I Have to Follow That?

John Langan here, wondering how the heck I'm going to follow the glorious flood of posting that has gushed from this site in a more or less constant stream for the last several days. "Surely," I thought as I read the savagely incisive political commentary, the riveting accounts of hunting the lesser furred squid in Hudson Bay, the recipes for Bangladeshi-Scottish-Quebecois cuisine, "surely, the man must have his limits. He must need to speak with his loved ones--to eat--to sleep." But no, proving the full extent of the Infernal contract that gave him his fearsome abilities, Minister Faust continued to post. Indeed, I believe he could not not post, and so in sympathy engaged the services of a team of crack Presbyterian exorcists fresh from the mean streets of Glasgow to aid him in his struggle. I only pray they succeeded.In the meantime, I thought I'd begin with a couple of links. The first is to a speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College a few years ago. I'll be honest: I didn't read Infinite Jest--not out of any impatience with or malice towards its author; it was more a matter of having a lot of other things I wanted to read first. But it was impossible not to be aware of Wallace, of his obvious (and to my mind, very welcome) ambition as a writer. I find his death shocking and deeply sad. It appears he struggled with severe depression for the last two decades; that he managed to produce as much and as well as he did seems to me evidence of a heroic effort. I'd rather link to this speech than any of the obituaries because it's him talking, not someone talking about him, and it's worth a read.The second link I'll offer is to Ramsey Campbell's home page. If you don't know his stories and novels, I'd highly recommend them. The reason I'm linking to Ramsey's page is because he has an explanation of why he calls himself a horror writer, what it is that's carried in that description. It's how I describe myself (unless I'm with my academic friends, in which case I wimp out and talk about myself writing "ghost stories" or "Gothics" or something that won't cause them immediately to look as if they've had the bad seafood dip); in fact, I thought about starting my time on Jeff's blog with my own explanation of why I use this designation for myself, before deciding that Ramsey does so much more elegantly, and more people need to be reading him.Finally, not a link, but a poem, cribbed from the also-late Tom Disch's blog. After Tom's suicide, there was a lot of haste to declare him a great minor poet, which rubbed me the wrong way, I'm afraid. As I see it, time will settle who's going to fall in the major column and who's going to find themselves in the minor, and even that can and will change. I loved Disch's poetry; here's an example.A Reverie by the ShoreWe all respect you, Sir, for the violenceof your death. Who'd ever heard of a stingrayturning its tail into a spearand thrusting it in someone's heart?What can one say but Wow, way to go!I walked once alongside a ray, at dawn,drawn from the shore step by step, entranced.Could it have done the same with me?The sea has so many ways to kill a person.But your death was as though Ocean himselfhad crushed you with a single kiss.