http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wallace14-2008sep14,0,7461856.story

Why is it that when someone whose work, or whose life, I admired decides to stop the work by taking the life, I feel angry? It isn’t the first time, but it’s the first time in a long time, that I’ve been as angry as I am now. I’m sitting here in tears at not having any more David Foster Wallace in the world.

I went and saw The Dark Knight on the IMAX screen at the Air and Space Museum tonight, mostly because the 9:45 show at the regular theater seemed too late (the IMAX show was at 9:15), and I was amazed at the way—makeup or no makeup—Heath Ledger disappeared into that role. And I wondered, not for the first time since he died, whether he died on purpose. I like to think he didn’t, that it was an accident, but of course we’ll never know, and that’s good. Because at least we can choose to believe that he didn’t throw it away.

David Foster Wallace fucking threw it away. That’s just how I see it. And it makes me angry.

This is a link to my current book list (which, I just realized, it being past July 17, is now outdated and should say “year twelve”).

This is a link to my first book list, which I started on July 17, 1996. You will notice that the first book on that list—meaning the last book I read in the Year One—was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

I gave Infinite Jest a five, on a scale of one to five. It was the third book I gave a five on first reading; all the other fives in the Year One, except Another Roadside Attraction and A Prayer for Owen Meany, were books I’d read before and loved.

I always planned to read Infinite Jest again. I saved my notes from it (you need notes). I always knew where the book was, and for years it was on one of those shelves that hold things that could fit properly just fine on “normal” shelves, but things that seem different somehow, like they don’t belong with the “normal” books and should be held separately, perhaps for fear the other books taint them with a lack of greatness and blinding beauty. Books like Little, Big, The Neverending Story, The Golden Compass, The Virgin Suicides, and Winter’s Tale. Books like Jitterbug Perfume, Skinny Legs and All, and Still Life with Woodpecker, because David Foster Wallace was almost as good as Tom Robbins, and could have—would have—been better.

I won’t pretend I loved everything he did. If I tried, you’d bust me, because I gave you links to the book list, and I hated The Broom of the System and said so.

But after years on the “special” shelf, I needed a book to hold up a new monitor that was on top of a table that was about an inch and a half taller than the desk below, and it was a glass table, and it wobbled, and it had to be a book that was more than just the right size. It had to be a book that was beautiful inside and out, and that I wouldn’t mind starting at all day.

So for a good three years—right up until I moved to the new house this summer, in fact—Infinite Jest held up my monitor. You could say it supported my view of the world, if you wanted. I looked at it every day, touched it most days, and remembered it every time. I would smile to myself whenever I saw a reference somewhere to John Wayne, or to competitive tennis, or to footnotes, or even to affairs between students and teachers. I thought about it whenever I read a Harry Potter book or saw a Harry Potter movie, because I kept notes on those books, too, the same kind of notes I kept for Infinite Jest, to keep straight in my head who was in what house, in what year, on what team.

The book was part of my life. I’ve never given it as a gift. I’ve only very rarely—maybe once or twice—even recommended it. But I looked at it every day. And I always meant to reread it. What stopped me? Besides the fact that the table would have wobbled?

What stopped me was that I knew it couldn’t live up to my memory of it. I knew it couldn’t be that good, because I’d read other stuff of his in the meantime and it wasn’t as good. It’s the same reason I don’t buy They Might Be Giants albums since Flood, the same reason I don’t read Daniel Handler’s novels not written as Lemony Snicket, the same reason it’s hard to accept anything any artist creates after their masterpiece. Because it might be the new masterpiece, and you don’t want to lose the old one.

The book I’m reading now is The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, and I’m barely half an inch into it, and it’s a five, because it’s changing the way I think about the world, the way I think about life and death.

It sucks that I started it, because I’m going to have to put it aside now and reread Infinite Jest, and think about life and death.