Five Dials

CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND WORk OF DAVID FOSTER WALLACE 1962–2008

A Five Dials Special

published by hamish hamilton These tributes were given on 23 October, 2008 at the Skirball

Center for the Performing Arts, New York University, and are reproduced here with the kind permission of the authors and of Bonnie Nadell, David

Foster Wallace’s literary agent and longtime friend.

Copyright in each tribute remains with its author. Finally, know that an unshot skeet’s movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like – i.e. orange and parabolic and right-to-left –

and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

—from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

3 4 Talks and Readings by

Amy Wallace-Havens

Bonnie Nadell

Gerry Howard

Colin Harrison

Michael Pietsch

Don DeLillo

Zadie Smith

George Saunders

Jonathan Franzen

Artwork by michael schmelling

5 6 questioned what most of us don’t bother to question. David was not a know-it-all. If he was a genius it’s because he was smart Amy Wallace-Havens enough to be curious about everything. So many of our conversations began with David’s saying ‘Why do you think . . .?’ or ‘Do you ever wonder . . .?’. David always ntil very recently, David and I reading Kafka or watchingThe Waltons thought, and he always wondered. As Uwere lucky in that we had such a than playing baseball. his depression essentially metastasized, limited experience with grief. When our In the days following David’s death, although he was panicky and sleepless and grandmother died, just in the last decade, my mother and I realized that we could dropping huge amounts of weight, I think we were emotional novices. I remember sit in front of the computer and conjure it was the fear that he would never be well sitting next to David at Gramma’s memo- David on YouTube. There he was on the enough to write again that finally con- rial service. Whoever spoke first had Isle of Capri, struggling to explain to the sumed him. It was the writing that made it uttered maybe five words before we both Italian-speaking audience that this was his so much less lonely to be in his head. became loudly unglued – wailing, sobbing first experience ever of being in a place He fought very hard. This was not his and clinging to each other. If we hadn’t where he didn’t speak a single word of the first battle with clinical depression, and the been in the presence of actual relatives, I language. There were David’s mannerisms fact that he had survived that earlier time think the assembled would have surely and loveable self-mocking digressions, and made us hope that he could do it again. thought we were shills, that Gramma for a moment I actually forgot that he was Depression is not well understood, but in Betty had not left to chance the level of dead – there he WAS, for heaven’s sake – David, although chemicals were running distress that would be registered at her explaining to the chuckling crowd that he amok in his brain, this seemed like a cancer funeral. We absolutely marveled – clutch- felt like a baby, he could not understand, of the soul. The fact that he was loved so ing our stiff balls of Kleenex – that our and he could not make himself under- fiercely by his friends, his family, his wife, grandfather could find it in himself to stood. could not penetrate the fear and loneliness. stand and to speak of the honour that it Although I have been in the company David simply ran out of the strength to had been to be our grandmother’s husband of fellow native speakers since that awful hope that tomorrow might be a little bit for sixty years. How could he so calmly Saturday morning when my husband better. speak of his heart’s joy in the past tense? thrust the phone into my hands, I have Shortly before David’s death, I re-read This seemed utterly superhuman to David felt my ability to communicate and to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, and the and me. And I stand here today not at all comprehend slide away. I simply cannot notion that each person made his own calm but knowing that David would have find the words to express what David’s quirky sort of heaven resounded as I tried found it in himself to do this for me. absence feels like, and I cannot begin to to believe that David – not his oeuvre but David was not always an easy brother understand that this is forever. The lan- David – was separated from us merely by – forget winning an argument or having guage of grief is hideous and guttural, a sort of membrane. In David’s heaven, the last word, ever. But he was loyal and comprised of lung-tearing sobs and stran- he can eat chocolate Pop-Tarts again, and good and protective. It took him some gled screams. And although I am sure that people never say, ‘I’m nauseous,’ when years to get over the disappointment of many of you have found yourselves in this what they really mean is that they think being stuck with a female sibling, but he empty, wordless place, I simply feel that they’re going to throw up. In David’s did. Although as children we spent a great no one will ever truly understand, least of heaven the horizon stretches an unclut- deal of time simply avoiding each other, it all me, how words will have any function tered Midwestern forever and the scent of was understood that he was there if I really any more. bayberry candles is everywhere. But most needed him. When I was ten, I decided to If David could have been a little bit importantly, he can put his fingers in his try out for Little League, which was not gentler with himself, perhaps he could mouth and whistle to summon his beloved, much done by girls in those days. I know have simply shut up shop for a while and departed dogs – Roger, Drone and Jeeves. that David was probably horrified in his tried to heal. But unlike almost any other David and his dogs go for endless runs, heart of hearts, but he took it upon him- profession, writers cannot ‘retire’ – if they and his enormous high-tops make no self to teach me to catch a fly ball, to run stop writing, they cease to be writers, at sound in the clouds. down a grounder, and – most important least in their own minds. David loved Thank you so much for being here. My of all – not to throw like a girl. To this day being a writer, not so that he could dazzle family and I are proud beyond measure I have a decent arm, although I imagine us with the glorious arias of his intellect, that our boy meant so much to so many. I throw like a boy who would rather be but so that he could take us with him as he He meant everything to us. ◊

7 es and GQ had reserved him a room at the convention in Denver. I knew David was never going to meet Obama or even get Bonnie Nadell near him. He wanted to spend his time with the speechwriters sitting in Chicago sweating out Obama’s words. Everything David learned would have come from knew David as his literary agent. We Brown and Company; we all protected watching from the outside, from being I met in 1985, when he was an MFA stu- him. Being David’s agent often meant on the edge. And if David had been well dent at the University of Arizona and being a shield for him. enough to go to Denver, he would have I had just moved to San Francisco and Because David needed to keep himself spent most of his time in his hotel room become an agent with Fred Hill. He had apart from the noise of our culture, people or somewhere far away from the action never published a story outside of college would ask sometimes if he was difficult as and chatter. But he would have shown and I had never sold a book. We grew up a client – was he condescending, patroniz- us things we would never have noticed, in publishing together. ing? Never. David was an incredibly sweet people we would never have spoken to From the very beginning I knew David person. If anything he would offer up too and had ideas about rhetoric and language was smart. When he sent out the query much. When David was writing about that most of us would never have thought letter for The Broom of the System, his first talk radio in LA for the Atlantic, he called without him. novel, he used the word ‘diachronic’. I one afternoon to get directions to the For twenty-three years David made didn’t know what it meant, looked it up nearest Koo Koo Roo. He had promised me see the world through his eyes – made and found it means ‘out of order’. Which to pick up that night’s take-out dinner for me think harder, feel infinitely sadder and made perfect sense, since he had sent the the tech guys at the station. I tried to con- laugh at all sorts of crazy things. We will eighth chapter of the novel instead of the vince him that the writer from the Atlantic all miss him dearly. ◊ first. It didn’t take me long to realize that wasn’t the one David was the smartest person I had ever who had to buy met. I loved his writing and wanted the the evening’s world to see his gift. chicken take- The thing is, David always wore his out. But I also intelligence so lightly. The Broom of the gave him the System ends without the last word and simplest possible doesn’t really have a final scene. I, with the directions, since wisdom of a twenty-five-year-old, tried I knew he hated to convince David to wrap up the story in driving around a traditional fashion before I sent it out to Los Angeles and publishers. He proceeded to explain to me, was going to do using Wittgensteinian philosophy, why it it anyway. And was written like that and needed to remain that he would just as it was. I think that was when I then spend his understood that David’s mind worked in time at the sta- an entirely different way. Of course Gerry tion sitting in Howard, his editor, had the same conver- a back room sation with David a few months later. The with these guys, book was published as David wanted. eating his own David had a complicated relationship take-out din- with fame from the very beginning of ner, listening his career. He liked the attention but he to them and couldn’t shrug things off the way most absorbing every- writers can. He never read his reviews thing they said. or wanted to know print runs or sales This spring, figures. Never wanted to be interviewed before things on TV the times he got asked, or go to got bad, David parties, or meet the Hollywood producers was going to who optioned his books. In order to write, write about David couldn’t be in the public eye and Obama and still function. It was simply too hard for rhetoric for him. David didn’t have the armour most GQ. David was of us develop to survive in the world. I listening to knew this and so did his publishers Little, Obama’s speech-

8 talked him down, just the way we used to do in the dorms when someone was hav- ing a bad trip. Trust me, it was exactly like Gerry Howard that. So many memories come back: that just incredibly squalid Somerville apartment he shared with Mark Costello, with those hen you reach your late fifties, me introducing them in alphabetical order. textbooks on symbolic logic whose titles I Was I have, the question ‘What have As the first three mature and practised lit- could not understand, let alone their con- you done to justify your miserable exist- erary stars strutted their stuff, David sank tents. The eyestrain-causing five- and sev- ence?’ presents itself with steadily increas- deeper and deeper into his seat, clearly en-page single-spaced editorial letters with- ing insistence. I’ve formulated a number of suffering the tortures of the damned. It out a single typo that hog-tied my much tentative answers to that question, but one was his first readingEVER – what had we slower brain. The somewhat unfortunate of the best I can offer is, ‘I published the done? I can still taste my guilt. But then chewing-tobacco years. The sweetness and first two books by David Foster Wallace.’ his turn came, he got up, walked to the the vulnerability and the modesty. With In an editorial career, the shocks of lectern, calmly took a long sip of water, a mind like his, David could have easily recognition arrive at highly irregular said, ‘Ahhhh,’ and read the epileptic baby/ applied himself to some money-spinning intervals – those moments when a manu- John Irving send-up section of Broom with job like, I don’t know, devising fiend- script grabs hold of your mind and heart incredible brio. As the song goes, he blew ishly complicated financial instruments to and says, ‘Baby, we were made for each that room away. He was the Ruby Keeler leave the American economy in smoking other.’ That’s exactly what happened of fiction – he went out there a nobody ruins. He could have done that! Instead he when the manuscript of The Broom of the and he came back a star. I was in awe. devoted his genius to renewing the fragile System hit my inbox at Penguin in 1986, But as all who knew and worked with enterprise that is serious American writ- courtesy of Bonnie Nadell. What a star- David know, he never carried himself ing. That’s serious, not solemn. He was the tlingly fresh and original book that was, like a star in the least. In fact he had no most idealistic of ironists, and his vision of a neo-postmodern extravaganza, ultra- defences, in my experience, against the the world was fuelled by deep wells of sin- brainy and high-spirited at a time when toxins endemic to the literary−industrial cerity and a dogged quest for authenticity. American fiction was mostly out strolling complex. I vividly remember one August Oh boy, will we miss him. ◊ the strip malls or cruising the clubs. We day in 1988 when David published it as the first trade paperback came down to the city original in our Contemporary American for, God help us, a Fiction series, and it was a critical and photo-shoot for some commercial success. And this remark- slick magazine on ‘the able book brought David Wallace, a truly Hot Young Writers’. remarkable person, into my work life. I David had been up am so proud and happy that twenty-plus at Yaddo with a fast years later The Broom of the System is still crowd – Jay McInerney, selling steadily and drawing new readers David Leavitt, Mona into David’s uniquely imagined world. I Simpson – and all their was re-reading it last night, and I had to talk of Andrew says wonder, how did I ever slip this one past this and Binky does the Authorities? It’s a wild piece of work that had really knocked – hysterical realism, yo. (I read Our Mutual him sideways. That Friend over the summer, and it seemed morning’s shoot, with totally clear to me that Charles Dickens Tama Janowitz and had been deeply influenced by David Fos- Christopher Coe, a very ter Wallace.) flamboyant gay novel- In my mind David will always be young. ist, camping about, had At twenty-four when our paths crossed, he finished the job. By the was painfully deferential, totally unworld- time he arrived at my ly, woefully underdressed, but you knew office for lunch he was that he possessed a formidable, even stag- in the midst of a full- gering talent and intellect. Maybe my blown anxiety attack favouritest moment in publishing ever was or nervous breakdown. a reading that Penguin arranged for the Oh my. So I reached CAF series at the McBurney YMCA, with back to the skill-set that T.C. Boyle, Laurie Colwin, Frank Conroy the sixties had equipped and David reading from their work, with us all with and calmly

9 pressure: the shower-head’s force pins you helplessly to the stall’s opposite wall, and the head’s MASSAGE setting makes your Colin Harrison eyes roll up and your sphincter just about give . . . ‘But all this is still small potatoes com- pared with my room’s fascinating and ne day in the spring of 1995, I got a ticular assignment, except that he was to potentially malevolent toilet. A harmoni- Ophone call at Harper’s Magazine from be Dave Wallace on the spotless cruise ous concordance of elegant form and vig- Dave. He was calling from a 700-foot lux- ship ploughing through the aquamarine orous function, flanked by rolls of tissue so ury cruise ship, called the Zenith, off the waters of the Caribbean. I said, ‘There’s soft as to be without perforates for tearing, coast of Florida. I’d sent him on this trip nothing else I can tell you, Dave.’ There my toilet has above it this sign: THIS TOI- to write an article, and he’d phoned just was a pause. I’m willing to bet Dave made LET IS CONNECTED TO A VACUUM SEW- to let me know that yes, he was on board, one of his lightning-quick facial grimaces AGE SYSTEM. PLEASE DO NOT THROW as planned, and, by the way, what exactly before responding, ‘Okay.’ He seemed INTO THE TOILET ANYTHING OTHER was his magazine assignment again? simultaneously relieved and amused, like THAN ORDINARY TOILET WASTE AND I paused before answering. he knew something I didn’t – which was, TOILET PAPER. The toilet’s flush produces Telling Dave what to write about was of course, already true. a brief but traumatizing sound, a kind a tricky proposition. In his previous non- I like to think of that conversation now of held, high-B gargle, as of some gastric fiction piece forHarper’s , in which he’d because I know more disturbance on a written about the Illinois State Fair, Dave or less what happened cosmic scale. Along had, within the first few lines of the piece, next. Dave – big, with this sound blown up any idea that he considered fleshy, semi-shaven comes a suction so himself a conventional journalist and also Dave Wallace, with awesomely powerful gleefully detonated the notion that I, his his bandana and his that it’s both scary editor, knew what I was doing. sneakers and his quick and strangely com- Let me quote from that piece: smile – explored that forting: your waste ‘I’m fresh in from the East Coast, for huge luxury ship, seems less removed an East Coast magazine,’ he wrote. ‘Why inspecting its many than hurled from exactly they’re interested in the Illinois restaurants and gam- you, and with a State Fair remains unclear to me. I sus- ing rooms and loung- velocity that lets you pect that every so often editors at East es, all twelve decks feel as though the Coast magazines slap their foreheads and and 1,374 passengers, waste is going to end remember that about ninety per cent of their acres of horrify- up someplace so far the United States lies between the coasts, ing flesh soon frying away that it will have and figure they’ll engage somebody to do in the sun. He piled become an abstrac- pith-helmeted anthropological reporting up tens of thousands tion, a kind of exis- on something rural and heartlandish.’ of fabulous words describing the ship and tential sewage-treatment system.’ Ah, to be cleverly ridiculed in the pages its inhabitants. As for that frying flesh, He loved writing that, I know he did. of one’s own magazine. So now, as Dave he’d write, ‘I have seen every type of pre- A few months after his call, Dave floated somewhere off the coast of Florida, melanomic lesion, liver spot, eczema, wart, turned in an ocean-liner of a magazine I knew that whatever answer I gave him papular cyst, pot belly, femoral cellulite, piece, way too big to dock. We devoted could be subject to inclusion in the piece varicosity, collagen and silicone enhance- twenty-four entire pages of the magazine itself, and perhaps even a source of further ment, bad tint, hair transplants that have to the article and, but for the need to run mockery. not taken – i.e., I have seen nearly naked some advertising, would have included But there was another reason I hesitated a lot of people I would prefer not to have more. Although the article was laced to answer his question. In telling Dave seen nearly naked.’ These are the kinds of with Dave’s obsession with mortality and what the magazine assignment was, I might details that sickeningly thrilled him. yes, even references to suicide, his atten- accidentally suggest what not to do, which Naturally, though, Dave found the tive detail to his fellow travellers revealed could be unwise. The smart thing would ship’s relentless pampering highly stress- a kind of love for them. While aboard, be to just let Dave and his imagination and ful, so he semi-agoraphobically retreated Dave surely sensed he was on to some- neuroses run wild. In his piece on the Illi- to his room, especially to the shower, of thing big, something cohesive and funny nois State Fair, curiosity and anxiety had which he said, ‘itself overachieves in a and utterly original. He must have had combined again and again to great effect. very big way. The HOT setting’s water is fun writing that piece, as self-lacerating exfoliatingly hot, but it only takes one as it was, and so this is how I prefer to I figured that the best thing was to preset manipulation of the shower knob remember Dave. Smiling. Laughing. give Dave no editorial guidance whatsoever. to get perfect 98.6 degree water. My own Happy that he just wrote something Not a word. So, no, there was no par- personal home should have such water great. ◊

10 pp. 327−30. Michael, have mercy. Pending an almost Horacianly persuasive rationale on Michael Pietsch your part, my canines are bared on this one. pp. 739−48. I’ve rewritten it – for about the eleventh time – for clarity, but I bare teeth all the way back to the second molar on cutting it. work for Little, Brown and Company, my computer. David came to New York I and I had the tremendous good fortune seldom. Once he wrote to me, apropos p. 785ff– I can give you 5,000 words of to work with David Wallace on his books some NYC brouhaha about who had and theoretico–structural arguments for this, but Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll who hadn’t gotten nominated for some let’s spare one another, shall we? Never Do Again, Brief Interviews with Hideous award, ‘This is why I’m glad I live in a Men, Oblivion and Consider the Lobster. And cornfield.’ David’s love affair with the English I want to say right at the start that work- We communicated mostly through language was one of the great romances ing with David was a thrill beyond any- letters. And through a form of communi- of our times, both a scholarly learn- thing I imagined when I entered this pro- cation that I thought of as a Dave special- every-nuance love and a wildly passionate fession. The novel Infinite Jest is, I believe, ity, the phone message left on the office flights-and-flourishes love. David’s idea one of the great American works of fiction, answering machine hours after everyone of an unbeatable magazine assignment a work of mind-boggling ambition and had departed. Very few emails – he came was when he was asked to review a new originality that depicts contemporary life to email reluctantly, and preferred the nar- dictionary. One of his proudest moments, as a surfeit of pleasures and indulgences row-margined single-spaced letter in ten- he wrote, was when he learned ‘I get to that can make connection with other point Times Roman over all other forms of be on the American Heritage Diction- people lethally difficult. Since encounter- written communication. I never saw what ary’s Usage panel . . . My mom whooped ing that novel I’ve found it difficult to he was like in the morning before his coffee, so loudly on the phone that it hurt my ear view life in our times in any other way. I never sat and watched a video or a foot- when I told her.’ David loved encounter- My goal here today is to try to get ball game or a tennis match with him. But ing new words. In one letter he wrote across in some way how much I loved in our occasional visits and our hundreds of ‘the last sludgelets of adolescent self- David, and why, and how lucky I feel to of letters and phone calls and late-night consciousness being borne away on the have known him. First: for the things he messages, I saw what he was like while he horological tide.’ And added in parenthe- wrote. I got to know David because I was was writing, and revising, and working out ses, ‘I just learned the word “horology” a fan. Even if I’d never known him I’d be what exactly he wanted a novel or story or and was determined to use it at least once.’ mourning the loss of a writer who took essay to be. No mention of the fact that he had just in the fire-hose blast of our world in all Those letters were extraordinary, and invented the word ‘sludgelets’. I think he its voices and forms and varieties and gave I tore into every one of them hungrily wanted to use every word in the language it back to us in these gargantuan, howl- knowing there was pleasure awaiting before he was done. In one talk about the ingly funny, nakedly sad, philosophically me inside. Mostly the letters had to do drawbacks of using words that sent read- probing novels, stories, and essays. He with the editing of his books. They are ers running to their dictionaries, I men- delineated the inside of the skull, the con- documents of the superhuman care David tioned a favourite book by another writer voluted self-talk we all carry on constant- took with his writing, but at the same whose first word is the very obscure ly, in a way that no writer ever has. And time of the joy and pride he took in his ‘picric’. (Means yellowish.) David’s instant at the same time that he could capture the work. Here is a sample from innumerable response was, ‘I already used that!’ tiniest granularities of self-consciousness, pages of back-and-forth on Infinite Jest, in I worked with David at the profes- he also saw and could draw the broadest which David was responding to request sional interface between him and his outlines of the big-picture world. His after request for cuts. Which cut requests, readers, a borderline he approached with books are vast terrains that will continue please bear in mind, were the work he had vast apprehension. To say that David was to be explored in readers’ minds as long as asked me to do: uncomfortable in the public eye is to there are readers. understate enormously. He said no thank But I did know David, in a particular p. 52. This is one of my personal favour- you, politely but unalterably, to an invita- and maybe peculiar way, and my love ite Swiftian lines in the whole manuscript, tion to appear on The Today Show when for him is rooted in fifteen-plus years of which I will cut, you rotter. Infinite Jest was published. He submitted working closely with him on his books to photo sessions only when placed under and on helping him bring those books p. 82. I cut this and have now come back an multiple duress not just by his publisher to readers. Our relationship was a long- hour later and put it back. and his publicist but also by his beloved lit- distance one. My old Rolodex card for erary agent, Bonnie Nadell. When David him has addresses crossed out in Tucson, p. 133. Poor old FN 33 about the grammar visited our offices, people would jostle for Urbana, Somerville, Arlington, Brighton, exam is cut. I’ll also erase it from the back-up the chance to meet him. David wrote of Syracuse and Bloomington before the disk so I can’t come back in an hour and put it those encounters, ‘People who regard me Claremont entry in the Contacts folder on back in (an enduring hazard, I’m finding). as a Golden Boy make me feel lonely and

11 unknown.’ His manners were too good for Everyone I’ve talked to in the weeks Mrs Thompson’s’, about the days after him simply to say no to those encounters, since he died has recalled how kind David 9/11, when he sees that everyone has an but he would turn the conversation within was. And it’s true: he was sweet, he was American flag of some kind, a big one for seconds to the assistants who he dealt with kind, he was solicitous. I’ve spent a lot the porch or a small one for the car. And day to day, or to the twins his publicist of time wondering why this is such a he doesn’t have a flag, and has no idea had just given birth to, or to any subject prominent note. I think it’s because he even where you go to buy one, when other than himself. was, and because he knew enough about every other person in the country seems ‘I don’t want to be a hidden person, pain to know exquisitely how much kind- to have been born knowing these things. or a hidden writer: it is lonely,’ he said ness matters. And because he knew that Always something to learn. in another letter. He shied from being people who had read his work expected David’s great act of kindness to me was known in a public way but he worked to be intimidated by him in person. David trusting me to help him bring his books hard not to be hidden from the people he knew that his image could scare people into the world. I couldn’t pretend to grasp encountered in person. He wanted them off or make them afraid to talk to him, so the depth or magnitude of all he set out to know him himself, not some caricature I think he worked extra hard – through to do, but he needed an Authority Figure or idea of him. One way David endeav- kindness – to get them to see him as he who he would listen to sometimes, and I oured to be known was by endeavouring really was, not as a formidable bandana- was lucky to be the one who he fitted out to know others. His solicitousness was sporting wunderkind. I’m not saying the for that role. Of one scene I proposed cut- legendary. In one note he asked me to kindness was a tactic: David’s manners ting he wrote: ‘Well, it introduces three remind a new mother in the office that it and concern for others were bred deep characters, five themes and two settings.’ was time to switch from skimmed milk to and genuine. But maybe the smiley faces His patience with me is one of the things 2% or whole milk. He wrote thank you he drew in the margins of his letters like that I will always treasure. notes not just to the copy-editor who a goofy schoolkid, the casual (on a good David wrote, ‘I want to author things worked on Consider the Lobster but also to day) way he dressed, the playfulness and that restructure worlds and make living the supervisor who had assigned the job to jocularity that I will not begin to be able people feel stuff ’. He certainly did those so talented a copy-editor, and he offered to capture here, all helped make sure that things. The world has a huge hole in it for to pay a bonus out of his own pocket to people didn’t feel intimidated. He wanted the lack of his giant brain and his giant the designer who wrestled down a par- to let people in. The critic Laura Miller heart to take in and examine for us all that ticularly gnarly layout. My daughter still observed that he was smart enough to lies ahead. And for the lack of his kindness. remembers from a visit to our house a know that every person he encountered But we all have all the words he wrote. I dozen years ago the nice man who played was smarter than him in some way, about hope everyone in this hall today will do all tag with her and her little brother, and something, and that there was some- we can to help make sure that those words who invented ‘worm tag’ when ordinary thing he could learn from everyone. I’m are read, and spread, and appreciated, tag grew dull. reminded of his essay ‘The View from admired and celebrated. ◊

12 dead serious frolic of addicted humanity. We can imagine his fiction and essays as the scroll fragments of a distant future. We Don DeLillo already know this work as current news – writer to reader – intimately, obsessively. He did not channel his talents to narrower patterns. He wanted to be equal to the vast, nfinity. This is the subject of David ders in off the street. babbling, spin-out sweep of contemporary IWallace’s book on the mathematics, ‘Her photograph tastes bitter to me.’ culture. the philosophy and the history of a vast, ‘Almost Talmudically self-conscious.’ We see him now as a brave writer who beautiful, abstract concept. There are ref- ‘The tiny little keyhole of himself.’ struggled against the force that wanted erences in the book to Zeno’s dichotomy A vitality persists, a stunned vigour in him to shed himself. Years from now, and Goldbach’s conjecture, to Hausdorff ’s the face of the complex humanity we find we’ll still feel the chill that attended news maximal principle. There is also the offset- in his fiction, the loss and anxiety, darken- of his death. One of his recent stories ends ting breeze of Dave’s plainsong – OK then ing mind, self-doubt. There are sentences in the finality of this half sentence:Not and sort of and no kidding and stuff like this. that shoot rays of energy in seven direc- another word. His work, everywhere, tends to rec- tions. There are stories that trail a charac- But there is always another word. There oncile what is difficult and consequential ter’s spiralling sense of isolation. is always another reader to regenerate with a level of address that’s youthful, ‘Everything and More’. This is the title these words. The words won’t stop com- unstudied and often funny, marked at of his book on infinity. It might also be ing. Youth and loss. This is Dave’s voice, times by the small odd sentence that wan- a description of the novel Infinite Jest, his American. ◊

13 kids I made them read it alongside Kierke- gaard’s Fear and Trembling. The two books seem like cousins to me. Both find black Zadie Smith comedy in hideous men who feel them- selves post-love, post-faith, post-everything. ‘When people nowadays will not stop at love,’ wrote Kierkegaard, ‘where is it that they are o the critics, Brief Interviews with ing. This thing doesn’t have that much to going? To worldly wisdom, petty calcula- THideous Men was an ironic book do with talent, even glittering talent [. . .] tion, to paltriness and misery? [. . .] Would about misogyny. Reading it was like being Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a it not be better to remain standing at faith, trapped in a room with ironic misogynists pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. and for the one who stands there to take care on speed, or something like that. To me, I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently not to fall?’ The truth, he argued, is that we reading Brief Interviews wasn’t at all like out of the premise, but it seems like the big haven’t even got as far as faith. Kierkegaard being trapped. It was like being in church. distinction between good art and so-so art took faith seriously, recognized it as an And the important word wasn’t irony but gift. lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, impossible task, at least for him. Dave took Dave was clever about gifts: our inability to the agenda of the consciousness behind the faith seriously, too: it’s his hideous men who give freely, or to accept what is freely given. text. It’s got something to do with love. don’t. The most impassioned book recom- In his stories giving has become impos- With having the discipline to talk out of the mendation he ever gave me was for Catholics sible: the logic of the market seeps into part of yourself that can love instead of the by Brian Moore, a novella about a priest every aspect of life. A man can’t give away part that just wants to be loved.’ who, after forty years in a monastery, finds an old tiller for free; he has to charge five This was his literary preoccupation: he still isn’t capable of prayer. Anyone who bucks before someone will come and take the moment when the ego disappears and thinks Dave primarily an ironist should note it. A depressed person desperately wants to you’re able to offer up your love as a gift that choice. His is a serious kind of satire, receive attention but can’t bring herself to without expectation of reward. At this if by satire we mean ‘the indirect praise of give it. Normal social relations are only pre- moment the gift hangs, good things’. served because ‘one never knew, after all, now like Federer’s brilliant But I don’t mean to did one now did one now did one.’ serve, between the one replace an ironist with a Brief Interviews itself was the result of who sends and the one God-botherer. The word two enormous gifts. The first was practi- who receives, and reveals God needn’t be present – I’d cal: the awarding of the MacArthur. A itself as belonging to rather use the phrase ‘ulti- gift on that scale helps free a writer from neither. We have almost mate value’. Whatever name the logic of market, and maybe also from no words for this experi- one has for it, it’s what that bind Dave himself defined as post- ence of giving. The one permits the few heroes in industrial: the need always to be liked. The we do have is hopelessly Brief Interviews to make their second gift was more complicated. It was degraded through misuse. gestures on the strength of his talent, which was so obviously great it The word is prayer. For the absurd, making art that confused people: why would such a gifted a famous ironist, Dave nobody wants, loving where young man create such a resistant, complex wrote a lot about prayer. they are not loved, giving piece of work? But you need to think of A married man, confront- without the hope of receiv- the gift economy the other way round. In ed by a teenage seductress, ing. Dave traced this ultimate a culture that depletes you daily of your falls to his knees and prays, value through the beauty of capacity for imagination, for language, for but not for the obvious reason. ‘It’s not a Vermeer, to the concept of infinity, to autonomous thought, complexity like what you think I’m afraid of,’ he says. The Federer’s serve – and beyond. As he put it: Dave’s is a gift. His recursive, labyrinthine granola-cruncher prays as she is raped, but ‘You get to decide what you worship.’ But sentences demand second readings. Like the she isn’t praying for her own rescue. A man before we get giddy with po-mo relativity, boy waiting to dive, their resistance ‘breaks who has accidentally brain-damaged his he reminds us that nine times out of ten we the rhythm that excludes thinking’. Every daughter prays with a mad Jesuit in a field, worship ourselves. Out of this double-bind, word looked up, every winding footnote as a church made with no hands rises up the exit signs are hard to see, but they’re followed, every heart- and brain-stretching around them. When the incomprehensible there. When the praying married man puts concept, they all help break the rhythm and unforgivable happens, Dave’s characters his hands together, the gesture might be of thoughtlessness – your gifts are being resort to the impossible. Their prayers are metaphysical, but he’s seeking a genuine returned to you. irrational, absurd, given up into a void, and human connection, which, in Dave’s stories, To whom much is given, much is expected. that, paradoxically, is where they draw their is as hard to find as any god. Love is the Dave wrote like that, as if his talent was a power. They are the opposite of ironical. ultimate value, the absurd, impossible thing responsibility. He had a radical way of see- They are full of faith, a quality Kierkegaard – the only thing worth praying for. The ing his own gifts: ‘I’ve gotten convinced,’ defined as ‘a gesture made on the strength last line is wonderful. It reads: ‘And what he wrote, ‘that there’s something kind of of the absurd’. if she joined him on the floor, just like this, timelessly vital and sacred about good writ- When I taught Brief Interviews to college clasped in supplication: just this way.’ ◊

14 got inside the world’s mind and changed it for the better. Our sadness is proof of the power of a single original human con- George Saunders sciousness. Dave – let’s just say it – was first among us. The most talented, most daring, most energetic and original, the funniest, the few years back I was flying out to was about as open and curious and accept- least inclined to rest on his laurels or A California, reading Brief Interviews ing a person as I’d ever met, and I left feel- believe all the praise. His was a spacious, with Hideous Men. I found the book was ing I’d made a great new friend. loving heart, and when someone this pre- doing weird things to my mind and body. And I had. We were together only occa- cious leaves us, especially so early, love Suddenly, up there over the Midwest, I sionally, corresponded occasionally, but converts on the spot to a deep, almost felt agitated and flinchy, on the brink of every meeting felt super-charged, almost nauseating sadness, and there’s no way tears. When I tried to describe what was – if this isn’t too corny – sacramental. around it. going on, I came up with this: if the read- I don’t know much about Dave’s spir- But in closing, a pledge, or maybe a er was a guy standing outdoors, Dave’s itual life but I see him as a great American prayer: every one of us in this room has, prose had the effect of stripping the guy’s Buddhist writer, in the lineage of Whit- at some point, had our consciousness clothes away and leaving him naked, with man and Ginsberg. He was a wake-up altered by Dave. Dave has left seeds in super-sensitized skin, newly susceptible to artist. That was his work, as I see it, both our minds. It is up to us to nurture these the weather, whatever that weather might on the page and off it: he went around seeds and bring them out, in positive be. If it was a sunny day, he was going to waking people up. He was, if this is even form, into the living world, through our feel the sun more. If it was a blizzard, it a word, a celebrationist, who gave us new work, in our actions, by our engagement was going to really sting. Something about respect for the world through his rever- with others and our engagement with the prose itself was inducing a special vari- ence for it, a reverence that manifested as our own minds. So the pledge and the ety of openness that I might call terrified- attention, an attention that produced that prayer is this: we’ll continue to love him, tenderness: a sudden new awareness of what electrifying, all-chips-in, aware-in-all- we’ll never forget him, and we’ll honour a fix we’re in on this earth, stuck in these directions prose of his. him by keeping alive the principal lesson bodies, with these minds. Over the last few weeks, as I’ve of his work: mostly we’re asleep, but This alteration seemed more spiritual thought about what I might say up here, we can wake up. And waking up is not than aesthetic. I wasn’t just ‘reading a great I’ve heard my internalized Dave, and only possible, it is our birthright, and our story’ – what was happening was more what he’s been saying is: don’t look for nature, and, as Dave showed us, we can primal and important: my mind was being consolation yet. That would be dishon- help one another do it. ◊ altered in the direction of compassion, est. And I think that voice by a shock methodology that was, in its is right. In time – but not subject matter, actually very dark. I was yet – the sadness that there undergoing a kind of ritual stripping away will be no new stories from of the habitual. The reading was waking him will be replaced by a me up, making me feel more vulnerable, deepening awareness of more alive. what a treasure we have in The person who had induced this com- the existing work. In time plicated feeling was one of the sweetest, – but not yet – the disaster most generous, dearest people I’ve ever of his loss will fade, and be known. replaced by the realization I first met Dave at the home of a mutual of what a miracle it was that friend in Syracuse. I’d just read Girl with he ever existed in the first Curious Hair and was terrified that this place. breakfast might veer off into, say, a discus- For now, there’s just sion of Foucault or something, and I’d be grief. Grief is, in a sense, humiliated in front of my wife and kids. the bill that comes due for But no: I seem to remember Dave was love. The sadness in this wearing a Mighty Mouse T-shirt. Like room amounts to a kind of Chekhov in those famous anecdotes, who proof: proof of the power put his nervous provincial visitors at ease of Dave’s work; proof of by asking them about pie-baking and the the softening effect his local school system, Dave diffused the tenderness of spirit had on tension by turning the conversation to us. us; proof, in a larger sense, Our kids’ interests, what life was like in of the power of the Word Syracuse, our experience of family life. He itself: look at how this man

15 or fabulously reticulated self-conscious- ness, you could smell the ozone from the crackling precision of his sentence Jonathan Franzen structure, his effortless and pitch-perfect shifting among ten different levels of high, low, middle, technical, hipster, nerdy, philosophical, vernacular, vaudevillian, ike a lot of writers, but even more than exchanging letters. Having loved hortatory, tough-guy, broken-hearted, Lthan most, Dave loved to be in control him at first sight, I was always straining to lyrical diction. Those sentences and those of things. He was easily stressed by chaotic prove that I could be funny enough and pages, when he was able to be producing social situations. I only ever twice saw him smart enough, and he had a way of gazing them, were as true and safe and happy a go to a party without Karen. One of them, off at a point a few miles distant which home as any he had during most of the hosted by Adam Begley, I almost physi- made me feel as if I were failing to make twenty years I knew him. So I could tell cally had to drag him to, and as soon as we my case. Not many things in my life ever you stories about the bickering little road were through the front door and I took gave me a greater sense of achievement trip he and I once took, or I could tell you my eye off him for one second, he made a than getting a laugh out of Dave. about the wintergreen scent that his chew U-turn and went back to my apartment to But that ‘neutral middle ground on gave to my little apartment whenever he chew tobacco and read a book. The second which to make a deep connection with stayed with me, or I could tell you about party he had no choice but to stay the awkward chess games we for, because it was celebrating the played and the even more publication of Infinite Jest. He sur- awkward tennis rallying we vived it by saying thank you, again sometimes did – the comfort- and again, with painfully exagger- ing structure of the games ated formality. versus the weird deep fraternal One thing that made Dave rivalries boiling along under- an extraordinary college teacher neath – but truly the main was the formal structure of the thing was the writing. For job. Within those confines, he most of the time I knew Dave, could safely draw on his enormous the most intense interaction I native store of kindness and wis- had with him was sitting alone dom and expertise. The structure in my armchair, night after of interviews was safe in a similar night, for ten days, and reading way. When Dave was the subject, the manuscript of Infinite Jest. he could relax into taking care of That was the book in which, his interviewer. When he was the for the first time, he’d arranged journalist himself, he did his best himself and the world the way work when he was able to find a he wanted them arranged. At technician – a cameraman follow- the most microscopic level: ing John McCain, a board opera- Dave Wallace was as passion- tor on a radio show – who was ate and precise a punctuator thrilled to meet somebody genu- of prose as has ever walked inely interested in the arcana of his this earth. At the most global job. Dave loved details for their level: he produced a thousand own sake, but details were also pages of world-class jest which, an outlet for the love bottled up although the mode and quality in his heart: a way of connecting, of the humour never wavered, on relatively safe middle ground, became less and less and less with another human being. another human being’: this, we decided, funny, section by section, until, by the Which was, approximately, the descrip- was what fiction was for. ‘A way out of end of the book, you felt the book’s title tion of literature that he and I came up loneliness’ was the formulation we agreed might just as well have been Infinite Sad- with in our conversations and correspond- to agree on. And nowhere was Dave more ness. Dave nailed it like nobody else ever ence in the early 1990s. I’d loved Dave totally and gorgeously able to maintain had. from the very first letter I ever got from control than in his written language. He And so now this handsome, brilliant, him, but the first two times I tried to meet had the most commanding and exciting funny, kind Midwestern man with an him in person, up in Cambridge, he flat- and inventive rhetorical virtuosity of any amazing spouse and a great local support out stood me up. Even after we did start writer alive. Way out at word number network and a great career and a great job hanging out, our meetings were often 70 or 100 or 140 in a sentence deep into a at a great school with great students has stressful and rushed – much less intimate three-page paragraph of macabre humour taken his own life, and the rest of us are

16 left behind to ask (to quote from Infinite having a fuller and less rigidly structured of writing, and out of having glimpsed a Jest), ‘So yo then, man, what’s your story?’ life. I noticed, when we spoke on the different kind of future. It was an incred- One good, simple, modern story would phone, that he’d begun to tell me he loved ibly scary and brave thing for him to try, go like this: ‘A lovely, talented personal- me, and I suddenly felt, on my side, that I because Dave was full of love, but he was ity fell victim to a severe chemical imbal- didn’t have to work so hard to make him also full of fear – he had all too ready ance in his brain. There was the person laugh or to prove that I was smart. Karen access to those depths of infinite sadness. of Dave, and then there was the disease, and I managed to get him to Italy for a So the year was up and down, and and the disease killed the man as surely as week, and instead of spending his days in he had a crisis in June, and a very hard cancer might have.’ This story is at once his hotel room, watching TV, as he might summer. When I saw him in July he was sort of true and totally inadequate. If have done a few years earlier, he was hav- skinny again, like the late adolescent he’d you’re satisfied with this story, you don’t ing lunch on the terrace and eating octo- been during his first big crisis. One of need the stories that Dave wrote – par- pus and trudging along to dinner parties in the last times I talked to him after that, ticularly not those many, many stories the evening and actually enjoying hanging in August, on the phone, he asked me in which the duality, the separateness, of out with other writers casually. He sur- to tell him a story of how things would person and disease is problematized or prised everyone, maybe most of all himself. get better. I repeated back to him a lot outright mocked. One obvious paradox, Here was a genuinely fun thing he might of what he’d been saying to me in our of course, is that Dave himself, at the end, well have done again. conversations over the previous year. I did become, in a sense, satisfied with this About a year later, he decided to get said he was in a terrible and dangerous simple story and stopped con- place because he was trying to necting with any of those more make real changes as a person interesting stories he’d written in and as a writer. I said that the the past and might have written last time he’d been through in the future. His suicidality got near-death experiences, he’d the upper hand and made every- emerged and written, very thing in the world of the living quickly, a book that was light- irrelevant. years beyond what he’d been But this doesn’t mean there doing before his collapse. I are no more meaningful stories said he was a stubborn control for us to tell. I could tell you freak and know-it-all – ‘So are ten different versions of how you!’ he shot back at me – and he arrived at the evening of 12 I said that people like us are September, some of them very so afraid to relinquish con- dark, some of them very anger- trol that sometimes the only ing to me, and most of them way we can force ourselves taking into account Dave’s to open up and change is to many adjustments, as an adult, bring ourselves to an access of in response to his near-death of misery and the brink of self- suicide as a late adolescent. But destruction. I said he’d under- there is one particular not-so- taken his change in medication dark story that I know to be because he wanted to grow up true and that I want to tell now, and have a better life. I said I because it’s been such a great thought his best writing was happiness and privilege and end- ahead of him. And he said: ‘I lessly interesting challenge to be like that story. Could you do Dave’s friend. me a favour and call me up People who like to be in con- every four or five days and tell trol of things can have a hard me another story like it?’ time with intimacy. Intimacy is anarchic himself off the medication that had lent Unfortunately I only had one more and mutual and definitionally incompat- stability to his life for more than twenty chance to tell him the story, and by then ible with control. You seek to control years. Again, there are a lot of different he wasn’t hearing it. He was in horrible, things because you’re afraid, and about stories about why exactly he decided to minute-by-minute anxiety and pain. The five years ago, very noticeably, Dave do this. But one thing he made very clear next times I tried to call him after that, he stopped being so afraid. Part of this came to me, when we talked about it, was that wasn’t picking up the phone or returning of having settled into a good, stable situa- he wanted a chance at a more ordinary life, messages. He’d gone down into the well of tion here at Pomona. Another really huge with less freakish control and more ordi- infinite sadness, beyond the reach of story, part of it was his finally meeting a woman nary pleasure. It was a decision that grew and he didn’t make it out. But he had a who was right for him and, for the first out of his love for Karen, out of his wish beautiful, yearning innocence, and he was time, opened up the possibility of his to produce a new and more mature kind trying. ◊

17 Amy Wallace-Havens is David’s sister. She is a deputy public defender in southern Arizona.

Bonnie Nadell is vice president of Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Agency in Los Angeles.

Gerry Howard is an executive editor at large for Doubleday.

Colin Harrison is a novelist, and a vice president and senior editor at Scribner.

Michael Pietsch is executive vice president and publisher of Little, Brown and Company.

Don DeLillo has written fourteen novels, including White Noise and Underworld.

Zadie Smith has written three novels and the essay collection Changing My Mind.

George Saunders is the author of several books, including Pastoralia.

Jonathan Franzen is the author of several books, including The Corrections.

Michael Schmelling has produced four books of photography. His latest, The Plan, features 523 photos on the subject of hoarding. www.michaelschmelling.com

Thanks to Debbie Hatfield and Ellie Smith

Designed by Dean Allen

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