I find myself surfing a wave of strange feeling about this, since I haven’t actually read any of his books, although I own a few, and intend, have intended for years, to Get Around To It. I have, however, read some of his essays, and found them funny and compelling. This one, which is a beautiful rumination on the English language, its written form, and the politics and right usage thereof, called out powerfully to my regimented and language-lawyer nature; and perhaps for this reason I found this rebuttal petty and territorial, though others celebrated it as some kind of multi-cultural triumph. But whatever you think of his pretensions as a proscriptive linguist, he was obviously a smart guy; some respectable people have used the word genius, and when respectable people say that it should give one pause.

Anyway, McSweeny’s, the magazine published by Dave Eggers and others, is running a sort of memorium page here. People, including a couple of authors you might know, post remembrances of the man. I read a few; they are touching. And more than touching, they’re thought provoking. Now I feel curiously inspired to succeed in the way that he so grandly succeeded, not just in the literary realm but as a person.

I realize that those remembering the dead form a skewed sample, and that they will say things that people who are NOT moved to write on the McSweeny’s wall would not say; and that the act of writing imposes its own selection on theme and content.

Even so, I couldn’t say some of these things about a lot of people I know and like, no matter how much I’d want to. Everyone you like is not kind, even if you’d want them to be, or generous, or witty. So I’m guessing that DFW really was pretty special as a person, and not just a writer, and it makes me want to be special, too. This is a weird way to feel, under the circumstances: inspired by this guy’s death. Or by its fallout.

Anyway, take a look. Worth your time.