Bothersome

Apparently many new people are getting into David Foster Wallace now, which is fine, it's a good thing, it will help them and amuse them and will provide money to his relatives.

But nothing fries me more than people who claim to be huge fans who never paid attention previously. Is there anything sicker than that?

On the positive side, people that I know and care about, seeing how upset the death made me, are reading him and one is even afraid he won't like him, that it will upset me. That is a good friend. And no, it won't upset me.

Those people more than make up for the idiots and the maladjusted. And isn't that what friends are all about? Helping to level and set right the crap we're exposed to every day.

David Markson was a favorite writer of DFW's, and he published a book of poetry as well. This one is apt and the last line is eerily prescient.

Skull
That’s Dostoyevsky’s skull beside my desk.
Oh well, perhaps it’s Percy Shelley’s then.
In either case the skull’s a skull, no fear:
True tears in those two hooded sockets once.
The teeth are bad, which may mean youth was gone;
Were Gogol’s teeth undone? Were Baudelaire’s?

One night, oh, years ago, Jack Kerouac
Contrived to wedge a candle stub in there;
We meant to watch it glow, but only slits
Along that jaw would let out any light.
“This thankless peon’s got no soul,” Jack said.
Next day on breakfast thought he swore it Poe.

There’s scarce profundity in this, lame ploy
To balance out one’s grimmer view of things;
Like questioning how long the soul’s rot takes,
Let’s say: would Jack himself be clean bone yet?
Ah, Christ, trust life to intervene indeed –
And darken even jests that keep us sane.