wallace-l: Coverage of DFW

[Marie Mundaca]

Yeah, me too.

Damn, I miss this guy. I used to have a lot of imaginary conversations with him in my head. I suppose that doesn't have to stop, but... anyway. yesterday I was devastated and furious at psychiatry, and today is a tiny tiny bit better, but I still have to write a review of Oblivion for the book site I write for, and man, is that hard. I hope and hope that he's out there still in that sea of energy having light-speed conversations with Kafka.

I used to have a little fantasy that when his next book came around he'd request to work with me again and I'd totally do it even though I don't work at LB any more and they would be eating copious amounts of Corvus while they paid me to chat with my hero on the phone every evening about em-dashes and ampersands. David made me work harder and like it. He really was an amazing person in the true sense of amazing, at least to me in the few hours I spent on the phone with him. 

I think of him as my brother in so many ways, and it hurts me that he hurt so much, especially when he was so very very kind.

When I get home tonight, I'll take a photo of one of the post-it notes that came on the 2nd or 3rd pass of "Host" that said "totally, bitchingly great." That was him, in a nutshell. 

love to all you guys.
-Marie

--- On Tue, 9/16/08, Matt Bucher <mattbucher at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Matt Bucher <mattbucher at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: wallace-l: Coverage of DFW
> To: "wallace-l" <wallace-l at waste.org>
> Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 4:31 PM
> I'm glad Benjamin Kunkel called out Kakutani:
> http://www.nplusonemag.com/dfw-1962-2008
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 1:48 PM, Dan Scharf
> <DScharf at henson.com> wrote:
> 
> > 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wallace-l mailing list
> > Wallace-l at waste.org
> > https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/wallace-l
> >
> >
> > Watch Jim Henson's "Sid The Science
> Kid," weekdays on PBS KIDS.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Wallace-l at waste.org
> > https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/wallace-l
> >
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