Did David Foster Wallace knew he will ctb?

[noname223]

I really like the writing of DFW. (An american author who ctb 2008). HIs description of depression and suicidality are so accurate. I think noone will be interested in this thread. But I do it anyway. In The Planet Trillaphon he describes that he will never be a able to leave the circle of depression. In Good Old Neon (published 2004 so 4 years before his suicide) he describes the feeling of someone who will ctb and has a lot of self-hatred.
I think in his work he has often left hints that he will do it. I partly do the same. And I think so did Virginia Woolf. However I am not fully sure about her whole story.

I compare myself too often with people who ctb. Still I just recently thought again about this interview of David Foster Wallace.



At minute 29 a very interesting part begins. He talks about his private life. Especially depression and suicidality. At minute 31 he says he is "not ready to jump of a building". If you look at his face after these words he does not look very satisfied with it. I could imagine he lied about this. However if you take him literally he never jumped of a building. Instead he hanged himself.
After one point in my life (I am talking about myself) I have recognized there is no way around suicide. (After my second psychosis). I am pretty sure DFW also knew it in a very young age or at least expected it.
So I asked myself if he knew it in this moment during the interview. He always talked about how to manage a mid-life crisis. This is such an euphemism.

 

[dyingalone123]

I believe Virginia Woolf had bipolar disorder. It's painful :(
DFW had depression too and his meds weren't working anymore. It's sad. It's one of the reasons why I want to Ctb. I feel useless. I'm barely hanging on with my job.

 

[Quiet Desperation]

I'm sure it was frequently on his mind as it is for most of us that struggle with severe depression, but I don't think it is possible to read into someone's words and second guess what they are thinking. He was obviously suffering at times and it is a theme in some of his work, but one can never really know for sure until actually doing it, sometimes until the last moment. That interview was 11 years before his death, and he hadn't even met his wife yet. The years after his marriage were some of the happiest in his life according to people close to him.

As dyingalone wrote I think it was more a case of the failure of the 'medication lottery' approach to treating depression that seems to be the standard of care these days. You can read about it in David Lipsky's Rolling Stone article. They pulled him off his med that was working due to a side effect he experienced and after they messed about trying to find a new one and failed, the original one didn't work anymore either, and after that he was never the same again. I think the quote in the article from his Amherst days captures his overall attitude:

You are the sickness yourself….You realize all this…when you look at the black hole and it's wearing your face. That's when the Bad Thing just absolutely eats you up, or rather when you just eat yourself up. When you kill yourself. All this business about people committing suicide when they're "severely depressed;" We say, "Holy cow, we must do something to stop them from killing themselves!" That's wrong. Because all these people have, you see, by this time already killed themselves, where it really counts….When they "commit suicide," they're just being orderly.

If you haven't already read it I recommend checking out A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

 

[D&D]

Yes. He did.

When he wrote: 'Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view, i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really.'

Writers knew what it takes. As Bukowski said long ago; 'He asked, 'What makes a man a writer?' 'Well,' I said, 'it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.' Exactly.

 

[Fadeawaaaay]

I really like the writing of DFW. (An american author who ctb 2008). HIs description of depression and suicidality are so accurate. I think noone will be interested in this thread. But I do it anyway. In The Planet Trillaphon he describes that he will never be a able to leave the circle of depression. In Good Old Neon (published 2004 so 4 years before his suicide) he describes the feeling of someone who will ctb and has a lot of self-hatred.
I think in his work he has often left hints that he will do it. I partly do the same. And I think so did Virginia Woolf. However I am not fully sure about her whole story.

I compare myself too often with people who ctb. Still I just recently thought again about this interview of David Foster Wallace.



At minute 29 a very interesting part begins. He talks about his private life. Especially depression and suicidality. At minute 31 he says he is "not ready to jump of a building". If you look at his face after these words he does not look very satisfied with it. I could imagine he lied about this. However if you take him literally he never jumped of a building. Instead he hanged himself.
After one point in my life (I am talking about myself) I have recognized there is no way around suicide. (After my second psychosis). I am pretty sure DFW also knew it in a very young age or at least expected it.
So I asked myself if he knew it in this moment during the interview. He always talked about how to manage a mid-life crisis. This is such an euphemism.

I do know that he made an attempt just before going to college… In his bathtub trying to electrocute himself… I think you're right that this was destined to happen and he knew it