And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit "I don’t really mean what I’m saying." So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: "How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean."And how banal to actually give a shit! This too-hip-to-care kind of detachment is practically the form of communication nowadays, and woe betide the commentator or essayist who's caught out saying precisely what they mean; this is to be "shrill" or "overzealous" or just plain "ridiculous". It's far preferable to come at any given issue sideways: this way, one has plausible emotional deniability. It's strange that Wallace often struggled to meet his own high standards of connecting, but, as Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times, the conflict that must've roiled within Wallace produced a body of work that was stirring and eloquent in its vacillation. The knowledge that one would at least feel like a participant in Wallace's creative turmoil made reading him an event; it was the literary equivalent of seeing the new Kubrick or Scorsese (in their prime, of course). I don't know why David Foster Wallace hanged himself yesterday, but I'm acutely aware of the troubles which might've driven him to unthinkable despair. I can hear them issuing from the television in the other room, which is tuned in to an inconsequential professional football game in which I have zero interest. After I finish this half-assed obituary, I will likely stroll back into the living room, crack open a beer and be numb for a few hours. I will not feel because to confront what's become of our world is to hurt, and to be powerless in the face of it is to grieve. Turn back, turn away, do nothing. Barely be. I am not immensely pleased. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks