RIP, Evan Wright

Last weekend, I got a call from a friend who had heard that Evan Wright had killed himself. I knew Evan, had met him over 20 years ago, had kept in touch over the years but not in recent years. Before he did all the war reporting, he had been an editor at Hustler. So we had writing about porn in common. I wasn’t really surprised to hear that he had killed himself. This kind of journalism takes a toll on you. It’s taken a toll on me. It’s hard to bear witness when you stand in the face of insanity. Back in 2009, I interviewed Evan about Hella Nation for The Daily Beast. In the last question, I asked him about his friend David Foster Wallace’s suicide.

You were friends with David Foster Wallace. Were you surprised that he killed himself?

I wasn’t surprised because, I mean, actually there were a couple conversations we had a few years before where, you know, he said as a grim joke, “Well, if I continue in this state of mind …,” and then he did say, “I’d be hanging from a rope,” or something like that. On a super-functional level, he had a gallows sense of humor. It was actually a theme. When I heard about [Wallace’s suicide], I was surprised.

I once complimented him on some piece—he referred to his writing as his “shtick”—and he was very self-deprecating. He separated himself from the persona he had as a famous writer. So, when he died, I was very sad. Back to that gallows humor, knowing him pretty well, what I resent is all these stories where they’re all, “Oh, it was inevitable.” I look at it like he had a bad day. And as an accidental death. I know there were attempts before. A lot of people almost do this, and then they don’t. He was a really great person, a really extremely generous person, and it’s hard to see him as anything else but that.

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