Coppin’ Styles and Missin’ DFW

So it feels like there’s been an unusually lot of higher-profile people dying lately and I always find it harder to feel more than Well, Isn’t That Sad for any particular one because I know that the real impact of a television or film personality is effectively zero on my life other than someone else will be hosting Meet The Press for that hour from now on, but I have to say — even though it kind of annoys me when people write things like this because I’m always crazy tempted to quietly sneer at their subtly self-aggrandizing ‘aren’t I, anonymous internet blogger, extraordinarily well read’ motives — that the suicide of David Foster Wallace really is That Sad.

Lots of pubs have been trotting out their past dealings with DFW in the wake of the wake, and I just wanted to pass along this one that I finally just now got around to reading:

The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub
Seven Days In The Life Of The Late, Great John McCain

because it’s curiously timely and interesting in a present-reflection kind of way, and because, even at 11 pages and at times un-tread-ably dense (there’s an acronym glossary at the end of page 11 that still warrants a read after the fact, if you manage wend your way through without it), and even though it’s not his funniest or sharpest or most affecting piece of prose, it’s suddenly reminded me (well over a month later) of just how much I will genuinely miss his voice which, as admittedly cliched as it is in certain-modern-circles, is one of the truest inspirations I’ve ever really had as a quote-unquote writer or even just as a thinker, and brings out that same dull, empty ache that I had when I finished I.J. and realized I’d never get to spend time with those characters again, only now so completely assuredly.