R.I.P. David Foster Wallace*
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 09.13.08 | 9:05 PM ET
Photo by Horrible news is emerging that the widely acclaimed writer committed suicide in his Claremont, California, home Friday night. Wallace is perhaps best known for the novel “Infinite Jest,” but travel lit fans also know him for his typically footnote-laden 1996 Harper’s article, “Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise”—one of modern travel writing’s sharpest and funniest stories. (We were just singing the story’s praises a few months ago, in fact.) His 1997 appearance on “Charlie Rose” is well worth a look. Wallace was 46.
* Updated Sunday, Sept. 14: The New York Writers Institute blog remembers Wallace, observing, “His was a great voice of experimentation and liveliness that continually challenged literary expectations.”
The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani recalls him as a “prose magician” who wrote “about everything from tennis to politics to lobsters, from the horrors of drug withdrawal to the small terrors of life aboard a luxury cruise ship, with humor and fervor and verve.”
The Los Angeles Times travel blog has a thoughtful post. Also, via the Times’ Web Scout, here’s video of Wallace reading part of his Harper’s story, Ticket to the Fair.
Updated Monday, Sept. 15: Good news. Harper’s has made Wallace’s stories available online.