Oblivion

Brendan O'Kane

tags:wallace depression suicide
I'd always found David Foster Wallace's fiction to be utterly unreadable, and self-aware, but after greatly enjoying some of his essays I decided that maybe I should give some of his short stories a try. Regrettably, the same qualities that made me put down Infinite Jest a third of the way through -- a self-regarding, pleonastic clever-cleverness not-quite-masking its author's barely contained despair and misery -- are at play here. I found Wallace's fiction cumbersome and unenjoyable when he was alive; reading it now with the knowledge of where he was headed to is a distinctly unnerving and saddening experience.