As the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11, Bloomington-Normal literary enthusiasts are also marking 25 years of David Foster Wallace's essay The View From Mrs. Thompson's.
It's not often that Bloomington, Ill., is the setting for a story in Rolling Stone. But it was in the disorienting weeks following 9/11. The eyes of the world were on New York City and Washington, D.C. But Wallace, an Illinois State University English professor and Bloomington resident, covered 9/11 through the unique lens of the Midwestern prairie. The View From Mrs. Thompson's was later published in his collection, Consider the Lobster.
Wallace taught at ISU from 1993-2002 and wrote his most famous work while he lived here: Infinite Jest. He died by suicide in 2008 after a long battle with depression that started in his twenties. The View From Mrs. Thompson's recounts his experience of watching the events of 9/11 on television at his neighbor's house, Mrs. Thompson [likely a pseudonym]. He spent much of the day of Sept. 11, 2001 there, with people he knew from church. In this essay, as with much of Wallace's work, readers can see he had a deep and spiritual connection to the Midwest.
"He loved Bloomington-Normal. He may have loved it more than anybody," said Kymberly Harris.
Harris is the daughter of Victoria and the late Charles Harris, who recruited Wallace to ISU from Syracuse, New York. Harris was a theater student at ISU at the time that Wallace taught English there. She dated and lived with Wallace in the house that is mentioned in The View from Mrs. Thompson's — where Infinite Jest was written.
Harris said there was something special about Wallace's connection to Bloomington-Normal, that she and others did not necessarily share.
"It's a great place," she said. "But I don't know if people really feel passionate about it. I mean, he really, he might as well have been in Paris."
Harris said that compared to New York, Wallace found Bloomington-Normal more peaceful, easier on his nervous system and "calming to his brilliant brain."
“I really feel that he treasured, and was so glad to find like-minded folk in Bloomington. He could breathe there. He felt comfortable there,” Harris said.
Magical Markers
But as much as Wallace identified with the Midwest, readers can see that he also maintained a critical distance from it. Harris said his high level of intellect, empathy and education prevented him from processing 9/11 the way others around him did. He described feeling compelled to conform. Much of The View From Mrs. Thompson's is devoted to his panicked quest on Sept. 12 to find an American flag to display, as he experienced a growing, overwhelming pressure to conform to the overt patriotism surrounding him.
"His search for a flag becomes somewhat touching," said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
An anonymous community member donated a paper copy of the issue of Rolling Stone with The View From Mrs. Thompson's this year.
"In this essay, you get certainly doses of empathy, humor, a little bit of anger, right? Some pettiness, which he doesn't hide."
Wallace went to Mrs. Thompson's house on Sept. 11 because he did not own a TV. Even as early as 2001, he resisted screens and algorithms.
Citing Wallace's words in the essay, Kemp said, "'In Bloomington-Normal, we watch a staggering amount of television.' You wonder, you know, what he would have to say about our addiction to the smartphone, right? Which is on a whole 'nother level to television."
Surrounded by his church family, Wallace watched the twin towers fall on CBS. Very quickly, he began to feel cynical. He felt skeptical of the news anchors and the president. He realized he was the only one in the room who was actually familiar with the layout of Manhattan. This kicked off a growing sense of alienation from "these good people" of Bloomington.
Harris said Wallace was "prescient" about many things, including 9/11. The very morning of the tragedy, while others were still making sense of the violence, Wallace was concerned that President George W. Bush would try to capitalize politically on this event.
"As we all know now, we went to war with the wrong country," she added.
These are the things Harris said Wallace could anticipate.
"It was more instinctual for him. I mean, he was as well-read as probably anyone that's ever lived, but he also just had a gut about those things."
Wallace's mind jumped forward to the cultural and political next steps. He seemed to long for the simplicity of grief in a time when his own feelings were far more complex, Harris said. He also aimed to protect Bloomington residents from the jaded nature of his own reaction.
"He was sort of the ogre," Harris said. "But he also really admired the ability to not see the other side of it, and he certainly didn't want to be the one to bring that to his neighbors."
Kemp said Wallace seemed to experience 9/11 as an intellectual, unlike those around him.
"Certainly the women, Mrs. Thompson and her friends, fellow church members, they're experiencing that far differently," he said.
"The men flying these planes into the buildings," Kemp said, "their hatred for America certainly wasn't embodied in this kind of generosity of these women [at Mrs. Thompson's], right? [Wallace] says, ‘it was embodied perhaps in myself and some other people I know, but certainly not in the goodliness of these women.’”
Ironically, the person in Bloomington who offered Wallace the most comfort immediately after 9/11 was not a member of his church family. It was another man who, Kemp said, probably also had a complex reaction to the attacks: the Pakistani proprietor of a Qik-n-EZ convenient store.
During his frantic search for a flag on Sept. 12, Wallace had "kind of a mental breakdown” the day after 9/11, said Kemp. He wrote, "I’m standing in a Qik-n-EZ afraid to go home." When his anxiety became visible to others, the proprietor allowed Wallace to rest in the back room of the Qik-n-EZ.
"If he was Pakistani, well, he's probably Muslim, right?" said Kemp. "He's the one who comforts David, and he's surrounded by all the indulgences and sins of the Western world — cigarettes and alcohol — in a storage room, and he finally kind of calms down."
The Pakistani man is the one who ultimately solved Wallace's flag problem — by gently suggesting he create his own with "Magical Markers." And that's what he did.
The ripple effect
Ryan Edel was a student at ISU on Sept. 11, 2001 but did not know Wallace or Harris. The attacks inspired him to join the Army, and he later served in Afghanistan. Edel had already left the military when he came across The View from Mrs. Thompson's. He was later involved in organizing a David Foster Wallace conference at ISU, where he wrote a response essay. Now, he's an English instructor at Heartland Community College.
"I think I can safely say I was disillusioned with our response to Sept. 11," Edel said. "And what was so amazing to me was that David Foster Wallace had captured that disillusionment within days of Sept. 11, and it took me more like a decade."
Edel echoed Harris when he said Wallace had the ability to foresee how America may react to 9/11. Calling out the divisive nature of politics 25 years later, Edel speculated that many of the people united in the room at Mrs. Thompson's that morning, "today, might have difficulty being in the same room together because of where things have gone since."
Kemp said he was working at Milner Library during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He recalled watching the news on television just like Wallace. He remembered it as a time before Americans got their news from the internet.
"In some respects, it's a different world," Kemp said. "It's our world, but there are some kind of startling differences."
Harris had moved away from Normal and was living in Brooklyn on Sept. 11, 2001. Her son attended preschool near the World Trade Center. He was safe with his grandmother that day, but Harris didn't know that for many stressful hours.
"It was horrifying," she recalled. "The whole city really did go into mourning. So I understand David's feeling that it was not the time for cynicism, but very quickly it did turn into a political opportunity."
She remembered noticing approximately three days later, there were 9/11 t-shirts for sale on the streets of New York.
"That's really, I think, the heart of that story. You know, that he was aware of both sides of that," Harris said. "He saw it first, but he was right. It became, you know, a lot of things that were different than grieving."
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach a crisis counselor.
