure
\nand you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you
\nwill die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level,
\nwe all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs,
\nclich\u00e9s, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The
\nwhole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.<\/p>\n

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will
\nneed ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship
\nyour intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a
\nfraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing
\nabout these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s
\nthat they’re unconscious. They are default settings.<\/p>\n

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after
\nday, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you
\nmeasure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re
\ndoing.<\/p>\n

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating
\non your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and
\nmoney and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and
\nfrustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture
\nhas harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary
\nwealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of
\nour tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.
\nThis kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are
\nall different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you
\nwill not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of
\nwanting and achieving and [unintelligible — sounds like “displayal”].
\nThe really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness
\nand discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to
\nsacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
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