The Longest Day
is how it feels today, DFWallace admirers among us, after that in the middle of yesterday afternoon, we were shaken by a short blurb appeared on Internet sites, whose size is not suitable to the tragic news. We were not satisfied, of course. Those few words, poorly put together, could not convince us that Wallace had a very tight rope around his neck, showing how easy it was to destroy, with a paltry gesture, one of the brightest minds of the last century, when our devotion had made to believe to be imbued with divine immortality.
We faced a day of suspension and anguish, before reading in detailed articles of the Republic and the Corriere della Sera, that everything was true. DFWallace died. Indeed, killed himself at age 46, hanging himself. A gesture, for anger, I still can not forgive him. Even read the newspaper made me look like the news likely. I had to attack the articles on the wall with tape to keep them in sight all day, while studying, eating, tidy up. Eventually I got it.
Author of everything from books to their shopping lists compiled to go to market under the house - I like to imagine them with very fine details are absolutely safe and beautiful - to leave a huge void in anyone who has clashed with his prose. Yes, "Bumped" is the right word. Because nothing looks like the way you write DFWallace of the first author to create a formidable alliance between literary language and math - like "the devil's holy water" - that never would have imagined so fruitful. Her periods are soaked in an obsession mile-crazy to the details, to whom he dedicates all due attention, until they shine with meaning induced. Genius, as well as writer, in fact.
The thing that hurt me most today was to read articles written by journalists who, obviously, have never matched his works, but chose to put on praise memorable traits straight from wikipedia - in particular the definition of maximalist versus minimalist saddled with that for the umpteenth time in Carver. I'd be curious to see Wallace struggling with these items, and maybe come out as the corpse African Hemingway, shouting, "Hey, I'm not dead yet."
Now many, those poor people who do not yet know him, they will dip in a spirit of reverence in his work, and this makes me happy. Literature, great literature has the merit of its proponents make immortal. But for now, this thought just can not console me.