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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.
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.