David Foster Wallace an Apparent Suicide 232
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.
From the Harvey Mudd student list (Score:4, Informative)
A brief personal narrative (in the style of . . .) (Score:4, Informative)
(crossposted from Blacknell.net [blacknell.net])
Sad [latimes.com].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 [theatlantic.com].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 [amazon.com] as DFW). An early autobiography of this online journal community is available here [diaryhistoryproject.com] (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 [flickr.com], Venezuela [flickr.com], and Britain [flickr.com]. I've since reread it (in sections, while it wasn't lent out).
4Even though it isn't entirely representative [signonsandiego.com].
(Ah, for want of a superscript tag . . .)
Re:Very Very sad (Score:0, Informative)
damn, you're a fucking idiot.
Re:With great genius comes great madness (Score:3, Informative)
This is a myth. For instance, Shakespeare was by most accounts a gregarious, sane and happy fellow.
He also wrote an excellent popular math book! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:2, Informative)
For those modding up, this is a copy of a Stephen King troll.
Re:Good! (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Consider the Lobster (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:With great genius comes great madness (Score:4, Informative)
here's a list [wikipedia.org] from Wikipedia that cites several sources. here [autism.com] is an article discussing the relationship between Autism/Asperger and genius. here [psychologytoday.com] is an article on Psychology Today that discusses a growing movement within academic circles that views autism and similar disorders as just part of the spectrum of neurodiversity that our society is comprised of. and if you do a search for "Geek Syndrome" you can find a Wired article that i believe may have been on Slashdot a few years ago. i also recall reading something a few years ago on PubMed that discussed the correlation between genius and mental disorder.
another interesting paper i read on PubMed also discussed the evolutionary advantage of Bipolarism. basically, the author(s) argued that while Bipolarism/Manic-Depression may present an evolutionary disadvantage to the individual, the genes have been perpetuated because it fosters altruistic actions which coincide with kin selection.
all of this makes a certain amount of sense to me. i've always felt that bipolarism endows an individual with greater capacity for emotional experience. this can be a beneficial trait to artists/musicians since good artwork is defined by its ability to evoke strong emotions, and, likewise, good artwork is often inspired by emotional trauma in the artist's life. but greater emotional depth can also enable one to better empathize with others, which could potentially lead to altruistic behavior.
Re:Very Very sad (Score:4, Informative)
The word "survivor" has different contexts, and you're using it in a popular but not exlusive one.
"Person X is survived by their wife and children," is used simply to mean that when person X died, their wife and children lived on. It doesn't mean they all faced some danger together.
It only means that people lived on.
In fact, dictionary.com has "to remain alive after the death of someone," as the first definition.
It's correct to say that the family of a suicide are survivors.
Re:Suicidal Hanging? (Score:3, Informative)
Slip knot suspension is a little better than hanging, but both are better than suffocation, cutting, drowning in the tub, or overdosing because, with a strong rope and enough height, suspension or hanging better protect you from unconscious survival reflexes (whether it's tearing the bag open, not being able to cut under the veins, climbing out, or vomiting--all while unconscious). Carbon monoxide poising is on par with hanging because it is easy to not go far enough with both of those methods. The only better methods are jumping, shooting, or one of two hard-to-purchase cocktails. Hanging isn't that poor of an option considering none of the methods are foolproof, and that not everyone wants or can use on of the three better options.
Re:He also wrote an excellent popular math book! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the problem wasn't the distinction between these two infinities (he successfully and famously proved that with his diagonal argument) but rather whether there are any infinities in-between the infinity of the integers (aleph-0) and the infinity of the real line (the continuum, c). Specifically, he tried unsuccessfully to prove that the next higher infinity after aleph-0, called aleph-1, was equal to c.
As it turns out, this problem is unsolvable unless we assume it as an additional axiom of ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel with Choice) set theory, called the continuum hypothesis (CH), which states aleph-1=c. Goedel showed that is was OK to add CH to set theory without causing a contradiction (i.e. CH is consistent with the rest of ZFC set theory). That CH is independent, i.e. unprovable from the other axioms, was finally shown by Paul Cohen in 1963. He did this with a brilliant new technique he invented called "forcing", which became a stepping stone for a whole slew of amazing new discoveries about the "universe" of mind-bogglingly huge infinities that we mere mortals can barely even begin to grasp.
Re:With great genius comes great madness (Score:1, Informative)
here [autism.com] is an article discussing the relationship between Autism/Asperger and genius.
I have never seen any research connecting Autism with high intelligence.
While there is nothing preventing an autistic person from having high aptitude in many areas, I have never seen anything even remotely thorough that would suggest that there is a strong correlation.
I've seen an awful lot of claims of it being the case, however. Generally, I can't help but wonder if those can be attributed to the ego of autistic people or their friends and family who want to say "see, we're better off this way".
Social issues, however, may contribute a person with autism or aspergers to spend vastly more time working on and/or obsessing about an issue, which may lead to their having a greater understanding of the issue, but there's nothing precluding a non-autistic person from doing the same thing, except a greater capacity for social normalcy.
I don't think I buy your argument about bipolar disorder either. There is a certain allowance for "error" within animals and humans. There is absolutely NO evolutionary advantage to poor eyesight, except a general lack of necessity.
I would argue the same for long-term emotional stability.