wallace-l: Coverage of DFW

[Dan Scharf]

What a beautiful note.  It's equal parts comforting and sad to see how well-liked he was out in the world, both because of, and separate from, his writing.

-----Original Message-----
From: wallace-l-bounces at waste.org [mailto:wallace-l-bounces at waste.org] On Behalf Of Bill Stilwell
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:46 AM
To: wallace-l
Subject: Re: wallace-l: Coverage of DFW

McSweeney's started its remembrances today:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

There are some lovely ones, including:

He was my favourite. I didn't feel he had an equal amongst living
writers. We corresponded and met a few times but I stuttered and my
hands shook. The books meant too much to me: I was just another
howling fantod. In person, he had a great purity. I had a sense of
shame in his presence, though he was meticulous about putting people
at their ease. It was the exact same purity one finds in the books: If
we must say something, let's at least only say true things.1 The
principle of his fiction, as I understand it. It's what made his books
so beautiful to me, and so essential. The only exception was the math
one, which I was too stupid to understand. One day, soon after it was
published, David phoned up, sincerely apologetic, and said: "No, look
... you don't need anything more than high school math, that's all I
really have." He was very funny. He was an actual genius, which is as
rare in literature as being kind-and he was that, too. He was my
favourite, my literary hero, I loved him and I'll always miss him.

1 And let's say them grammatically.

-Zadie Smith
--
Bill Stilwell - http://www.marginalia.org/
bill.stilwell at gmail.com

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