Reading a friend's blog & clicking a hyperlink has landed me on a site that ran an elaborate article, titled The David Foster Wallace Disease. It was the article writer's obsession with DFW that amplified the latter's genius - the same genius which was evidently determining in ending his life.
Genius. Otherworldly smart. Brainy to an extent of finding (and proving with his works) everyone else dimwitted. And being disappointed, not at the dimwits but at himself for being an unasked-for genius. What do I peripherally make out of that? With the same set of eyes I read articles about DFW and his genius, I watched a film that scanned and presented to us the genius of Ramanujan in math and I also read works of Rushdie to a moderate extent. I am not saying this with an ignorance of not knowing they are different geniuses from one another. Each in their own right. But those names above have shown the world the magic their can brain can work up, to the disbelief of their audience.
Where has it gone wrong for DFW? He'd had his reasons to call it quits. How much could have 10 years of house-arrest fucked Rushdie's brains? What stopped him from losing his sanity? What made DFW to lose it? Or did he embalm his sanity by giving up on the worldly insane?
It gets me to the question V S Naipaul has once urged the intent listeners at a lit fest to prod him with. "What got him going?" The need to keep going; book after book, sojourn after sojourn, story after story.
I've had a brief brushing with depression, or let me safely say, with its classic symptoms. It weighs you down. Like an inexplicable melancholy for a fallen autumn's leaf and knowing that you could nothing to chip it where it could have blossomed.
DFW should have sure lived longer to keep reminding us hat we are dimwits, chained to our collective addictions & leading lives of subcutaneous misery. Instead he chose to shut off from witnessing that,
But other geniuses have their reasons to live on. Such a relief.
World doesn't just need smart people; it needs smart people with intent.
Genius. Otherworldly smart. Brainy to an extent of finding (and proving with his works) everyone else dimwitted. And being disappointed, not at the dimwits but at himself for being an unasked-for genius. What do I peripherally make out of that? With the same set of eyes I read articles about DFW and his genius, I watched a film that scanned and presented to us the genius of Ramanujan in math and I also read works of Rushdie to a moderate extent. I am not saying this with an ignorance of not knowing they are different geniuses from one another. Each in their own right. But those names above have shown the world the magic their can brain can work up, to the disbelief of their audience.
Where has it gone wrong for DFW? He'd had his reasons to call it quits. How much could have 10 years of house-arrest fucked Rushdie's brains? What stopped him from losing his sanity? What made DFW to lose it? Or did he embalm his sanity by giving up on the worldly insane?
It gets me to the question V S Naipaul has once urged the intent listeners at a lit fest to prod him with. "What got him going?" The need to keep going; book after book, sojourn after sojourn, story after story.
I've had a brief brushing with depression, or let me safely say, with its classic symptoms. It weighs you down. Like an inexplicable melancholy for a fallen autumn's leaf and knowing that you could nothing to chip it where it could have blossomed.
DFW should have sure lived longer to keep reminding us hat we are dimwits, chained to our collective addictions & leading lives of subcutaneous misery. Instead he chose to shut off from witnessing that,
But other geniuses have their reasons to live on. Such a relief.
World doesn't just need smart people; it needs smart people with intent.
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