Novelist and journalist David Foster Wallace is dead of an apparent suicide at age 46. Personally, I was a big fan of Wallace — I’ve actually read his doorstop dystopian satire Infinite Jest twice.
I have to admit, I tend to find it more than a little amusing when authors primarily famous for writing “pessimistic” or “dystopian” works wind up killing themselves. Not because I wish them ill or anything, but mostly because everyone acts as if it’s some sort of shocking act that no one could ever have expected.
I’d never read Wallace, but I’ll definitely have to check out Infinite Jest. Not because of the suicide, but because he sounds like a fellow devotee of The Footnote.