I think we've talked before about how suddenly most suicides make their decision, how quickly they progress from "Ah, fuck it," to doing the deed. This is why simple things like not owning a gun or placing confusingly difficult barriers on the sides of bridges can save lives: the additional effort of purchasing the weapon or navigating the obstacles will often be enough to snap a person out of their decision.

DFW was a bit of an archetype of phronesis, a phronimos for me. Specifically, I appreciated that he had found the way to combat akrasia, the incontinent or impetuous act of vice. Part of what's at stake in understanding and working through addiction as he did is finding ways to manage and control the inevitable attacks of akrasia, the impulses that promise to overwhelm our intentions, bolstering the weak will with insight and reflection. As Laura Miller pointed out in the Salon piece I linked, there is some indication that he was working on and through these issues in his most recent short fiction. I don't mean to grant him omni-reflective self-control, but I do suspect that this was a premeditated act.

You know, we were talking about suicide in my Existentialism class just last week. I reminded my students that it takes only one moment– really, just one moment– when a person cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're probably all a lot more vulnerable to that moment of hopelessness than we think we are.

We shouldn't assume, I think, that DFW's suicide indicates some conscious or ultimate rejection of life and its meaning. It just indicates that life can be very painful and, for a moment, for a man, it appeared as if the darkness would not lift.