david foster wallace. the autopsy of a forensic scientist’s life
Writter David Fosters Wallace tied his wrists up with silver-coloured masking tape, put his head through the oval loop formed by a black leather belt hung from a gap in one of the beams above his house’s terrace and hanged himself. He was 46. His wife, Karen Green, found DFW’s body swinging from a beam on one of those warm days between summer and autumn (1). She cut the belt with a knife and her husband’s body fell down into the chair he had used to carry out his final wish. It was there that she found his suicide note (2).
Those close to him already knew about his tendency towards depression and that he had tried to kill himself before. For the rest of us, he was a contemporary man from the States who wore jeans and sometimes wore a bandana. He wrote marvellous journalistic texts full of satire, irony and a special sense of humour (3). We was a talented writer who masterfully described the society he lived in thick books.
David Fosters Wallace wrote autopsies of many different sections of US society. He seemed to have a super-hero’s gift for that (4). His texts were photographs of life. DFW was a forensic scientist of life. That’s why we’ve decided to publish the last literary fragments about DFW on the following pages.
(1) You can read the exact date of his death in the autopsy. The reader, too, will need at least some deductive skill.
(2) Suicides don’t always leave notes. It isn’t compulsory. There are no laws to regulate that. DFW almost certainly thought that, as a writer, he had to be coherent in the very last thing he did. “Suicide Note”. A whole genre in itself.
(3) People who spread sadness about need a special type of petrol to be able to carry on in this world. In spite of what is commonly believed, people who make us laugh also commit suicide.
(4) DFW was put through twelve electroconvulsive therapy during his life. Maybe that extreme experience gave him is superhero powers. DFW used his pen like doctors use x-rays.
Those close to him already knew about his tendency towards depression and that he had tried to kill himself before. For the rest of us, he was a contemporary man from the States who wore jeans and sometimes wore a bandana. He wrote marvellous journalistic texts full of satire, irony and a special sense of humour (3). We was a talented writer who masterfully described the society he lived in thick books.
David Fosters Wallace wrote autopsies of many different sections of US society. He seemed to have a super-hero’s gift for that (4). His texts were photographs of life. DFW was a forensic scientist of life. That’s why we’ve decided to publish the last literary fragments about DFW on the following pages.
(1) You can read the exact date of his death in the autopsy. The reader, too, will need at least some deductive skill.
(2) Suicides don’t always leave notes. It isn’t compulsory. There are no laws to regulate that. DFW almost certainly thought that, as a writer, he had to be coherent in the very last thing he did. “Suicide Note”. A whole genre in itself.
(3) People who spread sadness about need a special type of petrol to be able to carry on in this world. In spite of what is commonly believed, people who make us laugh also commit suicide.
(4) DFW was put through twelve electroconvulsive therapy during his life. Maybe that extreme experience gave him is superhero powers. DFW used his pen like doctors use x-rays.
