courtesy abeams via flickr
I was still in graduate school when David Foster Wallace took his own life in September 2008. I remember feeling that it was impossible to believe that he had stopped believing. In the way we all have of building other people up, I’d never imagined that a person of such earnestness and integrity could possibly have felt so low.
During the dog days of August I went to the New York State Fair to write an essay in homage to his essay, Ticket to the Fair, which ran in Harper’s in 1994. You can read my essay here.
Katrina evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 2005
courtesy Houstonian via flickr
As with most contentious questions, it depends entirely on whom you ask.
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Shari Smothers shares a home with her mother on a cul-de-sac in Missouri City, 35 minutes from downtown Houston. Their two-story house is pristine and tranquil; a few cardboard boxes, tucked away in the kitchen, are the only evidence of the family’s impending move. For the first time since they came here to escape Hurricane Katrina, the women are separating: Smothers is moving across town, while her mother, a regal-looking former teacher with cropped gray hair, is returning to New Orleans. When I compliment her home, she says, “This isn’t my home. Houston’s not my home,” her voice full of emotion. “I love my city.”
