I Write like Who or is it Whom?

I recently got to playing around on Facebook and saw where a friend had had their writing analyzed. It's one of those applications where you submit a couple of paragraphs, and in a matter of micro seconds your writing style is analyzed. It then informs you what famous writer you mirror.

Fun, I thought, so I sent a couple of paragraphs from one of my creative spurts into the box. It then flashed at me and told me I was a kindred spirit of David Foster Wallace. Who? I'd never heard of him, but I figure there's a lot of people out there I've never heard of, so I went to Wikipedia to look Mr. Wallace up.

Of course, I was not surprised to discover that David Foster Wallace was a very intelligent, creative and successful writer. I liked that part. According to Wikipedia, not only had he written essays and short stories, but he also wrote novels and was a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. That was neat, too. His novel, Infinite Jest, was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the all time greatest novels for years covering 1923 through 2006. All right, now we're talking. Unfortunately, Mr. Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself in 2008. I didn't like that part. Apparently, David Foster Wallace suffered throughout his lifetime with depression. Wait a minute.

It has always been sad to me that so many great writers over the ages have suffered from misery in one form or another. I contribute that to the fact that it often takes great emotion to create great passion in creative work. I think that's very evident in the great paintings.

So my next question is what did David Foster Wallace and I have in common? Then I discovered our connection -- irony. He liked to write about what it's like to be human and to connect with others so we know that even though we're different, we're not alone. Even though we all may have degrees of strangeness, being human is our connection. I especially liked that. Loneliness is a terrible blight upon humans.

I discovered that he and I share a similar goal in writing, that of helping people feel better about themselves through my own often twisted look at life around us. I'm sorry that David Foster Wallace was not able to continue his work. Although I did my little Facebook exercise in fun, I now plan to read some of Mr. Wallace's work. Maybe I can continue his passion to help others. I hope so.

Source:

Wikipedia.com