I have literally nothing intelligent to say about him anymore. I’ve spent basically two entire years of my life thinking and writing and speaking about him incessantly and I’m tapped. I think I’m done. I’m not that smart. I do know that with every math class that I fail to understand, I feel slightly guilty that he would realize what an idiot I am.

“It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know,” is the quote that every member of the Wallace Cult of Personality clings to, including myself, and I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with it. I found a writer that, at least to me, is able to tap into my brain and make me cry instantaneously and expresses thoughts and feelings that previously only made me feel alienated and empty. And at this point he’s altered the way I think and the way I read and I know I’ll never get the parts of my brain back where DFW minutiae lies. But it’s gross for me to continue to reappropriate this quote when I’m clearly using it in some bizarre fan girl-y way that would have just repulsed him.

I love David Foster Wallace’s writings and I love the real human relationships that his writings have helped me to establish but I know that with him, and him alone, I’m prone to hero worship and that makes me wary. I didn’t know David Foster Wallace and I’ll never know David Foster Wallace but I know his writings better than anyone else I know and I think this is as far as I can take it. Happy birthday.