David Foster Wallace Appreciation
The rising moon looks like it doesn’t feel very well. – Infinite Jest
On Friday, September 12, 2008, novelist, essayist, professor David Foster Wallace hung himself in his home in Claremont, California. 46 years old, Wallace’s literary achievements included the enormous novel Infinite Jest as well as short story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion; and essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
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Two young men set up beach chairs on the sidewalk opposite the school’s front lawn. The tall one wore a black t-shirt which read ‘City Property’ in white block letters. The shorter man wore an untucked dress shirt and a tie. City Property rested heavily a large cooler between the chairs. Tie rummaged about a black backpack he had set on the pavement, producing a stack of cardboard party hats in vibrant colors and handing one to City Property without looking up from the pack.
“There’s only one thing you need to ask yourself about prosecuting a war you’re too old for: how would your stomach feel, in the provincial airport, as you waved your sons off to fight it?”
Karl was vacuuming the carpet like I had asked him to while I flummoxed and flumped the furniture all over the narrow living room, making way for the fake but, to our eyes, gorgeous and redemptive tree.
If the female is not inebriated make her so. The same can be said for myself.
‘The house is on fire. The house is on fire. The house is on fire.’ 
A female, VICTORIA (21) and a male, JONAH (26) sit on a beach together, in sand, facing the audience. Umbrellas perch over their heads and an icebox sits stage left. Victoria wears a bikini top and shorts, expensive sunglasses and flip-flops. Jonah wears an old, white undershirt and shorts. Jonah is smoking a cigarette while Victoria leans back, trying to get tanned. She has a hand down Jonah’s shorts.
If I could have written a letter it would have been to the person who provided the greater amount of body odor on the J train into Manhattan that afternoon. I had given a dollar to two subway musicians on the platform who were playing Woody Allen caper music with a clarinet and bass guitar and, sitting on the train, was staring at the city as we crossed the East River. Two teenage girls across the aisle talked and giggled as one of them reached her arm all the way inside the tube of chips they’d been eating from to get at the last bits. I formed a judgement of the attractive woman sitting next to me, mooning over Lady Chatterley’s Lover. She laughs, I thought, not because it tickles her funny but because she wants us all to know she’s sophisticated enough to understand and, moreover, laugh at what goes on in the naughty novel.
* Prompt from F. Scott Fitzgerald story contest from McSweeney’s magazine: A man hates to be a prince, goes to Hollywood and has to play nothing but princes. Or a general—the same.
Evaline was kicking stones along the pavement towards my feet, some missing my shoes and skittering past. I was reminded of Charlott throwing stones at me when we were kids. Evaline wasn’t wearing yellow but should have been. Her somber black sweatshirt did not fit her whimsical, sardonic mood. She was getting married tomorrow and we were late for the rehearsal dinner and the bus wouldn’t ever come.