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He is the first person in my life to have successfully committed suicide, whatever that that actually means. I was in a graduate creative non-fiction class taught by him and another professor several years ago. That class was, by a huge margin, the most intense academic experience I've ever had. As seen in his writing, the man was acutely sensitive to the various pressures of social interaction. He could, in the most scholarly and unemotional way possible, bring those pressures to bear on anyone in the class at will.
All the articles I've read have focused on the "darkness" in his writing, which I suppose is appropriate when someone kills themselves, but it isn't at all the first thing I think of in relation to his writing or on a personal level. David Foster Wallace was uproariously funny in person and on a regular basis in his writing. Without his constant and brilliant sense of humor his class would have been and unbearably stressful. Three or four times per class when someone else was talking DFW would mutter "no pun intended," and once the gears in my head caught up to the level of language he existed on, it would be the most devilishly funny thing imaginable.
His command of the English language was second to none. He deserves mention with the greatest: Pynchon, T.S. Eliot, Nabokov, Dickinson, and who else? His class taught me the absolute limits of our ability to communicate with language. His preciseness with English, I believe, grew from a desire to eliminate the ambiguity he so easily saw in even the most basic use of language. There was no room for irony in his writing.
I'm slowly working towards sadness at his passing, but it's definitely the last thing I'm feeling. After the initial surprise I have had a strong sense of anger. He was well aware of what a shitty thing hanging himself was to do to his parents and wife who survive him and the students who had probably just started the semester in his class. Certainly though, his voice in the world will be missed.
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