... and everyone else who defended DFW against Mister Marker.

ANY suicide is terrible. It takes a lot of very deep pain to get to the stage of actually going through with it, and from the sounds of things, DFW suffered this pain for years. That's sad. I feel for anyone in that situation.

And yes, I feel worse about this suicide precisely BECAUSE it was DFW. I really liked his writing. It was funny and insightful. It changed how I saw the world, for the better. Through his writing I got the impression that he was a very decent, kind, cool guy that I would have loved to hang out with. It's always sad when we lose such a person.

He will be missed.

First, I can't believe how affected I've been by DFW's passing. And the more I read by and of him the more I've come to believe that my sentiments are not misplaced.

Although, stylistically, he is coming from a 180-degree opposition to a writers like Kerouac and the Beats, he seemed to embody the same spirit (from Kerouac's "Rules"):

Something that you feel will find its own form

Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Blow as deep as you want to blow

Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

The unspeakable visions of the individual

There are more similarities (particularly in their unexpected popularity, attacks upon their methods, etc.) but it's this core humanity in their writing that strikes me most strongly. Thank you and Godspeed Mr. Wallace - we will all be there soon enough, with the "Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven."

Second, to Mr. Marker and his ilk: I know you.

I've been a professional musician for a number of years and have encountered plenty of guys who have sat in their bedrooms (or conservatories) learning technique and scales and playing along with the records who have never had a live paying gig in their lives. They complain bitterly about the skill (lack of) and ethics (none) of those of us who are working. But anyone who's ever tried to work with them know that they are, at best, a one-trick pony, and temperamental at that. It is the audience's, fan's, other musician's, world's fault that they have not received the acclaim their talents so richly deserve.

Until someone undertakes a plan to rid us of the current economic system, you need to recognize that what you are engaged in is a business venture (or... you could just STFU and ENJOY writing for yourself and those who like to read your work). Are you marketing yourself, or are you waiting for the the "genius grant" people to knock on your office door (and stand there reading your bitter little anti-pomo cartoons while they wait for you to open).

Do you want to be an "artist?" Do you want to be a "working artist?" Then ponder this:

The ONLY THING that equates to working on your artistic career is actually working on your artistic career.

Have that little tautology tattooed to the inside of your arm and read it out loud the next time you feel the need to tear down someone who you believe is undeservedly successful.

Culture is oranic, as it should be. What started in the 80s wasn't a "conspiracy" or a "cabal." It was simply an organic change in what writers could expect from the gate-keepers of their profession. Do I really have to go back as far as Swifty Lazaar? (no pun intended)

There was a very famous essay published in The New Yorker on or about 1982 entitled "Less Is Less." It was about Raymond Carver, primarily, but it also concerned itself with what the author thought was a gross misunderstanding of Hemingway's short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Specifically, it dealt with the fact that Carver - and the other "Kmart realists", though they weren't called that back then - had misunderstood Hemingway's aesthetic. He was not trying to ruin language, but tighten it to the point that it could express great thoughts with few words.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with Hemingway's idea, but it is indeed intriguing. Then people like Carver came along and used it as a crutch for bad style and even worse writing habits. And the literary culture has suffered for it, as has the larger culture.

Mr. Marker, I don't personally like a lot of the PoMo "Believer" stuff that comes out of MFA programs. I did not go to an MFA program myself. I kept on writing anyway. I recently signed with an agent at one of the best literary agencies in the US. Does this mean I'm going to have a successful career? Who knows, it's too soon to tell. But regardless of what happens, I'm certainly not going to blame my success or failure on the EEEEEVillll Post-Modern MFA conspiracy.

Maybe you've had a run of bad luck. Maybe you stopped trying too soon. Maybe you're just not as brilliant as you think you are. I have no idea.

But I'm pretty damn sure it's not Wallace's fault.

Wow. Well done, Marker. Someone hand this guy the Idiot Award. I don't think it gets any better than that. On so many levels, that was hysterical. You shit all over an homage to a dead guy. You complain that Wallace ruined the writer's market for "real" writers. You hand out _incorrect_ corrections of other people's writing. (Yours is a truly dizzying intellect, I dare say.) And then when someone else points out that your correction was wrong, you call them a troll. And the best part is, if you are a self-declared troll, trying to get giggles, you're doin' it wrong! It's not supposed to be so much work.

I'm one of the people who has written in saying he didn't care much for Wallace's writing. It's funny to me that all the compasion and empathy Wallace is supposed to have taught people doesn't come into play if you didn't like his writing. Then it's knee jerk attacks and whopping generalizations.

I'm wondering how many people here are readers but not writers. Because I've never known a writer to silence his opinion about what he cosiders good or bad writing under any circumstance, and one who doesn't respect another author's contribution is unlikely to be silenced even by said author's untimely death. It may not be particularly proper, but it strikes me as eternally accurate. Writers are forever passionate, if not always well-socialized. I have a lot of empathy for people who dislike the whole po-mo/deconstructionist school of writing, and their bewilderment regarding the success of someone like Wallace who embodies it while claiming to be writing against it.

But Mr. Marker, I'm not sure what to say to you. While I dislike a lot of what gets published these days, and while I too have friends that are good writers who never cared for Wallace (or DeLillo, or Franzen), I'm not sure where you're coming from. I don't write that sort of thing, and I don't support it, yet I have been published.

I don't think there's any cabal, though it seems easier to get in print if you went to an Ivy League school or graduated from an impressive writing program. But still, it strikes me that people with vastly different sets of aesthetics have a better chance at reaching an audience with their work than ever before. There's such a huge market and no single definition of good writing, not even one or two dominant ones. The days of everyone needing to sound like one author (whether it be Hawthorne, Hemingway, or Bellow) is over. If, after all this time, with all the little magazines, with all the online publications and everything else available, you've never been published and yet you're continuously trying...well, I hate to finish that sentence.

You might want to start your own blog, or an online magazine with friends who share the same philosophy of writing. If you attract enough attention, you might even be able to swing a book deal.