FYI, the following post can also be found here, along with other entries from Pomona students and faculty.
I'm having a hard time with the idea of a tribute, because it makes me
think of 21-gun salutes, awful tribute bands, and, as Wikipedia defines
the term, wealth being passed as a sign of submission or allegiance.
Implying that Dave had some kind of authority, some power greater than
our own is a characterization that, while possibly true, he would have
found totally ridiculous and cringeworthy.
But I think it's important for those of us who knew him as Dave—the
professor, the (dreaded cliché alert) mentor, the goofy-looking guy—to
have a space to talk about stuff. Because I'm scanning headlines about
Dave's death, and I'm frustrated because everything I'm finding isn't
about Dave, not really. The media is talking about his books and his
essays and, sometimes, his teaching career, and, honestly, none of it
is making much sense to me. They're talking about someone, but it's not
Dave. It's an abstraction or a stereotype. They're telling a story
about a character named David Foster Wallace, and it doesn't have
anything to do with the person I and a lot of us knew.
Which brings me to another problem I'm having, which is, on the one
hand, wanting to bring my memories of Dave to the table as part of this
collective remembrance, while, on the other hand, feeling fiercely
protective of those memories. In the first days after his suicide, I
had a hard time coming up with anything to share. His death was like
this massive object that stood in the way of everything that came
before. Just in the last day, my memories of Dave have been returning
in little snapshots. I've been able to talk with friends who knew him
and piece together some of the moments that made him who he was to us.
Some of these moments feel too sacred to share, but I'm realizing now
how much we need each other and each other's memories in order to keep
Dave, the man and not the character, alive in our minds.
So with that, I offer this snapshot.
I almost killed Dave's dogs. This is not a deep secret that I never
told him, rather, I called as soon as I found the bottle of
dog-arthritis medication mangled and empty on the floor. I was a little
hysterical on the inside, but I think I did a good job of faking
composure on the phone. I remember following his instructions, my hands
shaking as I turned the tissue-paper pages of the phone book, looking
for the vet's number. I remember telling receptionist what happened and
her questions: "How many arthritis pills would you say were in the
bottle?" "And how many did they eat?" "All of them?!" What I remember
most, though, is Dave on the phone telling me that I didn't do anything
wrong, even though I did, and not to be scared, even though I was, and
that he wasn't mad. And he really wasn't. And his dogs were absolutely
fine, by the way.
And here's one more. Sometimes people brought food to class, like for a
birthday or to celebrate the last class of the semester. Dave didn't
eat sweets, but he would often go on about how good it looked or how
delicious it smelled. One time, when someone brought brownies, he held
it up to his nose and inhaled deeply for a long time before passing it
on. He used to bring plain almonds for himself. If you sat next to him,
he'd occasionally place an almond in front of you. He wouldn't ask if
you wanted it or not, he'd just put it there. If you ate it, he'd
probably give you another one.
When I consider what Dave would have wanted us to remember, three
things come to mind: how to identify point of view, the difference
between "compliment" and "complement," and proper use of the serial
comma. But I never want to forget that Dave wore white socks pulled
halfway up his calves, and tennis shoes. I want to keep talking and
writing about him, all sides of him, because I'm afraid of forgetting
these details, which are more important to me than anything he ever
published. We trust ourselves to hold onto so much, but our minds are
slippery. We can't do it alone. We need each other in order to remember
Dave honestly, and we need to resist eulogizing and deifying him in
ways that he would have found absurd.
