David Foster Wallace. There's a long piece on his life that should be worth reading. Tomorrow, we are publishing two essays on the presidential campaigns. It's hard not to think about Wallace's brilliant take on McCain's 2000 run and how different the coverage has been this time. The 24-hour news cycle, blah, blah, blah (to quote McCain on anything these days), the web, the Twitter. I still think Wallace's essay would stick out. But would his thoughtfulness be appreciated?

It depends on the meaning of "arrival." TPM has been tracking this too.

I've been reading David Foster Wallace's essay on the old McCain (the McCain2000, the one that mocked the Christian Right, that promised to "Always. Tell you. The Truth."), and despite the obvious differences between McCain2000 and McCain2008, it's worth reading if only for the author's ruminations on trust. Is McCain a leader? Or is he a great salesman?

That question was relevant back in 2000. In the wake of McCain's latest stunt, I wonder which category McCain falls into? Do we even have to think about it?

At this point, is McCain even a good salesman?

For those that are still mourning/thinking about/re-reading David Foster Wallace, McSweeney's is a must read right now.

This isn't the most relevant detail to fuss over, I know, given the horrible fact of Wallace's passing. For me, and for at least one of my colleagues, Wallace was a supremely important writer---a guy who could not only access a fearsome arsenal of postmodern tools, but employ them sensibly, and make it look like he wasn't playing you. Because he wasn't playing you---as overstuffed as Infinite Jest was, there was no question that he wrote out of a real worry over what it meant to live in a hypermediated, hypermedicated world, and he brought that same spirit to his reporting and essays. It's a ridiculously difficult trick to keep pulling off: Look at everything Don DeLillo has written after Underworld, or just about everything Dave Eggers has written, period.

But who had the news of Wallace's suicide first?

The AP, says Air America; searching Google News' archives, it would appear that the Los Angeles Times had it.

The news, in fact, first came from a book blogger, Edward Champion, who followed up on an anonymous tip. I make no grand statements about this detail---certainly nothing about how bloggers and Twitterers and such are going to somehow supplant journalism. True, I first saw the news on Champion's Twitter post, but I'm not hearing the replacing-journalism business until there's a competent Twitterer at every city hall meeting. Still, I will call it a proof of how good, genuine journalism can be done by individual practitioners who care about their chosen beats---regardless of whether you're attached to a media organization. And though outlets like the AP and LAT certainly have their own resources with which to find a story, let the record show that they didn't find this one first.