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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.
As opposed to "with idiocy comes no madness"? It's there regardless of how clever you are.
Full Tilt
Infinite Jest was an amazing book. Foster Wallace was an incredible writer. Very interesting and depressing. Time to read the jest again - ..
If you had, or knew anyone who had, an affective disorder that led to suicidal ideation or attempts, you wouldn't say that. Unless you actually are the ignorant, cold, and heartless ass your note reveals.
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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.
Or, the parents in Silicon Valley tend to be wealthy enough to get their kids diagnosed with Asperger's, and medicated/trained into being "better" students... just a thought.
I'm suspicious of how well documented this link really is; let alone, that any evidence is totally observational. Of course the randomized study would be grossly immoral, even if it were possible.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Apparently you never had anyone close to you commit suicide and therefor cannot understand why I consider people who take suicide willingly complete egoistic and ungrateful morons.
Those who commit suicide because they are mentally ill (schizofrenic, and such) and do not know right from wrong are excluded from this definition as they cannot possible be blamed for this utterly stupid and ultimate egoistic act.
Okay Troll I'll bite.
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.
In my experience it takes at least some serious mental instability to even consider suicide as an option.
Quick frankly you should be ashamed of yourself for holding the viewpoint you do. They failed and broke but know this - the people around them failed as well and many of us, myself included, will carry that failure to our graves with us.
And if I could find the bridge you live under I would drag you out into the sunlight with the rest of us and stake you out in it until you realize how important it is to help those around you.
'Scuse me now while I go shower to remove your nasty trollish smell from my presence.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Yet unlike you, he had the balls to sign his name to whatever he wrote.
Fuck off.
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.
Those who commit suicide are to blame for their actions unless someone forced them to do so. If you feel pity the deceased but not those left behind then you are the inhumane one.
You are judging the motives of suicides based on your own culture and ideals. Culturally and societally, there are reasons and causes for suicide that have nothing to do with mental instability historically and presently.
Personally, I view the act as an act of desperation, escape or destruction that can never be undone or repaired and should be avoided until absolutely all other options are explored and tested. There are times when I feel suicide may be appropriate, for example, in the case of the terminally ill. (My mother died of "natural causes" brought on by a degenerative nervous disorder and prayed for death and my own salvation for more than a year of unceasing misery before she finally died, choking to death in her sleep... presumably in her sleep... odds are good that she actually awoke while choking and dies of suffocation which I understand is actually rather painful.)
Suicide is a subject I have given a great deal of though and observation to. I find that suicides are too often unsuccessful, especially among women, and the chances of survival are too great. For this reason alone, suicide should be considered a very bad idea -- people just don't die the way they do in the movies. Hanging, for example, is a pretty horrible way to go -- you don't just magically die... and that death is ridiculously messy and disgusting.
There are a variety of other issues to concern one's self over and yes, some of them are rooted in family, society and culture. But generally speaking, people grow up within their own cultural ideals and beliefs. It is inappropriate to judge one culture, society or even an individual based specifically on your own ideals and beliefs. In it's own way, it is a form of prejudice as bad as any other.
I would draw a clear and bright line between what you say about David Foster Wallace ("he took the coward's way out") and others' reactions ("fawning news coverage"). The second point, I totally agree with you on. The first, I vehemently disagree.
We don't know why DFW committed suicide, and we might neverk now. But in the vast majority of cases, "cowardice" isn't even a relevant concept. Depression -- real, deep depression -- is not just about being in a crappy mood. Real depression (and other kinds of serious mental illness) messes you up so deeply that up seems like down and you cannot make rational sense out of yourself or the world. To call someone a "coward" implies that were faced with a choice and, with faculties intact, made a weak decision. Like I said, not a relevant concept for suicide.
And for the exact same reason, all the tributes making this into some sort of penetrating existential act of a man who saw the world too clearly... please! DFW was a brilliant thinker and writer, but his death is a tragedy and a loss. It is not an artistic act.
You're arguing from a rational perspective here, but I don't believe people kill themselves while in a rational frame of mind. Instead it's an emotional choice, brought about either by events and an inability to deal with them, or a disorder that creates the belief that suicide is the only option.
Cool, rational debate isn't a feature of suicides.
Those who commit suicide are to blame for their actions
Blame? Whatever, we're not short on people, everybody should be allowed to kill them self. Only religious nut cases (i.e. the mis-informed) believe otherwise.
If you feel pity (for?) the deceased...
I'm so jealous, what could be easier?
Look dude, it's not your fault, you don't have to fight it so hard. They made their choice, you must let go, get on with your live, go and make your choices. You don't have to feel guilt for their death, you don't have project that guilt on to the deceased.
I see your pain, feel pity for you. I feel pity for you because you feel you deserve pity, and well that's kind of sad. I feel pity, because you feel so guilty about the death of your wife (this was your wife, right?), that you continue to blame her for your suffering longer after her last breath.
You must accept the the decision she made, not feel guilt, not feel a need to blame her. I get the feeling you lover her a lot, even if you're not the best husband in world.
Forgive you're wife, then forgive yourself. There is no point in wasting two lives over one death. Take care.
M0571y H@rml355.
"most accounts?" There's hardly any information about the person William Shakespeare.
My uncle committed suicide a few weeks ago. All I'm going to relate is the position of his church implied by the words of the presiding priest. He used a quote (that I can't remember the attribution of) which went along the lines of, "When someone does this, it is no different than if they were set upon and murdered in the woods." My take on it was that the person had been overcome by some outside force. We don't have a problem who are physically overcome; we reserve our derision for people who are overcome mentally. Not very fair in light of the truth I learned in martial arts, which is that there is ALWAYS someone faster, stronger, or better trained than you. No matter how much we care to think nothing can overcome our will and clear thinking, it seems manifestly untrue in light of events like this.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Agreed. Depression is usually completely misunderstood by those with no experience of it, either direct or by loved one. Worse are the people who know someone is depressed and then tell them to "just snap out of it" or who pile on extra stress in other ways - it's like kicking the crutches out from someone with broken legs.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
> 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.
Huh? Just because you think the universe is better off without you doesn't mean you think you are the worst thing in existance. I think the universe would be better off without, lets say, hay fever. Does that in any way imply that I think hay fever is the worst and/or most important thing in the world? No, and such a conclusion would make no sense at all. But if I think the world would be better off without me, then that suddenly means I give myself greater importance than everything else?
> As for grateful... How about for being alive?
Yes. Its a pain and a constant struggle but sure beats the alternative.
Grateful for being alive? Why? And to whom should we be grateful?
Suppose you think your life sucks. If you are dead, you do not experience anything at all, so I guess being dead qualifies as 'neutral'. Surely if you really dislike your life and see no way to change this, then surely the rational thing is to die since that would be an improvement (it ends your suffering forever).
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 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.