It's been finally made public. The University Of Texas in Austin has recently made the acquisition of 20 000 items of his drafts, letter and personal papers. The transaction has been done somewhere around August if I remember well, but it just been made available to public (they had to sort out the mess first I guess) and Newsweek were the first courageous to take a look at them. They have written a very touching article about it I invite you all to read.
Did you know he wrote his first story for school, when he was only nine years old? The story is narrated by a tea kettle and the first words he's ever written are: "Ouch! Listen I come to you for advice. This flame is real hot but I love my job". Isn't it eerie? He burned out doing what he loved the most. Tragically, it's something very appealing about him. There's a level of complete passion and involvement in his work that most of us will never reach. But reading his first literary words made me realize something. Childhood is important. Like, very important. Growing up to eighteen years old, whatever you're going to experience is going to make you who you are. It's easy to dismiss things like bullying and emotional outbursts of children, but most people (me included are modeled by the child they were). At nine years old, David Foster Wallace was already scared of burning out. What happened there? He probably got patted in the back and told he has a lot of imagination.
