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In 1999, when David Foster Wallace had already published two novels, two short story collections and two works of non-fiction – including the ground-breaking A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – his alma mater Amherst College ran a Q & A interview with him in the university magazine. “The things about Amherst that, in hindsight, disappoint me are things not about Amherst but about who I was when I was there. I let almost no one know me, and I lost the chance to know and learn from most of my peers. It took years after I’d graduated from Amherst to realise that people were actually far more complicated and interesting than books, that almost everyone else suffered the same secret fears and inadequacies as I, and that feeling alone and inferior was actually the great valent bond between us all. I wish I’d been smart enough to understand that when I was an adolescent.” dailymaverick
Wow I had never heard of this guy before but that is exactly how I feel about my misspent youth. Oh well, the late seventies. His -post-modern work strikes me as something I probably wouldn't have gotten into but I may look up some of it. It's certainly a shame that he killed himself.
Do you have a disappointment with your college or your college days?
