Leaking anew

The best thing about being on the Wallace-l is the generosity of the listers. That's also the worst thing. I could have avoided the whole Rolling Stone article, maybe just read the excerpt online (thanks, Claud) but of course, one of the generous members copied the whole thing, made a PDF of it - around 25 mb, and put it on her website.

So now, thanks to a writer who had access to DFW's family and friends, including the famous, we have his entire personal history, the blueprint for suicide, according to a lister - the early depression years, the mid-depression years, and a chronical of his insecurities, from high school through last summer. Of course, many artists/writers will recognize and relate to the insecurities, the worry that the ability or the impulse to create will dry up, that the one thing that keeps you relatively level will disappear and not leave a forwarding address.

It's a weird sort of comfort to know that this great talent was burdened with the same basement sale humanity that the rest of us root around in, separate from any clinical depression.

It's not at all a comfort to re-realize that for all its glory and expense, modern medicine can fall so incredibly short.

RIP, DFW.
"He was like a comet flying by at ground level."
Editor