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.