![]() A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster are both great books. His non-fiction - “essays and arguments”, as described in the subtitle of one collection - is more approachable, and I suspect has more universal appeal. A few readers have asked via email which of his books I’d recommend to someone new to his work. Over the last few days I’ve listed some of Wallace’s pieces available online. What we’ve lost, the words that were yet to come, we’ll never know. ![]() A palpable authorial compassion for the reader. What was left was an exuberant dedication that left no heavy thought unconsidered, no detail unexamined, no apt digression unexplored. The occasional tendency toward linguistic showmanship for the sake of showmanship was gone. I admire his most recent work more than his early work (and I admire his early work very, very much). It’s worse because Wallace was still rising to the top of his game. ![]() ![]() The loss is too big, the circumstances too senseless. It feels foolish and selfish to argue that one particular suicide is any more tragic than another, but there’s something about this that I’m just not able to grasp. There are dozens of writers whose work I admire and adore, but Wallace is the only one whose work consistently makes me ache with the impossible desire: I wish I could write like that. The intricacy and watchmaker-like precision of his prose was marvelous. David Foster Wallace possessed a verbal gas pedal that he could press further than what I had ever thought possible. ![]()
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