The NY Times obituary that accompanies the AO Scott piece places DFW's suicide in its medical context.  According to Wallace's father, David had been treated for depression for more than twenty years.  In June 2007 he had begun to experience side effects of his medication and since it had been some time since he'd experienced a major depressive episode, it was recommended that he undergo a trial of going off meds completely.  Major depression ensued and it remained refractory to medication and subsequently to electroconvulsive therapy.

David Foster Wallace had a fatal outcome of a common and not uncommonly fatal illness--depression.  He may well have had a melancholic sensibility that was a necessary component of his artistry, but a melancholic sensibility is not identical to major depressive illness.  I feel fairly certain that DFW would have viewed depression as an obstacle to his writing not its source.

I don't usually address bloggers directly, but just for once...

Dear Isaac,

You should certainly read Infinite Jest, and no it's not nearly as hard a book as people generally think it is. But here's a hint: start on page 120. That's right, just skip the first 120 pages and dive in. Trust me here.

My theory is that the reason IJ has this reputation as an Impossible Tome is that the first few chapters really are next to impossible to read. Dense doesn't begin to get to it, and neither does esoteric. You'll need a dictionary close by, and even then you have to read each sentence three times and never be quite sure if you're quite understanding it. I never understood why, exactly, but DFW starts the book with a giant Fuck You to the reader, as though he was trying to weed out those who don't want it enough.

After the first 120 pages or so, though, most of the rest is almost conventional in its narrative strategy. That's one thing people always forget to mention about DFW: beneath the layers of convoluted brilliance there was a great story teller just dying to get out.

I'm not smart enough or literary enough to understand Infinite Jest on a super-sophisticated grad-school lit-crit style meta-level. I loved the book on a very naive and visceral level: I fell in love with the characters. The book is so damn long, it took so long to read, that after a while the characters acquired a kind of intimate familiarity that made it almost impossible for me to really believe they were not real. I felt such a loss when I got to the end, like these long-time friends had been ripped away from me. Don Gately felt real to me. Hal Incandenza felt both impossible AND real. I wanted them so badly to really exist...

The point, though, is that IJ only has the reputation it has because most people read the first 30 pages or so and are absolutely appalled, figuring they're in for 1100 pages of that sort of thing. It's understandable many give up pretty early on. This bait-and-switch may be part of the Jest DFW is infinitely playing on his readers.

But you can't judge a book by its cover...it's just that, in characteristic DFW style, IJ's cover is 120 pages long

Well, while skipping the first 120 pages will spare a reader some of the densest and most confusing parts of the book, it also cuts out a major plot point.  Something has obviously Happened, and the whole rest of the book is (in large part) a cryptic explanation of what.

SPOILER ALERT

-does that phrase even have a meaning in this context?-

Of course, Dr. Dan, it's just that it makes much more sense if you read the first 120 pages at the end rather than the beginning...annular fi(ct)ssion, right?

The Lit Crit set might be horrified, but for The Normal Reader readability is kind of a big deal.

Anyway, even if you read straight through from the beginning, you still miss those plot points scattered in the first 120 pages cuz you can't make heads or tails of it!

Fair enough, emigdio.  I actually was kind of "meh" on Infinite Jest the first time I read it.  I reread it, largely because I loved the characters (like you say, though my favorites are Joelle and Gately), and the second time it made so much more sense.  There are so many little clues and hints and moments where I went "oooooooh.  So THAT'S who that was" that it was much more enjoyable.  And, of course, I just loved the characters even more, and I found it even more funny and heartbreaking.

I'm reading "Oblivion" right now, which is ever so very dark.  I am grateful for the grace and beauty of "Good People," his last published short story, since it offers a break from what seems to be a pretty bleak lilterary turn.

Gah, you're just baiting me to pick it up again, aren't you?!

I want to, I so want to, but my dissertation will NEVER get done if I do...I'll stay stuck in gradschool forever.

I sure am, emigdio.  I sure am.  Partly because I am DYING to have ANYONE to discuss my questions/theories with.  Plus, I guarantee you'll love it more the second time.

I had to leave my computer and wrap up my original post in this thread more quickly than I had intended.  

What I meant to address more explicitly was what I saw as A.O. Scott's implication that there was a mournful, depressive--and obsessive--aspect to DFW's personality that was both necessary for his artistic vision and the root cause of his suicide.  At the very beginning of the piece, Scott highlights Wallace's total rejection of the notion that knowledge of a writer's biography or personality can shed light on his literary works, but then Scott merrily goes on to indulge in precisely the conflation of Wallace's life and work with which Wallace himself held no truck, albeit in a reverse-engineered direction, teasing hints of a melancholic authorial character from the work.

I think Scott's article was well intentioned, and he seems aware of the risks he runs in trying to make sense of Wallace's suicide by reference to his writings.  Still, he'd have been better off if he'd simply left that conundrum alone.  

Clinical depression is extrinsic to a person.  Most people who have experienced an episode of major depression and come out the other side will describe it as something that has happened to them, a sickness that has befallen them analogous to a bout of pneumonia, not as an intrinsic component of their personalities.  Wallace may indeed have viewed the world with sadness, and maybe a vein of implicit sadness runs through his literary output, but ordinary sadness didn't kill him, depression did.