David Wallace Tribute

No disrespect is intended by the title of this reminiscence. Some disgust, yeah. But that's momentarily. David Foster Wallace, like most holy fools, decided that it was necessary to leave no stone unturned to Figure Out What it Was All About. Thus his tendency to be verbose and hyperbolic. Like Jack Kerouac, one writer to whom he is not usually compared. But he, like Kerouac, was right; when you're trying to figure out what the immense imponderable Thing was that just lumbered by, crushing just about everything in its path, do you scrimp on time to gather clues? Not Wallace. As Coltrane once told Miles Davis one night after 'Trane's solo went on about 40 bars further than Davis would have preferred in some jazz club back in the late 1950s, "It took that long to get it all in." Regrettably, sometimes one finds out that what just passed is something one wasn't hoping to see. Other times, it's just Life writ large. Either way, it's better to be informed, in case whatever it was decides to come back.
Now for the 'screw' part. It's about taking one's life. The late Japanese author Yukio Mishima once commented that if one is to do so, best not to leave a note: 'A silent death is an endless word." I mentioned this to my Dad once, and he asked, "Huh. Wonder what word?" I suggested, ''Screw you'?" "Nah," he replied. "That's two words."
Where Wallace is concerned, remember the words that do have endings. The author is what's left after the writing is done. The author, I believe, would prefer you remember the words. RIP DFW.