This week of the year tends to see two kinds of writing about David Foster Wallace, reflections on his own experience of 9/11, which he wrote about for Rolling Stone, and reminiscences from those who knew him, because this week also marks his passing (September 12, 2008). The children’s book writer Mac Barnett studied with Wallace at Pomona College, and his this piece in The Guardian. 

In class this week, we’re reading the Rolling Stone piece and several immediate reflections on the attacks of 9/11 published in The New Yorker. I also recommend Tom Junod’s amazing story “The Falling Man,” about the person in the iconic and terrifying photo above, which brings to mind Wallace’s lines: “It seems grotesque to talk about being traumatized by a video when the people in the video were dying.”