Jean Stein

Death Is Not the End

Author(s): David Foster Wallace
Source: Grand Street, No. 60, Paranoia (Spring, 1997), pp. 6-9
Published by: Jean Stein
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25008144 .
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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

The 56-year-oldAmerican poet, aNobel Laureate, a poet known inAmerican

literarycircles as "the poet's poet" or sometimes simply "thePoet," lay
outside on the deck, bare-chested, moderately overweight, in a partially
reclined deck chair, in the sun, reading, half supine, moderately but not
severely overweight, winner of twoNational Book Awards, anAmerican
Book Critics' Circle Award, aLamont Prize, two grants from theNational
Endowment for theArts, a Prix de Rome, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship,
aMacDowell Medal, and aMildred andHarold Strauss LivingAward from
theAmerican Academy andNational Institute of Arts and Letters, a president
emeritus of PEN, a poet two separateAmerican generations have hailed as
the voice of their generation, now 56, lying in an unwetXL Speedo-brand
swimsuit in an incrementally reclinable canvas deck chair on the tile deck
beside the home's pool, a poet who was among the first tenAmericans to
receive a "GeniusGrant" from the prestigious MacArthur Foundation,
one of only threeAmerican recipients of theNobel Prize forLiterature now
living, 5' 8", i8i lbs., brown/brown, hairline unevenly recessed because of
the inconsistent acceptance/rejection ofvarious Hair Augmentation
Systems-brand transplants, he sat, or lay-or perhaps most accurately just
reclined-in a black Speedo swimsuit by the home's kidney-shaped pool,I
on the pool's tile deck, in a portable deck chairwhose backwas now reclined

IAlso the first American-born poet ever in the Nobel Prize for Literature's distinguished 94-year history to

receiveit, thecovetedNobel Prize forLiterature.

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four clicks to an angle of 350wlrlt the deck's mosaic tile, at I0:20 A.M.on
I5May I995, the fourthmost anthologized poet in the history ofAmerican
belles lettres, near an umbrella but not in the actual shade of the umbrella,
reading Newsweekmagazine,2 using themodest swell of his abdomen as an
angled support for themagazine, also wearing thongs, one hand behind his
head, the other hand out to the side and trailing on the dun-and-ocher
filigree of the deck's expensive Spanish ceramic tile, occasionally wetting a
finger to turn the page, wearing prescription sunglasses whose lenses were
chemically treated to darken in fractional proportion to the luminous
intensity of the light towhich theywere exposed, wearing on the trailing
hand awristwatch of middling quality and expense, simulated rubber thongs
on his feet, legs crossed at the ankle and knees slightly spread, the sky
cloudless and brightening as themorning's sunmoved up and right,wetting
a finger not with saliva or perspiration butwith the condensation on the thin
frosted glass of iced tea that rested now just on the border of his body's
shadow to the chair's upper right andwould soon have to bemoved to
remain in that cool shadow, tracing a finger idlydown theglass's side before
bringing the slightlymoist finger idlyup to the page, occasionally turning
the pages ofthe I9 September I994 edition of Newsweekmagazine, reading
about American health-care reform and about US Air's tragicFlight 427,
reading a summary and favorable reviewofthe popular nonfiction volumes
Hot Zoneand TheComingPlague, sometimes turning several pages in
succession, skimming certain articles and summaries, an eminent American
poet now fourmonths short of his fifty-seventh birthday, a poet whom
Newsweekmagazine's chief competitor, Timemagazine, had once rather
absurdly called "the closest thing to a genuine literary immortal now living,"
his shins nearly hairless, the open umbrella's shadow distending slightly,
the thongs' simulated rubberpebbled on both sides of the sole, the poet's
forehead dotted with perspiration, his tan deep and rich, the insides of his
upper legs nearly hairless, his penis curled tightly on itselfinside the tight
swimsuit, his Vandyke neatly trimmed, a clean ashtray on the iron table,

2Never the recipientof a JohnSimonGuggenheim FoundationFellowship,however:rejectedthriceearly

inhis poetrycareer,he had determined thatsomethingpersonaland/orpoliticalwas afootwith the
Guggenheim Fellowshipcommitteeandhad decided thathe'd simplybe damned, starveutterly,beforehe
would ever again hire a Graduate Assistant to fill out the tiresome triplicate Guggenheim Foundation
Fellowshipapplicationand go throughthe tiresomecontemptiblefarceof "objective"
consideration
again.

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not drinking his iced tea, occasionally clearing his throat, at certain intervals
shifting slightly in the pastel deck chair to scratch idly at the instep of one
footwith the big toe of the other footwithout removing his thongs or
looking at either foot, seemingly intent on themagazine, the home's blue
pool to his right and the home's thick glass sliding reardoor to his oblique
left, between himselfand the pool a round table of white woven iron impaled
at the center by a large beach umbrella whose distending shadow now nearly
touches the pool, an indisputably accomplished poet, reading his magazine
in his chair on his deck by his pool behind his home. The home's pool and
deck area are surrounded on three sides by a dense tangle of trees and
shrubbery.The trees and shrubbery, planted years before, are densely
interwoven and serve the same essential function as a privacy fence or awall
of fine stone. It is the height of spring, and the trees and shrubbery are in full
leafand are intensely green and still, and are complexly shadowed, and the
sky iswholly blue and still, so that thewhole enclosed tableau of pool and
deck and poet and chair and trees and home's rear facade is very still and
composed and very nearlywholly silent, the gentle gurgle of the pool's pump
and drain and the occasional sound of the poet clearing his throat or turning
the pages of Newsweekmagazine the only sounds-not a bird, no distant lawn
mowers or hedge trimmers orweed wackers, no airplanes overhead or
distant muffled sounds from the pools of the homes on either side of the
poet's home, nothing but the pool's respiration and poet's occasional
cleared throat,wholly still and enclosed, not even a hint of a breeze to stir the
leaves of the trees and shrubbery, the silent living nastic enclosing flora's
motionless green vivid and inescapable and not like anything else in the
world in either appearance or suggestion.3

3That is not entirely true.

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