DFW

I met him in a coffee shop. 53rd and 3rd;Financial District. Suits and pleated skirts file outof the avenue’s obelisk high-rises for their lunchbreaks to find me, your unassumingcorrespondent, in company-logo branded bandanaand smock, standing behind a marble gray countertop awaiting the caffeine-craving frenzy of theafternoon rush hour. It was not in this time, but inthe lull that immediately followed—when theyreturned to their office buildings with blonderoasts and pastries in hand—that I met the writerDavid Foster Wallace. This chance encounter, your correspondentadmits, was on the metaphorical side of realityrather than the literal. No, I did not meet the fleshand bone formerly known as DFW. He was deadlong before I was hired as a barista. Instead, I methim in the form of his greatest works: Infinite Jest.

Five-foot ten in a brown leather jacket andmatching messenger bag, he walked in around 1o’clock and ordered a Café Americano with a Branmuffin. The shop was empty save for us two, so Itook the liberty of adding some class to his meal. Iopted for a ceramic mug over the typicalStyrofoam and served him his muffin on a saucer.When I brought his order out to him I saw that hehad cracked open a book and was engrossedwithin it. An impressively thick paperback, he hadit on the table in front of him and open to almostthe central page––that point where the pages oneither side of the part are even in number. I placedthe food carefully down on the remaining tabletopand he said thank you. I smiled, nodded and lefthim to his novel while I cleaned the displaywindows. A half hour passed and still the placewas quiet and bare sans the two of us. I took this

chance for banter and asked him what he wasreading. He proceeded to tell me about the mindbending epic that was DFW’s magnum opus. Setbetween a tennis academy and a halfway house, itis a story about entertainment. He said, like manyafter him have said when I asked about it, that itwas the hardest book he had every read through. Iwould not pick the book up myself for anotheryear, but I would immediately know what hemeant. Since then I have become a pupil of DFW.Never before has a writer challenged me in such away that David did. From his vocabulary to hisprose, nothing was easy but everything wasimportant. I was about 200 pages into the novelwhen I learned how DFW died. In the summer of2008, David wrote his wife a letter and proceededto hang himself on his front porch. He was in the

middle of what would become his final work, ThePale King. Thanks to his editor and friend MichealPietsche, the manuscript was completed andpublished. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer.Distraught cannot begin to describe how I feltonce I found out. I was just getting to know theman and already he was gone to me. His death wassignificant, but I did not yet know why. Thus, Iread to find the answer. I listened to his narrationsand his descriptions for some kind of clue as towhat would drive him the point of suicidal non-return but, of course, the answers are not so blackand white as the text on the page. No, I do notknow why he did it. No one will, really. Hesuffered depression all throughout his life, but thefinal straw for him will remain buried along withhim.

I resolved to learn all I could from DavidFoster Wallace. His ways of narration, hisextensive vocabulary, the way he would make uphis own words. It all inspired me so. Since InfiniteJest I have read his collection of essays entitledConsider The Lobster and with every word I cameto know DFW all the more. It was a friendship inpaperback, and I was grateful that he did not leavethis world with nothing. His work is recognizedand respected. Any literary buff I meet, I ask them,What do you think of David? And almost all of themhave almost the same response. He was brilliant.