Capitulation of a Maverick

I wrote this essay in 2008, the week after David Foster Wallace died, in the headline tsunami of the market crash, and the month before the 2008 election. It seems even more relevant now after his passing, and in the current state of party politics over individual ideals.

The pronounced death of writer David Foster Wallace (DFW) has been swallowed by the import of the coming election and the disasters of Wall Street, both which portend the demise of our economic futures. The media has become consumed by drained 401ks, taxpayer resentment towards the corporate bail-out, and fear of a derailed market. Last week the New York Times headline, “Post-Modern Writer Is Found Dead at Home” slipped quickly into finer print and then into the archives.

I first read DFW as a creative writing student at our alma mater, the University of Arizona. Last fall, I bought his essay collection, Consider The Lobster, which included a full-spread article covering John McCain’s campaign during the 2000 primaries. Originally conceived by Rolling Stone, Wallace was solicited as one of several respected and established writers to depict behind-the-scenes coverage of life on the primary campaign trail.

When McCain became the Republican nominee, I could not help but recall DFW’s earnest portrayal. His article, while capturing the nature of working as a member of the Press, also rewrites the character of McCain. Wallace’s McCain appealed to a wide readership. In his article, McCain was bold, outspoken, and vibrantly candid. His abundant charm and wit contributed to his enduring, uninhibited and honest relationships, including brazen antics, in dealing head-on with the press.

His personal accolades were also supported by his war story, now so popularized as to become folklore. Even as a non-supporting Democrat (reading the essay posthumously, 7 years after the primaries), I could not help but be moved by McCain’s history as a POW in Vietnam, where he refused to leave the prison camp without his fellow inmates. Wallace retells his story with credulity and seems to fervently believe in McCain’s claims of authenticity, unwilling to concede that he is “just a politician,” that he must… “be capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest.”

After supporting the surge in Iraq, McCain is infamous for the line, “I would rather lose the election, than lose a war.” Prior to his nomination, he was an icon of patriotism and garnered reverence as a free-thinking, unbridled politician. Up until this point, his career has been marked by independence and bipartisanship, often invoking the criticism of his own party for his dissenting views on immigration, off-shore drilling, and abortion rights.

Shaping the politician is in no doubt, a political process unto itself. Watching the transformation of John McCain from a Senator into a presidential candidate illuminates the rigorous manufacture of the individual as a symbol in the political process.

Despite McCain’s seemingly best attempts, he has conformed to his parties’ agendas, including unabashed politicking, without much restraint, though he appears jaded and unmoved. His new persona is cagey and apprehensive, unwilling to discuss specifics, or speak openly about the same issues and questions that he once was able to vigilantly defend or criticize.

A week before the GOP convention, The Economist, titled their cover and featured article, “Bring Back the Real McCain” and in May, David Foster Wallace himself conceded in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that John McCain had changed since his nomination: “McCain himself has obviously changed; flipperoos and weaselings on Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq timetables, etc. are just some of what make him a less interesting, more depressing political figure now — for me, at least. It’s all understandable of course — he’s the GOP nominee now, not an insurgent maverick. Understandable, but depressing.”

After discovering that DFW hanged himself, it was difficult not to consider whether such a prolific writer left a suicide note, and be curious as to what it would have said. At the time of death, and especially suicide, it is impossible not to consider the culmination and meaning of one’s own life. In these final moments, where would your accomplishments reside?

Whenever a writer or any famed individual with a perceived amount of “success” is willing to end their life, it is difficult not to wonder, what happened… is it simply a case of depression? A haranguing sense of failure or fatigue? A sign of chronic melancholy and years absent antidote? Selfish indulgence? For one who has empirically “made-it,” what would it take to say, “enough?”

Wallace’s suicide in the middle of McCain’s campaign smacks of a tragic truth: despite any individual determination or ability, the sense of defeat may always be palpable. Perhaps it does not matter so much what you do, or say, or write, because, even with a level of prestige or influence, what does it mean to know, that your world may go on unchanged? Your obituary, as an epic-writer, may be D-list news after a financial institution fails. Your career that was once marked by maverick intent, may be corrupted, as you yourself become subsumed as a political symbol.

The fate of John McCain as a presidential candidate and political figure triggers the end of the individual, for it requires his incorporation and submission. His determination, idealistic departures, and heroic demonstrations become irrelevant where becoming a member of the moving or “progressive” elite, he becomes something else — someone else, eviscerating the individual character, nature, or disposition that had created any signature dissent and momentum.

To become an influence, the individual must subscribe to something bigger, though this may also lead to the loss of the self. Perhaps a suicide itself is the ultimate declaration of individualism, or simply the discovery that “success” is an imposter in a world that demands capitulation.

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