I Met This Dude.

Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace hung himself in the closet on Friday in his Claremont, California home at the age of 46.

Turkana calls him "The Greatest Writer Of My Generation" and CNN had this to say:

Published in 1996, "Infinite Jest" cemented Wallace's reputation as a major American literary figure. The 1,000-plus-page tome, praised for its complexity and dark wit, topped many best-of lists. Time Magazine named "Infinite Jest" in its issue of the "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005."

Wallace received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1997.

To many he was a literary genius. To me, he was the "Hipster Doofus."

I loathe to speak ill of the dead, but I met Wallace just about a year before he published Infinite Jest. I was working at Illinois State University as a civil servant, and one of the perks of my job was the ability to take up to 10 hours of free classes per semester.

I enrolled in a graduate creative writing class and showed up on the first night. Wallace was the teacher. He walked into class with that 'do rag on his head, wearing cargo shorts, big dumb tennis shoes, and a t-shirt. In the first fifteen minutes he flirted with every girl in the class, said "fuck" and "shit" so the youngsters would think he was cool, and basically announced that he would do no work for his part of the class. We would write and critique each other's work and his role, apparently, was to moderate the discussions.

20 minutes into the class I realized this was going to be a waste of my time. Was I really willing to dedicate 2 nights a week to watching this fool hit on girls and take criticism from the college girl poet mentality?

I had taken every available creative writing course during my bachelor's. I had been praised and criticized and secretly acknowledged "the best in the class by far" by the instructor from the English department. I wanted to get serious and push myself to the next level. And my instincts were telling me this class was going to be a great waste of my time.

So I dropped. I think I stopped by his office for a signature and maybe chatted with him a minute, but that was it.

Two years later I was at Barnes and Noble and saw Infinite Jest perched high atop the stack of New Releases That Demand Your Attention right inside the front door. Curious, I took a copy down and flipped it open to About The Author.

There he was. The Hipster Doofus. With the 'do rag on his head. Why would this guy want this stupid 'do rag shot in his novel? What could he possibly be hiding under that thing?

I picked up the book from the library and couldn't get past the first chapter. I thought it was the most self-indulgent prose I'd read in years. He rambled on and on in a poor-man's imitation of McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis -- all stream of consciousness, leading nowhere.

I couldn't believe it. And it went on for over a thousand pages.

Over the next few years, I couldn't believe how often the guy kept showing up in my life. A review in Entertainment Weekly lauding his collection of short stories. His essay on David Lynch in Rolling Stone magazine. And just after 9/11, he wrote something in our local paper about people being nice to each other at the convenience stores, as we all were in those days.

I hadn't heard about his move to California or what he was working on these days. But I knew The Hipster Doofus was out there, ready to pop up in my reading again at some point.

This morning I saw the CNN article that he had taken his life.

I still think I made the right decision leaving that class. It was clearly a day job for him while he finished up his opus. But it was so weird to see a guy get so swept up in the HYPE and BUZZ of literary success.

Every year thousands and thousands of writers pour themselves into their work and put it out there for rejection. But this guy somehow managed to surf the wave of intangible buzz that every so often launches a lucky lotto winner into The Big Time. The Big Time, and now, Immortality.

Wallace was far better known to his peers than to the general public, but news of his death led to a quick jump in sales for his books. As of Sunday night, "Infinite Jest" was in the top 20 on Amazon.com and "Consider the Lobster" was in the top 75. Several of his books were out of stock.

Turkana knew him as "The Greatest Writer of My Generation." I knew him as a tool. In the final analysis, maybe we're both right. Maybe neither of us is.

But the guy was doing what he wanted to do with his life. His dream came true. And he killed himself.

What's the moral of the story? Achieving your dreams will not make you happy. Fame, recognition, money, none of it will bring lasting happiness. Happiness can only come from within. And in knowing this, we realize that all worldly pursuits are equally amusing and equally meaningless.

I'm reminded to be happy now. Just for the sake of being happy. Without reason. And if I can't be happy now, at least I know it's not because of a lack of worldly achievements.

But I'll never know what he was hiding under that rag on his head.

One love.