
Lipsky writes a forward where he talks a lot about Wallace’s death and interviews Jonathan Franzen (Wallace’s close friend and fellow author). He pretty much sums it up as follows: Wallace was put on an antidepressant that seemed to actually help pull him out of hell, but the drug caused some symptoms (e.g. would react poorly with some other foods, made him sick). A doctor suggested he try one of the new medications that come with far less side effects and Wallace agreed. The meds didn’t work, and when he tried to go back to his old ones they were now ineffective (apparently this is common with antidepressants).

“I tell him Van Gogh's story. Van Gogh went into a field to shoot himself, in the chest, with a single-shot pistol. And missed. And had to walk back through town, where everyone thought he was sort of foolish already: terminally wounded but not in fact dead.” - David Lipsky (aside)
Another trait that comes up over and over again is how Wallace is constantly flattering everyone else around him. There’s an interesting moment in the book where Wallace and Lipsky are angry at each other after Lipsky accuses Wallace of pretending to be “stupid” so as not to appear like the genius he is. Something I liked in the movie adaption (that isn’t in the book) is when Lipsky says, “No one read a 1,000 page book because they think the author is a normal guy. They do it because he’s a genius.”
“Yeah, I met somebody there who’d been given shock, which scares the shit – you know, I’m like you, my brain’s what’ve I got. The idea of the brain being hurt – but I could see that at a certain point, you might beg for it, the same way, like in Alien, they say, “Kill me, kill me.” You know? Because it would be – right. There’s a thing in the book – I like this thing in the book: when people jump out of a burning skyscraper, it’s not that they’re not afraid of falling anymore, it’s that the alternative is so awful. And then you’re invited to consider what could be so awful, that leaping to your death, you know, seems like an escape from it.” - David Foster Wallace during interview
One other small bit I have to include because it kills me when I even think about it is Wallace saying the whole trip how he wished he was married. I say this because I am an obsessive Joan Didion fan and idealize her marriage to fellow author John Gregory Dunne all the time. They would constantly wrack up these outrageously high long-distance phone bills when away on assignments. Wallace talks about how nice it is to have someone to call when you’re at a hotel alone, or someone to just talk about the mundanities of your day. This kills me. Wallace later marries Karen Green in 2004.

"I think every generation finds new excuses for why people behave in a basically ugly manner. The only constant is the bad behaviour. I think our excuse now is media and technology.” - David Foster Wallace (interview)

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