Well, shit.

I am typing this post through tears.

One of my idols, David Foster Wallace, died this past Friday from an apparent suicide.

If you look one post back, you will see my first true "essay" on this essay blog ("Of Ghosts And Fathers").

If you look three posts back, you will see a short post about Wallace ("To David Foster Wallace..."). I had just read an essay of his that inspired me to try to write actual essays (rather than unsupported, anti-grammatical rants).

You'll be missed, David.

Fuck.

Extra:
The Salon memoriam.
The Washington City Paper column.
The New York Times appraisal.
The 2003 Onion spoof.

"There is The Thing, plunked down in the coliseum of our consciousness. There is The Viewer of this Thing, sitting in the stands, hand on chin. And there is the Viewer of the Viewer of The Thing -- the postmodernist metaphysician hovering in the helicopter above, discussing the way people watch.

And then, somewhere out in the cosmos, watching the watcher watch himself watching, talking about talking about talking, there is David Foster Wallace, novelist, essayist, recovering ironist, and wizard of giddy self-consciousness." -Matthew Gilbert