Suicide Newscycle · 25 September 2008
I keep wondering what David Foster Wallace would say. With the collapse of the (financial) system and all. Each day is more accursedly interesting, pushes what I thought was the the solid envelope of social dis/order. The boundary between believability and unbelievability is moving. In a sense I am meditating on that boundary, like other times I practice at the edge of mind and body, and still others hypnotize by finding the space that is the meeting of the eyelids or the place the skin meets the air around it.
The question is: how do we believe the unbelievable as it goes down? How do we update the definition of the situation? The movement between belief and disbelief is, I have to admit, partly projection. I’m under hilarious stress at work—stress that feels epic. I see the dread in Nancy Pelosi’s eyes and think I understand.
Really, I wish DFW were here and could see all this, the same way I wish Hildegaard could listen to The Photographer through my ears or Mark Twain could look out of airplane windows from behind my eyes. DFW’s been dead two weeks now and the eulogizing’s done and forgotten. The first long obits appeared within hours (prepared in advance by those reading the signs? I have to wonder) and were bumped down within a day. This is what clickability does. Slashes mourning periods right down to the blip-length of “news.” But I love the way that some people resisted that or even pushed back in to it, turned the internet into an historical repository of memory and place for a new level of shared loss. The comments on the LA Times obit are better to me than any flowers at a grave.
I remember somewhere DFW wrote that Wittgenstein was the most terrifying writer of his century, but also so inspiring because the philosopher concluded that solipsism was for the weak. Did DFW really say that? Maybe I’ve made it up. Because it seems ridiculous—for an autistic genius between the wars, of course solipsism was a problem. For DFW? No, empathy was the problem. Lobsters and all. The few obits I saw wanted to understand DFW’s suicide as the conclusion to some sort of philosophical problem. You know, make it all analytical and conclusive and hold the man to account for his mistaken computations of the problem at hand.
Isn’t this all a bit high-minded, making it a philosophical problem? Sadness and loneliness are universal if stronger in some—the sharing of that sadness at ad-hoc monuments that would be postmodern jokes if they weren’t so deep and human is what we do despite technology (and other forces) that want to slice us thin. Community is as much the default state as isolation and “self ownership.” If there was any narrative that DFW’s deep natural sadness affixed to for me, it was the tragedies of connectedness as much as of isolation. He had a way of making me meditate on that boundary—individuation and community—better than my own discipline, which is supposed to be rooted in just that synthesis. He is behind my eyes now whether he likes it or not. He’d probably think this historization and borglike absorption of his perspective to be imperial and somehow mistaken, but this is what you get for dying, David.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: integration
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Also, a syllabus. [ via ]
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 25, 10:10 PM · #
i find it disgusting that anyone would hang themself for their spouse to find. a selfish act of the highest order. although i commend him for not making a mess if he would have put a gun in his mouth, gotta give him some respect. not that my rhetoric has anything to do with what your point is….
Posted by: bindifry · Sep 26, 07:50 AM · #
despite technology? I’d say precisely because of it. What are the most successful technologies? The ones that make us feel connected: mobile phones, the net.
Posted by: V · Sep 26, 08:29 AM · #
Not read him. But after two paragraphs of the commencement, I like him.
Killing yourself is the ultimate sadness, no matter the debris left behind, sadness has become the lens, and devourer it is.
What do you suggest I read from him?
Posted by: Gregor · Sep 26, 09:15 AM · #
Keep in mind he’s writing that way coming out of just a heritage in the amusing if onanistic Barthes/ Barthelme/ Gaddis kind of old white boy postmoderism. As far as I know, he’s just a product of a mainstream, relatively upper crust all-American experience. No “spiritual” or self-reflective inculcations in his lifeworld. Just one guy’s consciousness expressing itself in an original way. All of it, however we understand it.
I recommend “Little Expressionless Animals” in the collection Girl With Curious Hair.
See also William T. Vollmann.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 26, 09:46 AM · #
Well, no spiritual inculcations, in the sense of no inculcations of any sort. But would you agree there is some deep longing in there?
Gregor: The beginning of “Infinite Jest” is a good place to start w/DFW, even if you never intend to finish the book.
Posted by: karen · Sep 26, 09:56 AM · #
Yes. He is irreverant and reverant. At the same time. Not in an ironic way.
Many overly-workshopped writers in his genre have tried to express the same mood. It often comes off forced or syrupy, especially to the cynical, whipsmart readership that Thomas Pynchon created.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 26, 10:03 AM · #
Tanks.
Library next week then!
I can deal with the electricity without the voltage. The cynical-whipsmarts have yet to feel their toes. But they will…
Posted by: Gregor · Sep 26, 10:42 AM · #
This is an interesting hook to the idea of solipsism. Somebody close to me took the path of suicide and I’ve wondered about it (without conclusion) ever since. The difficulty in looking at a suicide and trying to figure out its meaning is that it seems utterly impossible. For a person who wouldn’t take his/her own life to understand why a person would take his/her own life… where is the toehold on which to build up some kind of reason to it?
As it looks to me after this person I knew decided to “quit”, there must be a lack of understanding of the boundary between individual and society. The suicidal person loses the solid sense of identity that’s necessary for living and gets lost in the haze and the swirl created by all the external forces that press against them. I make a tremendous stretch here but it’s all I’ve had to work with.
There is some philosophy to ponder when a person commits suicide and it might be described as anti-solipsism — i.e., the person did not seek to know their self as it was but instead got lost in the extraneous details that are part of living within a society. They know themselves only by way of the external effects of their lives. They get swamped but don’t know how to keep their sense of identity high and dry; they affix to outside influences, which method of living never makes sense, and the pain of it outweighs the drive to live.
So it looks to me.
Posted by: Carl · Sep 26, 03:13 PM · #
but why ruin someone elses life (his wife)? that can’t be easy for her to live with for the rest of her life. how would you like to come home and find your spouse hanging in a closet? what would that do to you?
sorry, but i think suicide is a cop out. he was a great teacher, loved by all of the kids at the school he taught. how do you think all those kids must feel?
life is so short. have the balls to stick it out. gonna die anyways soon enough. but i’m quite sure there are depressed people who believe he had no choice. to that i can not agree.
Posted by: bindifry · Sep 26, 04:50 PM · #
But Bindifry, isn’t suicide a statement that the person shall no longer live his/her life for the convenience of others? If a person comes to decide to withdraw participation from life then it must be pretty serious and they probably aren’t so concerned about emotional shocks to witnesses and bystanders. These usually are people that swallow their own emotional duress for periods of many years until their lives become intolerably bleak.
Posted by: Carl · Sep 27, 09:40 AM · #
last days of DFW
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/09/26/david_foster_wallace/
Posted by: karen · Sep 27, 10:46 AM · #
“Ineluctable modality of the visible”
Perhaps the last great literary genius
of Gen X
Lived out
his Infinite Jest
“Then went down to the ship”
only to be compared to
The Dead
why not?
Posted by: Kyrsten · Sep 27, 06:26 PM · #
hi (0v0) was DWF depressed? did he have a terminal illness? he’s not the first writer in recent history to do the same. there was or is a group getting together to listen to a mahayanan Buddist speak on suicide in SF soon. i don’t think i will go. this is where, despite practicing buddhism/meditation/yoga, where i should be open to a sensitive discussion on the subject, i prefer to stick to my catholic view on the subject, that it brings pain to others and doesn’t solve much. an influential woman in texas who i befriended did as much after finding that her husband was having an affair and after she failed to win a seat in the local government. she was one who would scream at you if you ate incorrectly; was a fanatic vegetarian, yet smoked. she was so full of controversy. her memorial was incredibly attended, but everyone’s view was that in a moment of depression, she grabbed a gun, when she shouldn’t have. On another note, she slept on an empire style bed in which supposedly Napoleon slept, but that is another story. Her library was paneled matchbook style in rosewood. That is a very expensive wall treatment. She was part cherokee Indian, looked like Nefertiti, was rich. When she threw a party, she would be the last to arrive, descending her stairs in a long dress, pearl necklace, oil of olay caked on her face, her hair done Audrey Hepburn style, holding a cigarrette holder. Food was served in her husband giant silver trays from South Africa. Does this not point to an unusual character? I’m not making this up to be entertaining. I think she wasted her life by leaving it so young. And why be vegetarian, smoke and then do what she did to herself?
hugs
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Sep 28, 06:50 PM · #
thanks for the link, Karen.
Posted by: R · Sep 28, 07:28 PM · #
OK, now that I have read the article Karen linked us to, I see he suffered from depression. But I also see how he depended on drugs to treat it. I know that there are people who are clinically sick and depend on psycho-medications to function. However, I know from up very close that there are many doctors who just push pills on their mental therapy patients and these people become partly disfunctional every day when they pop a valium or prozac to abate stress. With enough years of consumption of these drugs, they become walking zombies 15% of every day. If instead of relying on chemical means they found ways to control depression through yoga, meditation, obesity avoidance, they would enjoy better lives. For that to happen, the pill pushing psychiatrists and psycho-pharmacologists would have to believe that too, or the patient would have to get away from them and seek other sources of support that won’t make them so dependent on chemical means of relief.
hugs
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Sep 29, 03:48 AM · #
I think DFW qualified as having bona fide soul-rending clinical depression.
Posted by: karen · Sep 29, 04:31 AM · #
“OK, now that I have read the article Karen linked us to, I see he suffered from depression. But I also see how he depended on drugs to treat it. I know that there are people who are clinically sick and depend on psycho-medications to function. However, I know from up very close that there are many doctors who just push pills on their mental therapy patients and these people become partly disfunctional every day when they pop a valium or prozac to abate stress. With enough years of consumption of these drugs, they become walking zombies 15% of every day. If instead of relying on chemical means they found ways to control depression through yoga, meditation, obesity avoidance, they would enjoy better lives. For that to happen, the pill pushing psychiatrists and psycho-pharmacologists would have to believe that too, or the patient would have to get away from them and seek other sources of support that won’t make them so dependent on chemical means of relief.
Hugs Arturo”
Wow, so many things wrong with this thing you just wrote…I can’t even get started. I am totally appalled.
Oh, yes let’s start here! You spelled dysfunctional wrong and there should be capitals on Prozac and Valium.
Oh, and let’s not forget that they used to use shock therapy for depression too. Maybe that would be a more natural approach, in conjunction with Ashtanga yoga of course.
Yoga does not fix everything, in fact it seems to cause some people to have even more obnoxious
outspoken opinions.
Kisses,
Susan
P.S.
He was a fantastic writer and I am sorry we will have to get on without him. At least we still have David Sedaris.
Posted by: Susan · Sep 29, 06:16 AM · #
I will only say that the people who kill themselves because they are depressed are not thinking about their loved ones. If they did, they wouldn’t go ahead. But the pain they are immersed in is so big that they just don’t see any way out. It’s easy to see solutions, think of other ways, when we are feeling just fine or a little bit sad. But imagine what it must be like when it overrides the most elemental self-preservation instinct. Plus it makes you forget how much you love your loved ones and how much it would hurt them if you left. What must that be like?
Posted by: V · Sep 29, 10:58 AM · #
Since that is Susan writing up there, I know I don’t have to read beyond the first words. Sorry Susan, you and I usually don’t agree. You usually manage to really spank me online a lot. I wish peace for you.
Cheers, Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Sep 30, 07:53 PM · #
one more thing, and I’ll peace out, it’s called flaming, Susan, something you manage to throw at me quite often. One doesn’t have to explain flaming if one frequents the internet.
Sorry (0v0).
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Sep 30, 07:56 PM · #
Just call me the flaming spank lady. I do spank you, but only because no one else will. You need more spankings, everyone else is too nice.
Posted by: Susan · Oct 1, 05:57 AM · #
Hello! I am very happy when readers use this space to reflect on whatever topic is at hand and do that together. Nice.
But this implication that DFW offed himself because he was fat and didn’t do enough yoga is surely a new low in the copious online mourning that his death has brought. He was not fat, and was perhaps soul-crushingly self-aware.
Compassionate too, I would add.
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 1, 08:43 AM · #
Hi (0v0)
Susan, I apologize for my comments. I should have read your post – it was immature of me to not do so. Rest assured that my comments were due to not practicing yoga, rather than the opposite. I’ve been under strain this week and unable to get to the mat. My observations are just one-rat observations of people close to me.
I changed the subject entirely by bringing in obesity – so again, sorry. I do feel that there is an over-dependency on drugs. It was the opinion of my psychiatrists friends when I lived in Texas and in Florida that their profession has changed in that there is less interest in traditional psychotherapy and too much quickness on prescribing a pill to a person who suffers from anxiety. Those pills change the chemistry of the brain. And they tend to make the person consuming them unable to function normally for a percentage of the day. There must be healthy alternative ways of living without having to depend on drugs to function.
namaste
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Oct 1, 11:31 AM · #
oh, :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Oct 2, 04:24 AM · #