The Burden of Genius

The last time I chose a best friend was when I was in Grade 3. I remember declaring it, maybe in my head, maybe out loud to whoever would listen. His name was Ian MacDonald and we played soccer together and I thought it was funny to ask him if he wanted a hamburger cause his last name was MacDonald. He didn't find it funny but we had a lot of sleepovers anyway. I'm not sure why I chose him as my best friend, but I know I adhered to my choice religiously.

Who knows why but as a kid, there is an excitement to choosing favourites, favourite movies (Lion King) or teams (Edmonton Oilers) or foods (Eggplant mush that my Dad used to make). But as I've gotten older, I rarely choose favorites anymore. Maybe because as an adult you have to justify your choices and because this world is too full of great things to decide which one you like best. I can't justify my choices with the simple platitudes that pass unquestioned when you're a kid (I like the Lion King cause of Timon and Pumba!). Well you can but who would care. But after the two months that it took me to finish reading the 1,100 pages of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and definitely after I read it a second and a third time, I was sure that it was my favourite work of fiction, by a long shot. I didn't declare it out loud and tell all my friends (or maybe I did, Dayna?) but I knew.

So I was stunned when I heard from my sister that David Foster Wallace, at age 46, had committed suicide this past weekend. Genius is not a word that applies as often as it is used. I call my friend a genius for wearing snowboots and snowpants to university when it snows (we used to walk to school) when in fact, it's just logical and a little eccentric. But DFW was a genius.

If you don't know, I can't tell you. But I'll try. If you have time, click the links at the bottom of the post.

After finishing Infinite Jest, I craved more. I started reading everything else he had written and the breadth of the topics seemed too much for one man to handle without resorting to a superficial assessment. His essays tackled everything, from the horrors of a cruise ship (see link below) to America and the proliferation of talk radio, to tennis as a religious experience and it was all from an unbelievably original and inspiring point of view. Says Thom Bissell, "He had the ability to make intellectual things sound plainspoken and scatological things sound beautiful and horrible things sound honest."

He covered tired topics like John McCain, animal rights and 9/11 and still came away with new discoveries and realizations about society, human psyche, politics. He would take the issue and look at it from a satellite and then with a microscope. Then he would examine the popular perspective in the same way. And somehow, he would tease out these brilliant, universal conclusions. It seemed he was always five steps ahead. And he wrote with such blistering honesty, clarity and grace, with a grandfatherly decency, that even when he wrote about the discomfort of attending the annual porn star convention in Las Vegas with a confusing mix of disgust and arousal, reading it aloud to your parents would be enlightening and enjoyable, not awkward.

And the book, Infinite Jest. How do I even begin to describe it? While I was reading Infinite Jest, every few pages I had to stop and just smile because it was too much joy to handle. It's a difficult read and I had to stop to let it sink in because it was too much insight, too much wisdom for me to handle. His writing is not for those without patience because he will keep writing and writing until he is absolutely sure that he has made himself understood. He finds irony in the most curious of places, his definitions are beautifully accurate, his descriptions load your senses and take you places that are sometimes dark. He makes you feel at home in your most anxious, neurotic and self-conscious state. When you read his words, they map your thoughts, his word transcend the page, and transplant his ideas straight from his brain into yours. And this makes you feel unalone.

Like other geniuses, he had an ability to see things differently, maybe because he noticed all the things that most of us filter out on a daily basis to keep us from going insane. And maybe that's why, like other geniuses (Hemingway, Cobain, Van Gogh) he killed himself.

For the rest of us, it seems that the ability to create such staggering beauty would be reason enough to live on. But what non-suicidal mind knows how to understand suicides. Obviously, that wasn't enough or for him, it wasn't about beauty. Maybe he was a genius because it wasn't enough. In Infinite Jest, DFW describes the case of one girl in a mental house who has tried to commit suicide. She describes her depression as being entombed in a sense of nothingness, no emotion, just the pain of an infinite numbness. His short story 'The Depressed Person' begins, "The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror." He had dealt with depression his whole life. Who is to say he made the wrong choice?

Was he thinking before he hung himself “What’s the point?” Despite all the answers we could come up with that would end in exclamation (Wait! What about life! Puppies!! Mountains!! Love!!! God?!!?!!), I'm sure for him they would still be unsatisfactory.

I emulate him in my writing. This post runs on and on because I have DFW's fear of not being perfectly understood. I have learned from him to write with honesty and to examine things that I would normally ignore, and to step back from things that I scrutinize too closely. I try like him to be profound without being cheesy but with this next sentence, I fail. He has changed the way I see the world, the way I write and read, and the way I live my life.

Transcript of DFW's Kenyon Commencement address to 2005 undergrads

Literary communities' memories of DFW

Collection of Essays DFW wrote for Harper's Magazine
(His essay 'Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise' is acclaimed and hilarious but long and hard to read on a computer)

All Cooped Up, Nowhere To Go

Well, I was warned but I didn't believe them because I thought I was strong. Plus, I am opposed to bottled water on principle. So, I drank the water (in my defense it was filtered and my boss drank it first) and now I can't leave the house because I have limited control over some of my bodily functions. It's funny how the more basic a function, the more you appreciate it after it's gone. I am making mental note to remember this day so I will always have a good basis of comparison when I think I'm having a crappy day. Har har. Being opposed to medication too, I have resorted to pain relief in the form of movies Ratatouille, The Darjeeling Ltd, and Meet The Robinsons. Pictures of this little one also work wonders in helping me forget the stabbing abdominal pains. She's my three week old niece. Her name is Noa Fei Leenders Cheng as of right now though that might need to be reversed. Haha get it? Cause she's Chinese. Well, half. And the last name for Chinese people comes first. I'm dehydrated and possibly delirious.


I had a good weekend though.

Me and the roommates decided to escape the city. The pollution is smothering in Lima, the cars are loud, the overbearing color is grey. Exhibit A:But as soon as we left city bounds, the cloud cover thinned and the unrelenting smell of combusted fuel fades. 4 hours later, we arrived in Barranca, a oceanside town. To say the cool pacific breeze blowing inland was a breath of fresh air would be a gross understatement. There's Jesus in the background.

We ate, had a few drinks and then joined the rest of the town at the party sponsored by the new fast food chain, Roky's. This is a tactic frequently employed by fast food chains here. Get 'em while they're developing. Savvy marketing ploy for sure.

Maarten, being the conspicuous tall white guy, got called up on stage to join in the festivities. There was potential for some cross cultural miscommunication when he was asked what he thought of the ladies in Barranca and all he could do was shrug because he didn't understand the spanish. I was bracing myself for a riot. He was saved by the MC, who translated his shrug to the crowd as english for 'They are beautiful.' Everyone laughed.

Now we were partial celebrities and we got warned by some kindhearted ladies that we should be wary because some guys were preparing to rob us. We went back to the hotel, put all our valuables down and rejoined the crowd. I got my own moment of celebrity when a bunch of 12 year old girls asked if they could take a picture with me. Needless to say, I was flattered.

The next morning, we journeyed for an hour by collective taxi to see the ruins of Caral, recently discovered to be the oldest in South America (5000 years old). They built pyramids, had elaborate religious ceremonies and stayed around for about 1,000 years. I asked our guide why he thought this site and not others had given birth to the first American civilization. He responded that this site is close to a river, fertile lands, situated in a valley and close to the ocean but not quite on the coast. It wasn't until after we left that I realised I should have asked what were the reasons for their downfall. All the benefits of the location are still around but the civilization is gone.

PS Hi to everyone reading. Please leave any questions or comments if you have any. Say anything you want, anonymously if that helps.

Centro Historico de Lima

This is the Cathedral of Lima, photographed during the only hours of sunshine I have experienced in Peru (you can click on the pictures). It was built in 1535 and has been restored many times. We didn't get to go in.

Next to the Cathedral of Lima and not quite as magnificent is the government palace, named House of Pizarro. It was named after Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador that came to Peru in the 1500's with a handful of men and brought the Inca era to an end.

I first read about this clash of civilizations in Jared Diamonds' book, entitled 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. This is one of my favorite books but I'll try not to write a book report. Basically, it is a theory about the root causes for why the balance of power in our world is so lopsided, exemplified by how Pizarro's 200 men defeated an army of 80,000. Yeah, that's not a typo. Why did Europeans conquer North and South America and not the other way around? The answer is given in the title, but Diamond tries to understand why Europeans developed the guns, germs and steel, and the Americans didn't. It's not cause they're smarter.

The historical account of when Pizarro met the Inca ruler, Atahualpa, is astonishing. In a nutshell, the Inca empire was weakened by civil war and smallpox from earlier European contact. When they formally met, Pizarro's guns and horses freaked out the Incan army and in the ensuing panic and massacre, Atahualpa was captured. Pizarro asked for one room filled with gold and two with silver as ransom. He received it and then killed Atahualpa anyway, sending the Inca empire into chaos. Guns, germs and steal?



The government palace has army guards, gates and tanks surrounding it.









About two minutes away, behind the House of Pizarro, beyond a strategically placed tank, across a bridge and past the armed soldiers, is a different world.

I think this is the edge of the slums.




We were tempted to go further but it would have been unwise according to Gisela, our Peruvian friend and guide. Why tempt fate?




We retreated to a relic of a bar that was centuries old (said the newpaper on the wall) to satisfy our thirst for authentic Peruvian experience.