The most influential artists in my life seem to kill themselves soon after I discover them. Spalding Gray, Elliot Smith and most tragically of all, today, David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace Dead of Suicide at 46
My favourite author, a man who was highly influential in not just informing my writing style in both essays, blogging, and even online chatting, but can also be credited in part for changing the way I think about myself, and about culture, and ultimately in my choosing to pursue excellence through a design degree at the Emily Carr University, killed himself by hanging this week.
Wallace’s Infinite Jest remains the most important novel I’ve read, one that I return to in my thoughts and channel in many of my creative endeavours since I first found it in a discount bin at Chapters early in my university career. Prior to that it was my friend Graham who had mentioned a book he read about a city designed to look like the face of the urban planner’s lover. I myself was once in a beautiful and intelligent relationship with a girl that revolved in part around our admiration of the writer.
If, through television, The Simpsons continue to reverberate and manifest themselves in my personality in a very irrevocable way–and the same can be said for Brian Eno in my music-listening history–then DFW and his works are consistently at the top of my most-influential-list of literature. He’s part of my personal canon.
From an entry I wrote about Wallace in March, 2004:
IJ getting to have such a profound influence on my writing (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read his stuff, I should be ashamed), my academic goals, my squash game. Seriously: gets me thinking metaphysically about my squash game.
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