wallace-l: Thank You

[George Carr]

I have been frankly surprised that DFW's work was so emotionally
affecting to so many.  I suppose I was subconsciously aware that his
books did well commercially, but it never occurred to me that all of
those hundreds of thousands of readers -- not to mention the dozens of
writers, columnists, and bloggers whose commentary I've read in just
the past two days -- had reactions to DFW's work very similar to mine.
 Reading a book is solitary work in the first place, and discussing it
with a group of friends or colleagues can reveal similarities in
reaction by readers of very different backgrounds.  But reading how so
many people cried at work over the death of someone they never met,
how so many people felt that DFW was reaching directly into THEIR
souls and speaking in the language they spoke to themselves, how so
many people felt uplifted and honored by Dave's big project to make
fiction writing a source of honesty and compassion and relevance ...
it's kind of startling to me.  So for me, it's kind of simultaneously
uplifting and disappointing at the same time, that my particular form
of grief is so widely shared.  Which, as one might expect, was already
prefigured by DFW, who thought very hard and wrote very well about the
peculiar sensations associated with discovering that one is not nearly
as unique, in background or experience, as one previously thought.

George

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 9:35 AM, Prabhakar Ragde <plragde at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> Jon May wrote:
>
>> So how dare I? Who am I to
>> get upset? I'm just some fanboy
>
> The phenomenon I'm trying to analyze renders me somewhat incapable of
> analysis. I had thought it was my long involvement with wallace-l and
> the friends I have made through it, but I have been reading of similar
> reactions in people who have never heard of wallace-l. There may be a
> parallel in what DFW said about AA in IJ and elsewhere, what he said in
> the Kenyon address, and his general feeling that there could be too much
> irony and too much distance, even as he sought to wield those tools in
> moderation.