Four Facts:

   1. On Friday, September 12th, 2008, David Foster Wallace hung himself in his home in Claremont, California.
   2. I immediately recognized his name flashed on the TV screen over the weekend.
   3. I own a copy of his first novel, The Broom of the System, which he wrote in 1987.
   4. I have never read any of his writing but I still miss his being with us.

The Truth:

In 1958, before Mr. Wallace was born, I turned a short story that had appeared in Playboy into a play.  I then created a prompt book of the play containing blocking, lighting, and sound effects, cast the play, and directed the play which was performed for my peers in a little theater in the basement of a building located on the University of Denver campus.  Dr. Campton Bell, the dean of the theater department, called me into his office and asked me for a copy of the play, saying it was the best adaptation that he had seen in his 25 years of teaching.

The Connection:

I believe from my youthful experiences that I had talent to become a writer.  I just didn’t have the formula.  And I was too young to know that any piece of writing is the formula and, once used, is no longer of any value to the writer.  That includes what I am writing at the moment.

 Artists have formulas.  Thomas Kinkaid has a formula.  So did Warhol, Picasso, Dali, Vargas, and most of the other painters of the 20th century.  They also had last names that people remember.  Writers, Mr. Wallace included, had neither a formula nor a last name that was known other than by his peers.  And also to people like me who spent way too many useful hours digging through used bookstores, most of which no longer exist thanks to the Internet.

The Wrap-Up:

I don’t remember when but I know that one day I realized, after reading piles of how-to-write books, that there are no soft landings for writers.  They write what they must write, send it out, only to end up staring directly into the abyss of another blank page or, in our present age, a blank computer screen.

 A local newspaper had a contest for wannabe writers.  It ended yesterday.  The winner would be published and awarded $500.  Old habits are hard to shake.  I made notes and, finally about a week ago, the nucleus of a story began to form.  It was not a story I was interested in writing.  So I started it and, without giving up, voluntarily stopped writing it.

 I believe that poets and writers all too often give up when they realize that their ideas are gone and new ones are not worth going after.  I’ve gotten to the point that I realize that I can’t write something new until I forget all the old stuff I’ve written.  But it takes a long time to get there and some give up along the way.

David Foster Wallace
February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008.  RIP

- Bob