Interrupting our regularly scheduled programming.

This is terrible. More news as I come across it. Time to get on the phone.

EDIT:

Well, the fucker hung himself and that's it. Not much else to say. Well, okay, that's a lie. David Foster Wallace was some who's work I was never a fan of, but someone who nonetheless informed my view of the 90's. That is to say, "Infinite Jest" came out in 1996- the year of Bill Clinton's reelection (most likely the only two-term Democrat I'll see in my lifetime) , the introduction of the Java programming language and the year 200+ people died when TWA 800 exploded off the the Atlantic coast. It was two years into the post-Cobain world, I was turning 21 and the English department was abuzz with Wallace's novel.

I didn't care for it. It was entirely too long and felt like the worst parts of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Breakfast of Champions extended to a ridiculous length and with OCD footnotes. I read it because it was an "it" book. I felt like my literary resume needed to include it, that it was an essential piece of the cultural zeitgeist, an auspicious work from a complex genius that I just didn't understand. Yeah, maybe I am too dumb for this, I thought. Maybe someday I'll appreciate what he was trying to do.

Well, not so. On either account. His novel is not merely post-modern, it is self-congratulatory. It suffers from the very compulsiveness of the language and cultural minutia. It gave birth to the obnoxious cleverness of David Eggers and the McSweeneysization of literature in general and American letters in particular. But here's the kicker: I can't stop thinking about how essential a book it is.

In hindsight, "Infinite Jest" is the "Nevermind" of American literature, and now David Foster Wallace will be its Kurt Cobain, albeit with a case of arrested suicide. Now his work will be elevated. Now Wallace will be the tragic genius that no one understood or properly appreciated. If you listen carefully, you can hear the stampede of post-docs scramble to their keyboards in order to re-review and compose critical inquiries about Foster's work. There will be films pitched, documentaries made. We will be enraptured. "Infinite Jest" is essential because like "Nevermind" we will won't be able to escape it- no matter how the book was received at the time, it has now transcended. It will be seen as a reflection of the schizophrenic end-of-days mode of thought in America- millennial tension, Generation X coming of age and making less than their parent's did, maybe some will even see it as a parable for an increasingly disconnected yet interdependent world, a novel that described the paranoid and disaffected climate that ultimately led to 9/11. Fuck, I don't know. Maybe this is all beyond me- a Minnesota kid who likes tennis and showerbeers and music and film and books.

In other news, 80's zombie night featured the best music Ground Zero has played in a long time. There were throngs of undead dancing to the inevitable "Thriller" cliche. As for me, I appreciated the frivolity and spectacle of a hundred people doing the zombie shimmy, but as the night wore on I realized that this place where I had spent many a late 1990s evening dancing had lost its appeal. There was something that felt, well, "off". I can't quite put my finger on it other than to say I left feeling a bit angry. Once I got home, I popped on "Fargo" and relaxed before going to bed.

When I checked the news the following morning, I discovered that someone whom I didn't think mattered to me had killed himself.