I have only ever read one piece by David Foster Wallace ("Roger Federer as Religious Experience"), but that was such a beautiful piece of writing about one of my favorite subjects (tennis) that I find myself deeply saddened by the news of his death by hanging on Friday.

My friend Ulrich Blumenbach is in the last stages of writing the German translation of Infinite Jest. How odd it must be to have the author of something you are translating die while you are doing so. (Perhaps like having the author you are writing criticism on die while you are writing the criticism, something that has also never happened to me.)

Perhaps I am struck as much by the deaths of Reginald Shepherd and DFW because they are both of my generation (DFW was 46; Reginald 44; and I am 44).