Sunday, September 14, 2008

David Foster Wallace...

David Foster Wallace died Friday night of suicide at the age of 46. How terribly, incomprehensibly sad.

I didn't know him as well as others at Pomona, but from what I can see, his will be a rich and long-lasting legacy.

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death." --DFW


May he rest in peace.

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