I know it's a mistake to draw conclusions in advance of facts, but something really bothers me about the suicide of David Foster Wallace. Yes, it's disturbing to lose a talented young writer (exactly my age!), and I don't know what sorts of inner demons might have been tormenting him, but the fact that really bothers me is this: according to the New York Times article, David Foster Wallace was an English professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he taught one or two classes per semester with about 12 students per class.
He was living in English Professor Paradise! He wrote a critically acclaimed novel and some remarkable essays, including the funniest essay ever written on the topic of the Caribbean cruise, AND he had a teaching position any English professor would kill for.
If he didn't want the job, why didn't he just give it to me?
2 comments:
In what I hope would be classified as a Foster Wallace-type spin on the situation I offer this...Maybe you outta dust off the CV - looks like Pomona has an opening.
What a tragedy.
I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm not sure Pomona would be paradise for a lot of folks.
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