David Foster Wallace

I was very unhappy to hear of David Foster Wallace's suicide.

In a commencement address he delivered at Kenyon College on May 21, 2005 he spoke about, among other things, the mind being a good servant but a terrible master: "This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."

It is alarming that a thinker of DFW's caliber and ability to communicate ended his life. I will miss his work, most of which I recommend.

He lived and taught near me, and I even had the chance to see him occasionally walking around downtown Claremont.