Happy 51st, David Foster Wallace

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Today would have been David Foster Wallace’s 51st birthday. In remembrance, here is a particularly nice dream Matt Bucher had, and shared with us in “Consider the Year of David Foster Wallace”:

A year or two after he died, I had a dream that David Wallace did, in fact, have children: a boy and a girl. And for some reason, in the dream, I’m looking at the photos he’s posted of his kids to his Instagram account (or some dreamlike variation thereof) and as I scroll down, I watch them grow up together: a bald baby in a high chair, riding on dad’s shoulders, first day of kindergarten, laughing in the mud, birthday parties, little league games, sweet 16, prom, college graduation with the proud parents high gussy in the sun, and finally, at the end of the feed is a picture of a slightly grayer, more-creased David Wallace holding a little swaddled baby, his grandchild. And his smile in that picture is so simple and pure and real that it’s become part of my fantasy, too. That is how I choose to remember him.

Here is a whole bunch of stuff you can read about DFW from the last year — including five new books.

– Michael Moats

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