dragonfly editorial

Goodbye to David Foster Wallace

Posted by: Samantha Enslen, president and senior editor, September 15th, 2008

My sister wrote this morning to tell me that David Foster Wallace had died. Found dead Friday night by his wife. He had apparently hanged himself.

Mr. Wallace was a writer so brilliant that I often felt that the back of my head was opening up when I read his words. I writer so talented that he could hold together about 14 different threads in the same nonfiction narrative–without confusing the reader one bit. Hearing about his death brings a feeling of sadness and dismay. Sadness at the loss of such a talent, in a time when talented writers aren’t that common. And dismay in realizing that I’ll never again be able to read another new essay by Mr. Wallace.

Here are a few reflections on his death:

New York Times

LA Times

Chicago Tribune

Entertainment Weekly

I also include a link to a David Foster Wallace essay near and dear to my own heart — his review of Bryan Garner’s Modern American Usage. If you want to do it proper, subscribe to Harper’s and download it from there. It’s well worth the $16.97.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Language and literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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