That need to connect\u201d\u201dto bridge the divide between reader and writer, between me and you, between me and everyone\u201d\u201dis there from the first. In Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (which also started life as an undergraduate thesis: he was double major, in philosophy and English), one man is so scared of loneliness that he intends to eat until his body fills the entire world, so he won’t be alone anymore. The novel betrays a clever author very pleased with his own cleverness, but you can forgive a 21-year-old the narcissism when you realize the question at the book’s core\u201d\u201dcan we ever really connect with other people?\u201d\u201dwas an obsession for Wallace, even as his style matured from a theory-based sophomoric snickering to an empathetic, impassioned searching.<\/p>\n
“In dark times,” Wallace told McCaffrey, “the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”<\/p>\n
I guess you can’t properly call David Foster Wallace a religious writer, at least not with the definitions of religion we usually employ. Then again, when I first read him, I sensed a presence beyond the words on the page, a writer who was desperate to connect with the reader but also said what needed to be said. His questions are what I struggle with, too. Who am I? How do I connect with other people? What or who are we headed for, together? How do we get there? What is the best life?<\/p>\n