Slashdot Mirror
David Foster Wallace an Apparent Suicide
snydeq passes along the news that David Foster Wallace was found dead Friday at his home in Claremont, California. Wallace's wife found her husband had hanged himself when she returned home at 9:30 PM Friday. The novelist, essayist, and humorist, best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, was 46. Wallace had been awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1997.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - David Foster Wallace was found dead in his Claremont home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the American community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to Society and true American patriotism. Truly an American icon.
I've referred to NAFTA as "The Sin of O.N.A.N." ever since reading Infinite Jest.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
This ain't rocket surgery.
It is a great loss. He will be missed.
I had the opportunity to meet David at a book signing. He was an incredibly gracious and friendly individual who will be missed by many in the literary field as well as everywhere else.
'Nuff Said.
Professor David Foster Wallace of Pomona College's English Department died tragically on Friday. Professor Wallace was a well-known writer and gifted creative writing instructor. Pomona College has planned two events to remember Professor Wallace's life. The first will be tomorrow (Monday) evening at 6:45 - a candlelight memorial in the Peter Stanley academic quad. The second - an informal opportunity to share thoughts - will be Wednesday, September 17 at 4pm in Smith Campus Center 201.
Infinite Jest was an amazing book. Foster Wallace was an incredible writer. Very interesting and depressing. Time to read the jest again - ..
"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness." -- Aristotle
The death of deconstruction and semiotics. Which is either terribly arch or exactly what it itself would have predicted.
Who read that as Stamford Wallace dead. I cheered. If you transform Spammers into non-humans, it is easy to cheer their demise.
Until I realised it was some guy I have never heard of. American Icon, true patriot? Maybe with his passing, you USians will need less of that.
He wrote a book that mostly makes fun of our dedication to corporatism and neo patriotism and all the things that have been wrong with our country in the past generation.
When they say 'true patriot' they mean the real one. Not a fox news patriot which are the worst kind.
(crossposted from Blacknell.net)
Sad.1 David Foster Wallace2, along with perhaps only William Gibson, had a reader in me for everything he wrote. So dedicated was I to his Infinite Jest that I carried it in planes, trains, and autobuses over three continents.3 If you've never read any of his work, maybe you could start with this brilliant 2005 essay on political talk radio.4
1And I say sad in some weirdly personal sense that comes from both finding his writing deeply compelling in itself, and identifying his work with a period of time in my life which is not missed, but stands out as significant in recollection.
2David Foster Wallace (or DFW, as he is popularly known among fans) also provided (albeit completely unknowingly) some of the reason that Blacknell.net exists today. The blog that inspired me to start my own was written by an alumnus of the law school I had just started in. He, in turn, had been motivated to write online (in a format once known as an "online journal") while he read Infinite Jest (nb. This same author once had an essay published in the same collection as DFW). An early autobiography of this online journal community is available here (it is amusing to consider how much energy was expended on the subject of diary v. journal, only to have blog become the accepted appellation).
3 A massive tome of a book with 1200 pages of writing to be relished and consumed (in addition to being read) I took two years to complete it, taking it to Panama, Venezuela, and Britain. I've since reread it (in sections, while it wasn't lent out).
4Even though it isn't entirely representative.
(Ah, for want of a superscript tag . . .)
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
a humorist? there is nothing funny about suicide..
I think it sucks(1) that he(2) died.(3)(4) We (5) need more (6) like him.(7)(8)
(1)Here, literally, I'm, of course, speaking metaphorically. I don't mean it literally sucked (like, say, the 500 dollar an hour prostitute sucked the republican hypocrites shriveled cock), but rather figuratively sucked (like, say, the republican hypocrites bill to put you in jail for the same prostitution related behavior). Incidentally, by "it", I can't tell if I mean the whole universe or his dying or if those might not be one and the same.
(2)David Foster Wallace, a brave writer who broke open peoples heads. Understood grammar structures and larger similar consciousness effect on conventions he altering did have.
(3) Due to concern for his family, I won't mention the obvious fact that a cover up of his botched murder is already underway by the CIA agents who killed him to stop him from publishing his new book, which would of liberated minds beyond the power of the narrow imaginations of the CIA to control.
(4) Did you ever notice how we always are sad people are dead, even though that obviously shows no empathy. Look, first of all, it's not like there was a David Foster Wallace. Any ego is an illusory construct, his was no exception. There may have been a self referential feedback pattern that thought it was David Foster Wallace, but that no more makes there a David Foster Wallace then David Foster Wallace thinking he is a blue potato makes him a blue potato.
Second of all, if he really wanted to die, and was in that much pain, who are we to judge. Can you imagine being David Foster Wallace and having to deal with idiots like you people all day, every day? Maybe we should be glad such a great mind is finally liberated from the pain of dealing with stupid dumb fucks like us (well, OK, just most of you) every day.
Third of all, if this was maybe an epic fail at autoerotic asphyxiation, as some scurrilous, borderline slanderous, and definitely inappropriately timed comments wryly have hinted at, we shouldn't think it's sad. The same perverted streak is probably what caused Grandpa Wallace to poke Grandma Wallace in the ass while she was butchering a pig. Without that perverted streak, the drop of cum his dad's dna was in would have never dripped out his grandmas dirty ass, and we would have never had him in the first place. It's misplaced to hate an aspect of nature that is responsible for the creation of things we like.
(5) I mean, again, you stupid fucks, who don't know how to use your brains.
(6) If certain theories about reincarnation are true, maybe DFW stepped out when he did because, at the magical, metalogical realms he walked in, he saw it as an optimal time to reincarnate to the best effect.
(7) In the sense of writing and thinking like he did.
(8) If we want more people that brilliant, we need to do a better job making the world not suck. People of the internet, it's not good enough to sit around reading about tech and science fiction while smoking pot and jacking off. If you don't use your brain right while your are reading science fiction, smoking pot, and jacking off to the same perverted porn that lead your parents to the sex act that made you, you might as well be in a church on your knees praying to a God that doesn't exist, or in a university fighting for biosurvival tickets, with which to do ridiculous rituals that have as much to do with truth as catholicism in many cases, with memetically sophisticated domesticated primates who fight over their ideas long after they have been rendered obsolete, or raising your kids to be as dogmatic as you are, for all the good it will do yourself, your world, and the nothingness you arise in and return to. What does it say about us and where we are headed in the 21st century that someone as brilliant as DFW wouldn't stick around and experience it? Can we do better than this?
Henceforth, the part of David Foster Wallace will be played by Moe Szyslak.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
If you don't want to leap into "Infinite Jest," start with "Girl With Curious Hair."
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
it's strange,
i was feeling a bit blue just a couple days ago, and was considering rereading IJ to cheer me up: it's a book which always puts things in perspective and makes me laugh, and i especially appreciate that it makes *me* feel smart and witty, as if DFW were loaning me a portion of his verve and charm for a while.
IJ is in my opinion the best novel in the english language,
and DFW's suicide at such a young age is a huge loss to literature.
my thoughts go out to his family, friends, students, and fans.
Most great artists please many, but inside are miserable. God's greatest gifts make the receiver miserable, but give pleasure to many. Kind of fascinating to me. Almost like their internal misery is the source of their genius.
The description of footnotes in Infinite Jest reminds me of Wilson by David Mamet. Would Wilson be considered "in the style" of Infinite Jest?
Yet unlike you, he had the balls to sign his name to whatever he wrote.
Fuck off.
hemp rope makes a lousy necktie especially when you tie it to the ceiling. Sorry, no sleep, 12 Red Bulls and three quad lattes later your sense of humor is heavily influenced by the caffeine related brain damage.
...you just blew my fuckin' mind.
/toke
In which telephone book can I find the name "yourpusher"?
You're not exactly showing a lot of bravery yourself, you cowardly little chickenshit punk. Identify yourself so I can beat your ass like you deserve - DO IT NOW!
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
All the coverage of this cowardly act seems to really implicitly glamorize suicide. When people kill themselves, they hurt families, loved ones, etc. Then there's all this fawning news coverage of the suicide... oh come on.
He took the cowards way out. No diagnosis of terminal cancer, his death doesn't somehow cleverly result in saving someone from some terrible fate, there's no apparent real reason for doing it other than just giving up.
Fine, your life is the only real currency you have any anyone should be entitled to make that one decision about when and where they go. But for the news to make such a big deal out of it is a disservice to all the writers whos passing went unannounced and sends a terribly mixed message to society about how we value folks more for their death than their life.
No slashdot discussion of DFW is completely without mentioning Everything and More. In addition to his fiction, he wrote an excellent non-fiction book about the history of mathematical infinity. Unlike most popular math books, it was interesting and not condescending. He clearly taught himself a good amount of Analysis in order to write so well on the subject. If any slashdotter wants to see what made this guy great, you'd do well to start there. Not only is it excellent writing, it's technically coherent and you'll likely learn something.
Appropriate here may be what he had to say about the popular story of Georg Cantor going insane trying to understand infinity (specifically the distinction between the infinity of integers, and the "larger" infinity of the real line):
"To lament Cantor's failure to describe infinity, is like feeling sorry that St. George lost to the Dragon. It is both wrong and insulting." (paraphrased)
Of course no one is lamenting DFW's failures per se, but I can't imagine many accomplished postmodern writers caring to get the grip on modern mathematics that DFW did. He didn't go for the low-hanging fruit, this guy.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I just read some sad news in the New York Post - writer David Foster Wallace was found dead in his Claremont home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure a small minority of people in the Slashdot community will miss him - even though I didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture, which, as we all know, is destroying this country. Truly an American icon.
You can't believe that the world would be better off with you dead - without giving yourself greater importance than EVERYTHING else in the world.
You are SO bad for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE that your death will cause a sigh of relief across the all of the existence.
Hell yeah suicidal people are egotistic!
They just express it differently than usually expected.
As for grateful... How about for being alive?
Yes. Its a pain and a constant struggle but sure beats the alternative.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Depression is a horrible thing and it hits many without notice and can be a horrible experience. Many of you will look at this death as weakness but the reality is some of the greatest and strongest people alive (and dead) have suffered with the demon that is depression for years often with no help and in complete ignorance by those around the sufferer.
Never heard of the guy. But this seems to be interesting.
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/1997/03/27/2/an-interview-with-david-foster-wallace
... to start thinking about the casting for the "Infinite Jest - the movie"?
I mean... Angelina and Brad are not getting any younger...
P.S. Yes. I am joking. Dark humor and stuff like that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yessir, never let your ignorance get in the way of a good USA bashing. If you'd taken the time to read up on Wallace (by clicking on the convenient link provided in the summary) you would have found out that he was exactly the opposite of what you surmised from your misreading of a satirical troll.
This ain't rocket surgery.
You're not exactly showing a lot of bravery yourself, you cowardly little chickenshit punk. Identify yourself so I can beat your ass like you deserve - DO IT NOW!
Wow, I can find out who yourpusher is within two clicks of his comment. As opposed to 'strelitsa'... who is only known to us as "technical writer, rouge, dab hand with soldering iron".
This is, what, the pot calling the china black?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"Wouldn't you like to be alive?"
The silence of their approval was deafening.
I still can't hear very well with my right ear because of that.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Almost like", nothing. I'm no genius, but I was a pretty decent writer when I was depressed. I managed to ride it out instead of offing myself, and actually got better--but I just haven't been able to hang a complete story together since.
Bravo my good man!
If you want to kill yourself, fine, go right ahead. Your life, end it if you wish.
But why in the world would anyone commit suicide by hanging? There are plenty of other options to choose from. Especially when most suicidal hangings are done WRONG and end up taking loads more time to die than they had intended.
Don't do it. It's stupid. Pick something else.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
This short post by an AC is an excellent point.
I don't care why he did it. I don't care if he was depressed. I don't care if people think he was weak. All I know is that he was one of the greatest writers I ever had the pleasure of reading. It's a tragedy that he's gone. That's all. Just a god damn tragedy.
If you like David Foster Wallace or would like to get a good idea of his style without diving headfirst into a novel, check out Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. It has the full range of his work, from literary criticism to a hilarious essay describing his trip to a porn convention and various rambling thoughts on pornography's relationship with "regular" society and art. There's some really great stuff in that.
RIP DFW.
Welcome to the Internet. See those little underlined words? They're called hyperlinks. You can click on them for more information!
All the coverage of this cowardly act seems to really implicitly glamorize suicide.
Apparent suicide. A writer that questioned the patriotism of those who take away rights in the name of security and criticized McCain found dead. Somehow I think Jonathan Swift would have apparently committed suicide as well, if he were to have lived now.
I'm just saying that it seems like a lot of people are committing apparent suicide these days. This guy, the 'dc madame', the anthrax guy come to mind. Suppose there's a drug that pharmaceutical companies discovered doing normal drug research that makes people very suicidal and was kept secret by the man -- how would you know then even with no evidence of foul play if these people actually committed suicide under their own free will?
Seems to me the only fair thing to do is celebrate the departed's accomplishments regardless of how their death happened.
"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun--for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax--This won't hurt" -- Hunter S. Thompson, suicide note.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
the rules are simple:
1. sound of mind, unsound of body: suicide is ok. euthanasia is morally sound for the terminally ill
2. unsound of mind, sound of body: suicide is not ok. if you are mentally ill, that casts a question mark over your decision making abilities. as such, a decision to end your life when you are not mentally sound is not a decision anyone else should respect, simply because it is not free will which is guiding the decision
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ah, but we know that he is, indeed, red and not black.
Duh.
They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier.
This is a great loss. Just the other day, I finished reading 'Consider the Lobster', and I thought every one of those essays was interesting, funny, informative and insightful.
I hope it's not selfish to say that I'm sad that now there will never be a new 'Infinite Jest'.
I just bought Infinite Jest a couple weeks ago, after reading a few blurbs about it. Never heard of it or the author before that.
(it is amusing to consider how much energy was expended on the subject of diary v. journal, only to have blog become the accepted appellation).
I'm sure, especially when you know that the words diary and journal come from the same root.
It reminds me of the satisfaction I once got (during a deposition) at a glimpse of the silliness of legal language. When asked how fast a car was going at the time of an accident, I said, "I guess about fifteen miles an hour." I got this horrified look and an admonition that this was serious business and I was not allowed merely to "guess".
So I asked what I was allowed to say. The answer: "I estimate ...."
Oh fun, especially when you know that the source of the word "estimate" is the Latin "aestimare", which, of course, means "to guess".
Lawyers -- paahhh.
the idea is to respect free will
but if your decision making process is under the effect of a disease OF your decision making organ, then you aren't making decisions based on your free will
therefore, the decision to commit suicide by someone mentally ill cannot be respected, if you respect free will
in fact, all suicides who have been stopped or unsuccessful have reached a point later in their life where they were glad they didn't succeed
its amazing what modern psychopharmacology is capable of. its not a permanent state, whatever your mental illness
suicide by the sound of body, but unsound of mind, can never be respected, in logical accord with the idea of respecting free will
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I realize feeding the trolls is a bad idea, but as a Mudder myself, I'd hate for the casual reader to get the wrong idea about us from the AC. Mudd is a liberal arts school with a strong humanities & social science emphasis in addition to all of the thermionic emissions and np completeness stuff. If you want to call English and religious studies (the latter of which I'm concentrating in) 'fluff', then, yeah, Mudd is about 'fluff'.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
It (1) is sad news (2) (3) he (4) died (5). We (6) need more people (7) like him (8). (1) sad news. (2) I don't understand why it's sad news. As I see it, there are three possibilities. First, such an enlightened being maybe just noticed that he could reincarnate to the best effect by cutting his time here short. In such a case, it's not sad news. In the meta-logical world that he walked in, he just made a logical choice and will be back at us, fundamentally unchanged, in a fundamentally new form. The next 40 or 50 years must be great if he hopped off the elevator now to get a start being in his or her new prime by then. Second, look at it from his point of view. Can you imagine being him and having to deal with stupid fucks like us every day? If we had empathy for him, we should be glad he is freed from his misery, especially the misery of being a couple hundred years ahead of his time. Third, if, like some very scurrilous, completely inappropriate, unfactual and baseless, based on nothing but speculation, comments, poorly timed and in bad taste, on slashdot, have suggested, this might conceivably be an epic fail at autoerotic asphyxiation, then isn't it also true that the same genetic propensity towards perversion may have been what caused grandpa Wallace to plug grandma Wallace in her ass while she was butchering a pig, causing pa Wallace to be born and thus Infinite Jest to get written, so, it doesn't make sense to be sad about a consequence of something like that, which led to so many good things including the birth of the person. (3) Is it sad when the sun sets? Why the heavy taboo around death? (4) He, ostensibly, refers to Wallace, who, being a human, like any other (until recently?), is actually nothing but a self referential feedback loop that temporarily deceives itself into thinking it exists, as Wallace himself no doubt understands, which actually has no discrete boundary with the environment it hilariously confuses itself about thinking it is separate from, and might more accurately be thought of as a single brilliant thought (a eureka) in a larger cognitive process. (5) Wallace is one of those guys for whom death doesn't really represent a shift in consciousness. In the east, they have gurus. We get sci-fi writers. (6) Us stupid fucks. (7) Understood grammar effects and structures of larger logical altering of people on consciousness parallel in altering the style of who in synchronic analogy and linked multiple of interpretation same the data of. (8) David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace was one of the few great contempory American writers. His talent will be missed.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Death by hanging is what people in jail attempt because it's all that can be linked to themselves while they are held in the cell against their will. Is that what he was thinking his last moments, that all he can find was an innocent rope because his jailer/wife would suspect him of anything other than the standard cleaning solvents in the average grocery list?
That's exactly what the cops are trying to prevent. You see, that's why the cops hung him in his own house so there wouldn't be a traceable firearm or anything further than an abrasion of struggle concealed and overlay by the hanging. And if you all thought this was funny, then let me tell you: nobody actually dies alone; someone else is the reason why you are dead; their inductance of opinion, if not suggestion or physical force, brings you up to that one point that you consider your own value to be that of what everyone you've argued towards and their unproductive and compeltly unscientific attention to return cursing rather than an uninterested or neutral stance. Death by hanging? What are you people thinking? It's the easiest way to kill someone without evidence of a firearm or any other implement. I can't tell you how many home-invasion robberies occur here in southern California, where certain turn-coat thieves will wear all kinds of disguises to build confidence. By day, they are police men and women, and by night they are wearing painter's gear head to booties to contain any evidence. Death by hanging leaves no evidence behind, because it looks like the rope itself killed him without any assistance!
He wasn't killed uninentionally, he wasn't slayed for another's gain, he was murdered because his beliefs were that much more annoying. Just look at the man's record.
simply that one's "heart" has been murdered, and one "follows" one's murdered heart into silent death.
Why be abused more for no reason?
What could one gain?
If one's will-to-live was beaten by "boundary violation"
( which doesn't require that someone "get off", btw,
only that "authority" molest one's validity
deeply enough that one's human formation is sabotaged ), as a child,
and one is waging continuous up-hill battle to finish one's childhood self/other formation, and
one is waging continuous up-hill battle against depression,
AND working at functioning in a world that doesn't give a fsck about any real worth
( quarterly cash's more important! ),
and those who don't have to work to *exist* insist we are gutless cowards,
why on earth bother?
Once we get rid of ourselves, you ( not parent-poster,
but the shits who haven't enough honesty to hold heart-worth to be
worth more than Status or Cash or Authority-On-Others )
will have less to complain about,
so therefore it'll be a "better" world with us ripped out, right?
We're tired of waging multiple-front wars,
and having "normal" insist there is something wrong with us AS HUMAN BEINGS,
because our *condition* isn't the same as you.
Missing limb people in the same boat?
From your reactions, normals, the answer is Yes.
There isn't anything wrong with us as human beings:
there is something wrong with how much we have to work to even live,
and that's something wrong with the condition ON us,
not wrong with US.
I have considered suicide many times on a purley rational level. This is not a joke, I seriously sit around and think about this stuff. Here are some of my motives for rationally killing myself:
1. Curiosity. What happens when you die? Is there life after death? Is there a supernatural expirience to death? Can I find a mechanism to kill myself temporarily then revive before brain damage and still find the above answers? Will my subjective expiriences of death counter those of other near death expiriences?
2. Politics. If I am extremely old and ill, should I go on a death mission (example, assissinate George W. Bush, whoops thats a echelon2 dictionary word) before I die, for a precieved good for society? Basically martarydom.
3. Finances. Find a way to get insurance to cover sucidal death (as a mental illness), then kill your self when your really old anyways so your grand kids can have additional money from the insurance agency.
4. Illness. Why deal with the pain? Best works when combined with number 3 and 2.
5. Art/Fame. I often considered how suicide could be used as an artwork to codify works in history.
6. Fun. Trying something you always wanted to do, but knew it would result in death. For example, playing paint ball in iraq while dressed as the al queda (damn another echelon keyword).
7. Revenge. I dont have anything against anyone I personally know, but revenge could also be a rationalized form of suicide. I.E. setting somone you didnt like up to make the crime scene look like a murder, when it was actually a suicide. Could be political. I.E. Creating a false scnario where it appears that a cop killed you with unjustified force to influence publics opinion on security and management of police forces.
The conclusion of my rationalisations? Makeveli's The Price answered it best, faking your death would just as easily work for all these scanrios other than physical ailments.
While sucide can be commited for rational reasons in special cases, a truly rationalized thought process should also include the possibilty of a fake suicide.
there you will find that i condone euthanasia
suicide due to mental illness is not the same thing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In a culture where mental illness or instability are taboo subjects and the condition is stigmatized, "normal" people work to distance their self-image from these characteristics. They also project this "normalcy" onto everything in their lives.
People who consider themselves "normal" will brand any of their mental states as normal and healthy. This applies to everyone, including many who are clearly diagnosable (according to trained, objective observers) but who are in denial of their disability.
As a survivor and caretaker of mentally ill family, I have developed a very different view. I see the gradual slide into illness that happens all around me in society. Luckily, most people merely dip their toes into madness and then return to the sunlight. A relative few slip over the edge and are lost. And most frightening are those who are able to cross in and out at will (sociopaths and the like).
I also think that EVERYONE who commits violent acts against himself or others is clearly ill at the time. But society cannot tolerate such a view, because it makes ethics too confusing. What are we doing with prisons if everyone was ill? How do we reconcile the many forms of high-functioning disease and the wide range of rehabilitative potentials?
is a valid conceptual demarcation
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...a supposedly fun thing he'll never do again.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Judging from the content of your post, I'd say you probably didn't waste too much time worrying about passing this "english" of which you speak.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
And one less of you would make it even better. It's odd that someone like you--with the empathy of a mollusk--would even pretend to care that he committed a selfish act.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
So, now we know. Karl Rove reads Slashdot.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
As a survivor of having a close relative commit suicide I can easily say that by the time they commit the act they are already mentally ill.
If someone were to slowly torture you, turning one piece of your body to mush after the next in the most painful agonizing way - I'm talking medieval torture - crushing bones, destroying internal organs slowly, cutting, stabbing, burning - pain that didn't leave you so you could sleep or eat or function - so that you knew you were going to die but that it were going to take a long time, and so that you knew all the best life had to offer was long over, wouldn't you consider suicide? There are diseases - cancers, degenerative diseases etc. that are very much like that. It always doesn't take mental illness - extreme pain is enough. Now also consider that some people are in similar degrees of emmotional pain.
You can of course redefine wanting to take your life as a mental illness, but to say mental illness is a pre-requisite speaks volumes for your limited experience and imagination.
I only hope you and I are never in that kind of pain. Suicide shouldn't be glorified (ala Heath Ledger) - that's destructive. However to show no pity for a soul in such pain that they're willing to take their life is also destructive.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Duh
Thanks, that adds to the conversation.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
note: not an Anonymous Coward but can't remember my login - last slashdot post was so long ago.
What people's aren't talking about or considering publicly--before diving into the ins and outs of suicide--is the possibility that it may be a case of erotic asphyxiation. Which might help explain DFW's lack of depressive symptoms or "tells."
I don't believe this has been ruled a suicide yet, has it? primary news sources are still referring to it as "apparent suicide."
Whatever happened, it's tragic -- a terrible, terrible loss.
Given the mess left behind by guns, along with the likelihood of screwing up with either guns, knives or drugs, if you want to be sure, hanging is actually a pretty descent way to terminate one's life.
Even if the actual death takes several minutes, the individual is most likely unconscious.
Even if you don't go for a long drop, several kids have successfully (if unintentionally) killed themselves with bathroom cloth towel machines by simply being patient.
Blacking out from oxygen loss to the brain doesn't generally seem to be as terrifying as suffocation/strangulation. (ie: cutting off the blood supply versus the air supply) and it's also much faster. However, achieving blood choke with a noose may be a challenge.
The last typical option that I skipped in the above is CO (carbon monoxide poisoning). This can be problematic as you need a vehicle, and privacy. It can also be dangerous to the discoverer if they wander into the area where you've contained the CO. ie: if you have a spouse/kids and you don't want them to be physically harmed or die when they find you.
Has anyone else noticed that, when his publications are summarized in obituaries, "Everything And More" is never even mentioned? Math haters in charge of the lit section? For the record, it's an interesting, nonfiction book about the historical development of the concept of infinity in mathematics. David Foster Wallace will certainly be missed. A terrible loss.
Big brains cause depression. How can anyone who looks at the world with any insight be anything but depressed and angry? If you don't feel for the people of this planet, you're *much* sicker than us depressed "geniuses".
(If you don't get that, just consider that fact that we let people starve to death while we have a surplus of food.)
I'm a "genius" (top 1% of LSAT, without studying) and I'll tell you, it's hard. I've battled with drug addiction for most of my life, because they make the pain go away ... for a while. Sometimes, even a little bit of relief is worth it. And no, I won't go see a shrink because I've actually studied psychology and I understand that they don't know wtf they're doing. I'd rather smoke a bit of pot than take something stupid like Adavan.
We try a lot of things to take away the pain. Optimism and activism ... but it makes no difference. We try to just duck our heads in the sand and focus on the mundane, things like jobs and family, but the world always raises its ugly head. Then we get to the drugs... nice ... some real relief for a change ... until they stop working. Then you stare down the barrel of your pistol for a while and worry about how bad this is going to hurt your loved ones... which is the only reason I'm still here today.
David Forest Wallace, I hope you found some peace.
Waiting for death,
Jon H. (sorry, I'm too paranoid to ever use an account)
PS: Pot's the best. It gives just a bit of relief and you don't have to deal with stuff like alcoholism or any of the side effects of the psych meds.
For those of you able to read
That's all well and good, but nowhere do I see you say anything about having compassion or understanding. Perhaps you've never struggled with mental illness. For those of us who have, it's not so easy to condemn David Foster Wallace for what he did.
Obviously, his suicide is regrettable, both for its impact on his survivors, and for the loss of what he could have done had he lived on. I don't think anyone would argue that it's "OK" when someone commits suicide when they're mentally ill. But don't be so quick to lash out at the deceased and condemn them. Mental illness is a perverse thing and it robs its sufferers of much of their mental faculties. Making any kind of rational decision under those circumstances can be nigh impossible.
I'm not sure I buy your claim that free will didn't enter into the picture. The question of free will in the case of the mentally ill is a tough nut to crack, and I don't pretend to have the answers -- but I also don't think anyone else does either, regardless of their claims of certitude.
So, yeah, I've "been there" before. It's easy for me now to look back on those events (which I can thankfully count on one hand) and say, "Wow, what the hell was I thinking?" And the truth is, in the middle of those suicidal times, my thought process seemed rational, albeit tinged with depression. I distinctly remember that peculiar feeling of hopelessness. Had it not been for the intervention of dear friends (and in a couple instances, authority figures), I never would have gotten through those situations. I survived, and I got help. I feel sad that some people, even well respected people (and here I'm thinking of folks like DFW and Pushpinder Singh), apparently didn't get the help they needed.
isn't true compassion about helping the suicide choose life over death?
if the temperature in a boiler goes over 200 degrees and the boiler becomes broken, it might be useful to discard the boiler at that point. right?
well, what if the thermometer itself is broken? how can you make a valid decision when the tools you use to make that decision are warped?
such as it is with mental illness: there is no free will involved. decisions are being made under duress
would you respect the decision of a man to kill himself when there is a guy standing by his side hammering his head with a shovel?
so why do you respect the decision of a man to kill himself when he depressed? schizoid? same duress, same lack of free will involved
especially since there are psychoactive compounds nowadays rthat can make that guy with a shovel dissipate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is a difference between having depression and killing yourself. There is help available and there are people you can talk to. Do you really think his pain justified the pain that his wife felt, and will continue to feel, after finding her husband hanging from the ceiling? Or how about all his fans? You may think they are inconsequential, but a whole lot of people admired him and his writing. How would you feel if your favorite author offed himself? That person may be "at peace," but he hurt a lot of people to get there. Suicide is the act of a very selfish person.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Here's a brilliantly written piece (IMHO) by DFW on Roger Federer. I'd never heard of the man till I came across this article a couple of years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html