A TRUE TRIBUTE, TO BE SURE, WOULD BE HEAVILY FOOTNOTED: But for the moment I'm too stunned: the Associated Press is reporting that author David Foster Wallace (Amherst '85) has been found dead in his home. It is being reported as a suicide.
He was -- I can't believe I'm saying "was" -- a fiction writer with a journalist's attention to detail, a sprawling mind willing to explore the full potential of the page. Infinite Jest remains the heaviest piece of fiction I've ever finished, and I'm just gobsmacked right now. Go ahead, read his essay for Harper's about his seven-night cruise, his August 2004 piece for Gourmet on the morality of eating lobster (PDF), or this piece on the sport he played and loved, "Roger Federer As Religious Experience". What a shame.
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