Sorry All Over The Place

Part 1

David Foster Wallace has killed himself. No other writer I know of linked academic curiosity and soul-searching so well. DFW made it clear that taking apart a concept - even a relatively harmless one like grammar, but including more profound ones like identity, life-purpose, and math - and probing its intellectual depths is not only worthwhile but possible, for laymen. You don't need to be a genius (like DFW) to shove something down your brain's gullet and get it clicking on levels you didn't even previously know were there. In this way his genius mirrors Einstein's: a genius that has that forehead-smacking of course-ness about it. Like the answer was hanging there in front of all of us the whole time. DFW was a map leading to understanding in any pursuit under the Sun, and now that map has been erased.

Part 2

I have just done the hardest thing in the world for me to do, and that's to hurt someone's feelings. I feel ripped apart on so many levels right now, and if I try to heal myself on one it hurts even more on the others. Not even writing about it helps, but thanks for reading.