/lit/ - Literature

>suicide? haha what a coward!

>>12200788
He did it to have a infinite jest.

>>12200788
only the bravest men kill themselves

>>12200794
you have to go back

>>12200788
It is a well-documented bit of lore that David Foster Wallace, prior to his suicide, spent the day eating KFC, watching the first three Die Hard movies, and re-reading the Harry Potter series with the giddyness of a child. Afterwards, he and Franzen met up in Manhattan where they took turns photographing black postal workers sorting mail, correcting usage errors in the New York Post, and eating gyros while walking along the east river. Then he returned home, wrote 'Everything is fine' in his diary, and hanged himself.

>>12200788
Killing yourself takes balls.

>>12200788
Depression
lit loves his outsized passion for the printed word at a time when it needs champions

His treatment-resistant depression was being treated with an old, obscure MAOI. There are dietary restrictions involved in taking such anti-depressants. He ate something that he shouldn't have eaten. He was taken off the MAOI to prevent a hypertensive crisis. When he went back on the MAOI, it didn't work anymore. His life turned into a phantasmagoria so he checked out.

>>12200890
>Killing yourself takes balls.
Not with a gun it doesn't
Successful suicides tend to be strongly correlated with gun ownership, as other methods are considered too scary/painful whereas a gun is instant. most suicides are spontaneous/crisis related, and not long drawn out plans, so trying to delude yourself all the sudden to shoot yourself is far easier than facing the reality of their methods

>>12200898
He wasn't depressed.

>>12200898
>>12200903
So depression is 100% real and can be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain? So depression is real and anxiety on the other hand is a meme disorder used for an easily label and the shelter of victimhood by work dodgers and weak faggots who can't deal with other people correct?

>>12200788
suicide is the only way to legitimize your work.

>>12200904
U S A! U S A!

>>12200910
shut up

>>12200904
He hanged himself, though. Even duct taped his hands to prevent himself from having any final intentions of not doing it.

>>12200903
>phenelzine
>Obscure
To a lousy physician afraid of MAOIs, yes.

>>12200911
Depression is very real. I have it. I had lots of suicidal thoughts before going to the shrink and being medicated.

>>12200934
>dude im down with the struggle, see im all upset, *wipes tears with stack of money*, yeah sucks that you can't pay rent, or afford food or afford to pay the tuition ransom to continue college but, look dude, im more upset trust me!
>yeah man, my parents were two professors who raked in a modest 300k a year collectively and had millions in savings and paid for my college, paid for a new car for me, paid for everything and their connections allowed me to be able to publish. but dude, depression dude! you don't know how good you have it!
>but dude, i get you because i dress like im down with the struggle but let's be clear, I, DFW, lived a harder life than anyone because woe is me! see, look how street i am, i dress just like a regular joe, look how authentic I am!

>>12200941
>Depression is very real.
I never said it wasn't, all I meant was anxiety is the meme disorder that cause people to take depression in others less seriously, anxiety isn't preventing you from working or living. People claiming anxiety is real or anything more than garden variety dread or dissatisfaction are the problem correct?

>>12200788
he reread ij

>>12200946
I don't think you can really appreciate wealth if you were born into it. And the man had depression, ffs.

buuuwapapap
pap
pap
papap

>>12200911
>So anxiety is 100% real and can be caused by extremely stressful experiences? So anxiety is real and depression on the other hand is a meme disorder used for an easily label and the shelter of victimhood by work dodgers and weak faggots who can't deal with other people correct?

>>12200911
>and autism on the other hand is a meme disorder used for an easily label and the shelter of victimhood by work dodgers and weak faggots who can't deal with other people correct?

>>12200946
Shut it

who said depression was a chemical imbalance? doctors only need to ask you questions about how sad you are for 30 minutes before you can get on medication. are we really pretending that 90% of people out there on medication have a serious brain disorder?

>>12200981
>are we really pretending that 90% of people out there on medication have a serious brain disorder?
So they don't have real depression

>>12200982
okay - but if a majority of the people out there on medication have been diagnosed with depression, whats the point of making that distinction?

>>12200948
Anxiety isn't a meme disorder at all. For example, once I had such an extreme anxiety attack before going to sleep that it manifested physically in the form of me puking in the bathroom. You get breathless, and it's as if every single problem in the world affects you in one compact second that makes you feel some weird form of unexplainable despair.

>>12200981
> doctors only need to ask you questions about how sad you are for 30 minutes before you can get on medication.
This is true, however, the meds fucking work.

>>12200982
If depression is "chemical imbalances" could you please outline precisely, with numbers, how is a "chemically balanced brain" and by how much and which chemical a depressed brain differs?
Depressionfags will never ever answer this

>>12200998
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

Different types of depression. Normal feelings of sadness, reactive depression, environmental depression, and then actual severe depression based on inherited traits that are triggered causing chemical imbalances.

>>12201002
Didn't answer the question in the slightest

>>12200946
>poor complaining about his social better not being as devoid of fortune and personality as he is
It should have been you in that noose.

>>12200992
i don't doubt that. but surely i am not the only one uneasy about the idea of widespread and indefinite medication during formulating years.

>>12201005
50ml of prosaic a day. Wow.

>>12200878
Hard to believe any of that is true.

>>12201010
It’s not true

>>12201009
Still didn't touch the question in the slightest
depressionfags seething feels so good

>30 posts*1.
>No footnotes*2.

*In a DFW thread on Lit - Literature imageboard on 4chan
*I hate /lit/

>>12200903
This is what happened

>>12201020
there's more to it than that.
He was frequently fighting with his wife for "mysterious reasons".
The pale king, his history, and even general logic points to the fact that he was having affairs with his students.

>>12200981
if you seek help for depression they will probably give you something to help you with it, what exactly is weird about that?

He did it to become God

>>12200998
what are you some kind of dualist?

>>12201006
>social better
cringe

>>12200788
realized he was shit at writing

>>12201044
He's probably hesitant about the fact of how easy it is to get the medication. My friend recently got put on zoloft. She told me the doctor asked her a series of questions for like 10 minutes and afterwards she got diagnosed with moderate depression without anything else. If such of these diseases are really chemical imbalances I feel there should be more in depth testing if the measuring of these chemicals is possible.

>>12200946
Don't you think that all the shit you wrote is kinda rendered moot by the fact that the man ended his own life in spite of everything he had going for him?

>>12201156
Yes.
And there might be a link creativity-depression.

>>12201156
He knew he wasn't authentic and was a fraud, propped up by his parents.

>>12200794
t. oversocialized individualist bugman

>>12201039
Hadn’t he lost a lot of weight
He weighed 140 pounds—he was on the ropes with depression
—was getting electro-shock treatments
—in-patient hospitalizations
—2 recent suicide attempts

Maybe the infinite jest was drugs we took along the way

>>12201182
He just didn’t have someone as rational and optimistic as yourself
And aren’t you talking about your parents?

>>12201139
Literally pleb

>>12201198
the recent suicide attempts were likely related to the issue. He pretended to be "over it" and willing to comply with his wife's requests but ultimately decided it would be better to kill himself to spite her.

>>12201232
this is also why the note will never be released.

>>12201145
I assume measuring neurologicak chemicals isn't very cheap, but then again, I think of suicide daily and tell myself it's okay and psychiatry is a Jewish invention because I don't afford to see one.

I'm also kinda glad because I see how much friends suffer after they stop taking their meds.

>>12201232
>He pretended to be "over it" and willing to comply with his wife's requests but ultimately decided it would be better to kill himself to spite her.
What a weak overemotional hysterical faggot

>>12201265
ehh..
she probably had leverage on him, enough to ruin his life, reputation, and career.
It was probably the only way he had to come out on top.

>>12201010
It’s literally a copy pasta full of /lit/ memes meant to rustle jimmies

>>12200878
Suicide aside,that would be a wonderful day.

>>12201198
weighing 140 isn't a problem unless he was well over average height. stop being a fatty

>>12201742
He was 6'2.

>>12200788
Who’s that? Billy Ray Cryrus?

>>12201781
well then ignore me lol

>>12200890
As a matter of fact MtF trannies who lop off their balls have a high suicide rate

>>12201104
Not at all.
Simply I'm wiser and some would say inherently manlier than depressionfags

>>12201840
Look, ma, I posted again!

>>12201019
Baby level

Take the fucking pills
>b-but placebo
Take the fucking pills
>b-but I'll go crazy and shoot up a school cuz I'm so randumb ;)
Take the fucking pills
>b-but big pharma
Take the fucking pills
>b-but I'll lose my God-tier Joyce-like genius prose ability
Take. The Fucking. Pills.

Also, get psychiatric advice from medical professionals, not conspiratorial NEET morons on 4chan who are probably mentally ill themselves.

If your depression can be cured be lifting, social engagement, and sunlight, you probably weren't depressed in the first place. In many cases, depression has a BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN that can't be fixed by self-help YouTube pep talks and pursuing a STEM career. Something to consider

>>12200788
Girls rejected him for having too many footnotes.
https://youtu.be/S5ccWLJDV4o

>>12201960
Have you ever heard about those studies indicating that depression may be caused by some areas in the brain getting inflammed and not chemical imbalances? I'm not trying to fight but taking med sounds like the last choice before trying everything else

>>12201960
>Take. The Fucking. Pills.

Anyone reading this should not take it seriously and think twice before doing it. Seek out congitice behavioral treatment before pills. This Anon most likely hasn’t taken SSRIs or Benzos himself and doesn’t understand what comes along with them.

I took a number of medications to treat OCD (same meds for treating depression) and it was a living nightmare. There’s a reason why SSRI med pamphlets say taking them increases your suicide risk. In the current day doctors not only don’t understand why or how psychiatric conditions emerge or operate, them actually also don’t know exactly how medications affect them except that sometimes some effect takes place. In 100 years people will look back at the mental healthcare industry of today and consider it primaries and barbaric. Take any action you can to avoid putting extraneous substances in your body. I say this as someone who’s constantly tortured by OCD. The medication “cure” is worse than the disease most likely. Seek CBT treatment or go exercise or do something else.

>greatest writer in recent times was on SSRIs
>dont take them theyre bad!

>>12202074
an anon in here is really good at debate

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

>>12200801
lol

>>12202109
Escape, I agree
taking control by falling from Twin Towers, rather than being burnt to a crisp

He wasn't a pussy nor had a hard life, he just did it so he would become a pop icon. Infinite Jest wasn't a meme before he dieded.

reminder nobody writes a 1,000 page book without being a genius

>produce a Great American Novel
>rather than becoming a laughingstock weirdo like Pynchon, take the Chad route and exit with grace
Based

>>12202109
Did you write this? It looks like an excerpt from one of Zizek's books.

>>12202377
It's by DFW himself.

>>12201198
>he was on the ropes

>>12200788
If he kills himself he wins

>>12200957
>muh sad

>>12202550
Depression isn't sadness. It's more like spiritual inertia. Depressed people feel distant from themselves and struggle to physically do simple things like get out of bed because they're lacking their senses.

>>12202264
Stephen King is a genius?

>>12202109
>doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness
>Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Isn't this literally hopelessness?

>>12202264
what a stupid fucking thing to say.

>>12200788
he was a coward in despair. i didn't realize lit was full of cowards and modernists.

He simply was too much for this world

>>12200788
he was a faggot

>>12202377
>he hasn't read Infinite Jest

He projected himself a lot onto Himself including the failures and fears of being a father. He started to feel too old and had a midlife crisis.

>>12203917
Did he have kids?

>>12201133
>cringing
Cringe.

>>12201960
How about anxiety?

>>12200788

The Biological Essentialism in this thread alone makes me want to die so...

>>12204435
No

>>12204756
Don’t think anyone said that
Stressors are needed
Don’t worry, life takes care of everyone
It breaks everyone

>>12204790
>It breaks everyone
My bully broke me though and he said he was going to break me, he'll be strong through life until he dies peacefully
I still have constant nightmares years after and I wake up in fear and don't want to do anything other than distract myself

>>12204807
Know the exact feeling, believe me
Fuck the bastard
I stole the line from that last chess shop vid
That video made me so happy
https://youtu.be/eh8U6SLvNgs

>>12200794
Who are you quoting?

>>12200946
this might be bait but if it's not and you genuinely dont know, depression isnt about all the money and shit that you have or social status, it's a chemical imbalance that pretty much causes you to hate yourself and everything. thats why there are people like DFW who were wealthy and successful and connected and still hate their life so much they an hero

>>12206541
>it's a chemical imbalance

Which chemicals?

>>12200904
That South Korea suicide rate though.
Is it because of Starcraft addiction?

Depression isn't real.

>>12206561
Yeah it is dick breath, ask your mother, she birthed you after all.

Can someone describe what "anxiety" is? I can get anxious about stuff, but is there just a general "anxiety" with no target that you feel sometimes?

>>12206621
struck a nerve?

>>12206561
this is true.
In fact, I would go as far as to say there are very few "mental illnesses" that are scientifically proven.

It's sad to see how in denial people are when they are told this. How else can someone cope with the fact they spent thousands of dollars on placebo treatments for an invisible illness?

>>12206541
>depression isnt about all the money and shit that you have or social status, it's a chemical imbalance that pretty much causes you to hate yourself and everything. thats why there are people like DFW who were wealthy and successful and connected and still hate their life so much they an hero
Why don't they just face themselves and understand that everyone is suffering and that suffering isn't something they get from something outside of their control. That they make themselves miserable. Why don't they just change it, perceive it differently?

>>12206541
>2018
>muh chemical balance hypothesis
Back to Facebook, psychopharmacology illiterate.

>>12202074
He wasn't.

>>12206794
The greatest or took SSRIs?

>>12206861
me on the left

>>12200794
>>12200853
>>12200890
Nice meme responses. We call it "taking the easy way out" for a reason.

>>12200788
He suffered a kind of lypemania, incongruous to his success. It was an expansive fixed-idea, one he could only write to express.

It was all theatrical.

>>12206961
I agree.

>>12200788
I would kill myself if I wrote infinite jest too.

>>12207108
For what reason? Genuinely curious, Anon.

>>12206861
DFW took MAOIs, a superior drug.

>>12200946
going from being poor to rich doesn't make you happy, but it eliminates certain worries and provides certain securities, nothing more.
going from financially secure to richer does less.
Certainly doesn't prevent depression.

>>12206861
is that Donna Tartt?

>>12200946
Weak faggot

>>12207592
Twin Peaksu waifus

>>12200788
same reason most people do, they can't cope.

>>12200788
I took a creative nonfiction course with him at Ponoma back in '94. We weren't allowed to show anyone our essays outside of the class for some reason. He seemed naturally intelligent, didnt need to look at any notes or textbooks or prepare for any lectures, he just knew his stuff and was super casual.

I saw him talking to a girl on campus one day. He uncharacteristically wore a Fila sweatsuit, the kind that looks like it's made from the same material as parachutes, and trainer sneakers with a matching bandana. That was his pussy hunt outfit apparently. Several times a week, same outfit, I'd see him hitting on women in it. I once saw him wearing it while carrying an identical outfit from the dry cleaners, he had like 4 sets of same Fila sweatsuit.

I asked him about it in class and he said we aren't allowed to discuss anything unrelated to class while inside class, the same way we can't show anyone outside of class our essays. A student called out "but Dostoevsky isn't in this class and last week you talked about replicating his black tea obsession to test its affects on your own writing". Wallace stared blankly at the student with dead eyes for 30 seconds in dead silence then said "you just got knocked down a full letter grade. Any other smart asses? Didn't think so." and pushed up his glasses with his index finger.

I remember telling myself this guy will either be super successful or kill himself.

>>12206698
thanks anon you cured my depression, how didn't i see this before

>>12209194
great post
Mary Karr is another example

>>12209194
If that's true, he sounds like a cunt.

>>12200794
>in an age of demoralization and nihilism, suicide is the thinking man's choice!
>only an NPC wouldnt jump on the bandwagon of self-imposed victimization and self-induced depression that plagues the modern man
The irony of the NPC meme never fails to amaze me. Only the most unconscious people - the most like NPCs - even bother to use it at all.

>>12209266
>>12209253
NEWFAGS LEAVE

>>12209194
based copypasta

>>12200788
idk who this guy is, but he probably did it because he was balding and clearly he was fucked up about it. the bandana hiding the hairline, the denial with the long hair, the "beard." yep, the telltale signs of a suicidal bald guy
>t. starting to bald myself and i get it

>>12206503
beta as fuck way to go. mishima suicidemogs the shit out of him

>>12206938
what if you're actually living a really good life but decide to kill yourself because you're a sick cunt

>>12210373
then its the based way out

>>12200788
Yes.