There's one character, Kate Gompert, who is first introduced on suicide watch at a hospital, and later moves into a halfway house for addicts, still on suicide watch. The lengthiest passages dealing with suicide are from her perspective, and when she's talking about her feelings of despair or her lack of feeling whatsoever and her desire for it all to be over, I really did think that those experiences probably mirrored Wallace's own.
The main tennis player character's father, Jim Incandeza, has committed suicide before the book starts, and I believe some other minor characters' parental figures have as well (hard to keep track).
In the vernacular presented, killing someone is called "demapping" and it is used frequently to discuss "demapping" one's self.
So yes, the frequency of the mentions did in fact bring to mind Wallace's eventual death, but since it was 15 years after the book was published, who knows.
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You mention the book had a theme on suicide... how did those sections read, knowing the author committed suicide?
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The main tennis player character's father, Jim Incandeza, has committed suicide before the book starts, and I believe some other minor characters' parental figures have as well (hard to keep track).
In the vernacular presented, killing someone is called "demapping" and it is used frequently to discuss "demapping" one's self.
So yes, the frequency of the mentions did in fact bring to mind Wallace's eventual death, but since it was 15 years after the book was published, who knows.
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