Was his suicide really a "career move" as Franzen put

I may have a really cool opinion to share, but I'd rather hear what OP has to say.

>>8591561
Imagine saying that publicly about your friend. Franzen for many obvious reasons is a terrible person

Hard to know, but after reading a lot of him and about him, my feeling is that, no, he killed himself because he was intolerably depressed, but he was too smart *not* to realize how the literary world would react. He may have even fantasized about it. A depressed person finds relief in the idea of suicide but also satisfaction in imagining how people will grieve for him.

>>8591561
If you really think he's smart, then you have to realize that he couldn't have ignored that it was one
Always more than 'one reason' for suicides though

>>8591593

I beg to differ. I don't want anyone to grieve for me.

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>>8591593
>he was intolerably depressed
Maybe he was just an insufferable cunt, and he knew it all too well.

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>>8591578

>>8591578
No, I think being angry at a friend who committed suicide for being selfish when you're not yourself suicidally depressed is a valid reaction, same way some people are angry at God/the entire universe itself when someone close to them dies even if it's not by suicide. I mean, DFW suffered, but so did Franzen, one of his best friends. I know I've felt irrationally angry at God and the universe at funerals, it's just anger and sadness that needs to be let out.

>>8591732
And you vented about it to the New Yorker?

>>8591737
He's a writer.

>>8591732
He didn't say it! Holy fuck...

>>8591742
If you don't think calling out dead friends in print is scum I don't know what to tell you

>>8591750
He wrote an essay about grieving for his dead friend, and it was partly resentful and angry.

He didn't "call him out" or whatever corner-store nonsense.

>>8591593
>satisfaction in imagining how people will grieve for him
that's why narcissists commit suicide. depressed people are the "no funeral pls i feel guilty enough as it is" group
>>8591561
>a "career move" as Franzen put it?
wtf i like Franzen now not really but he can recognise a fellow bullshitter at least

>>8591760
All right, obviously I made a generalization, but let's say depression and narcissism aren't always mutually exclusive. "There's a lot of narcissism in self-hatred," or something to that effect, quote is Wallace, talking about his story "The Depressed Person."

>>8591750
what if he was right, though?

>>8591813
He probably is, that's why it's so fucked up

>>8591760
If you're suicidal thinking about our funeral and the impact of your death on those close to you is kinda an inevitability. It doesn't necessarily mean you are a narcissist.

>>8591769
That sounds like a Nietzsche paraphrase:
>He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
Depression is a different entity to narcissism. Narcissists feel wounded, sure, it's part of their rage cycle.
The reason why they fantasize about their own funerals is because they think the world revolves around them even if they're dead or hated. It's their trump card: you'll be sorry when I'm dead. They don't get depression's guilt or many of the other symptoms because when they feel wounded, while it doesn't feel good, it's not classic depression since they're incapable of feeling guilt instead of shame. A narcissist will commit suicide on your birthday so you have to remember them, even if badly, while depressed people want to avoid that guilt and are more likely to kill themselves on or near their own birthday.
DFW could have pulled an "I want to be alone" and killed himself a year or two into anonymity and not returning phone calls to people who get published in papers of record, if he didn't want to be the tragic writer dude like his wife posited. That scenario obviously wasn't worth not getting that title though.

>>8591758
We get it. You can totally relate to Franzen's anger and resentment. Thanks for the show and tell, pal. Has nothing to do with what we're talking about

>>8591868
Oh okay, I didn't realize that depressed people couldn't be narcissistic and that they were incapable of taking pleasure in the common fantasy of people grieving for them, something even mentally healthy people sometimes do. Thank you for that Column A and Column B lesson in Psychology.

>>8591857
yeah and depressed people think, let's avoid that, not EVERYONE WILL BE SO SAD ABOUT ME.
Woolf's body doesn't get found a couple of weeks, and Wallace knew his wife would find his still hanging. He didn't disappear to a hotel, he didn't call someone else to come over before her but after he hanged himself, he didn't pretend he was getting better and taking a solo road trip, he didn't give a fuck she'd see a dead body with no way she can take it down or hold his weight, or all the reporters would ask her what that was like.

>>8591892
lol, mentally healthy people do that out of low level narcissism, m8. you don't have to be a full blown narcissist to think that the world is all about you at times, but it's not a symptom of depression at all to think that or take comfort in it. they are incapable of taking pleasure in that, since not being able to take pleasure in things is a symptom of depression.

>>8591917
I'm not using any of these terms in the "clinical" sense, which you seem heavily invested in, as if they're truly rigidly scientifically defined. Even psychologists talk about depression as being a spectrum, while you're talking about personality traits that *absolutely cannot* coexist with having depression.

>>8591927
>but muh depressed tragic hero must be depressed
I'm not saying he wasn't fucked up, I'm saying the reason he was fucked up and the ways in which he was fucked up aren't "depression".

It's not like being a narcissist is a fun ride, it's just not the same as depression. Bad or low feelings aren't just depression, because there's a whole host of other feelings like shame or feeling fake or rage or rejected or wounded or debased or interrogated or abandoned or disrepected narcissists do get.

And it gets more blame which feeds back into the shame and rejection and emptiness, which is probably why you hope he was more depressed than narcissistic, because if he was a narcissist rather than a depressed person, you might fault him and you don't want to do that. Depression as a saint pass is why a lot of narcissists prefer that as a diagnosis too. It's not; they're both mental illnesses. I don't see the point in pretending he must be depressed because that kind of "kindness" is probably why he never got much help for what was really wrong with him.

>>8591852
I really don't see a problem with it.

>>8591966
I don't think you know what you're talking about. He was clinically depressed. In the eighties, he had shock treatments and was prescribed an anti-depressant. Then, when he tried to live without his medication, he fell right back into depression and was prescribed more medication, which didn't work. Then he had more shock treatments. That didn't work. Then he hanged himself. He had depression.

Furthermore, I don't think Wallace was a saint. I'm saying clinical depression and narcissism can coexist. You want to put these things in separate boxes for some reason as if psychology is very simple. Again, though, while I am using "depressed" in a clinical sense, I am not using "narcissist" in the sense of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I merely said that he was a clinically depressed person who may have also had narcissistic fantasies about literary glory after death. You claim that's outrageous on the grounds that narcissistic thoughts can't occur in a depressed person's brain.

>>8591981
No, I know he was on Nardil, taken off it, put back on it, but it doesn't mean he was properly diagnosed. He tried to throw a gf out of his moving car, he did throw a coffee table at her, and he slept with his students and stalked people. That's even when he's not depressed, which suggests that it's a personality disorder. That means that he probably spent more of his life feeling shit for different reasons than if he had been depressed, which is cyclical, because personality disorders are more pervasive than depression.
He probably preferred to think of himself as depressed rather than narcissistic, like you do, but that's like preferring to think you've got flu when you have cancer. You seem really insulted on his behalf, rather than upset people might have coddled him to death by ignoring the elephant in the room.

>>8591561
how the hell did Guy Pearce not play DFW in the movie? damn.

>>8592005
Face blind

>>8591997
did you miss the saint david meme? you also said you weren't using depressed in a clinical sense a few posts back.
you're using narcissist as an insult which you can't bear DFW to carry.
the problem is, he died because nobody wanted him to get treatment for the problem he did have, and treated problems he didn't have because it's "nicer" to interpret him feeling awful as depression rather than NPD.

>>8592018
What are you on about? I'm very cleary trying to attribute narcissism to him. Problem is, I think it's possible that he was a narcissistic depressed person, and you keep telling me, no, it's impossible, psychology tells us these are mutually exclusive things. I think that's ridiculous.

Actually, what am I doing, I'm arguing with a guy whose whole premise is that David Foster Wallace was not depressed but had NPD and that everyone around him conspired to put him on anti-depressants and give him shock treatment to... save the literary reputation he didn't have... back in the eighties, when he was a minor American writer? I don't know.

>>8592026
You're taking depressed to mean sad or otherwise low. I'm not saying he didn't feel shit, I'm saying what he was feeling wasn't depression. Depression doesn't fit. What narcissists are usually feeling when they claim they're depressed is wounded. There's a big difference but people assume all low moods are depression, when they're not.
That over expansion of the diagnosis is why "depression" causes more lost work hours than any other disease; most of it isn't depression, but depression is the label people are comfortable with.
That's a really dangerous thing because it means people are getting "help" for a problem they don't have, but they like the sound of it. So when the problem they do have doesn't go away, because the help doesn't actually target what's wrong with them, suicide becomes an option and not because they're depressed.

So, my problem is that you're part of the growing expansion of the term to the point where it becomes meaningless, which is costing enough in both money and lives that people who are depressed are going to be left out in the cold when that bubble bursts, and people who have other mental illnesses where the stigma isn't low like depression and so get diagnosed with depression to save face are already being mistreated like DFW.

>>8592037
>NPD had less stigma than depression in the 80s
>nobody could have treated him for depression with pharmatherapy or ECT because that's easier work than treating an NPD, which is years of psychotherapy where your client hates you and will probably leave to find a doctor who gives them a nicer diagnosis
>his parents' social position would not be considered by a psychiatrist in the 80s when the people most likely to see a psychiatrist willingly in the eighties are rich people or their kids
uhhuh

>>8592037
I'm mean, ffs, he went to McLean. Ofc they care about reputation.
And he highlighted his Drama of Being a Gifted Child to death and filled it out with his notes about how that was more him than depression. There's loads of quotes from him about fooling people into thinking he's special. How are you not seeing NPD? Even DFW saw it.