Joseph Bottum, on the sad news that novelist Thomas M. Disch is dead:
Endlessly talented, Tom was always a difficult character, with strange edges and an awkward, unbalanced and finally unbearably sad life. His friend and mentor, the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, once turned him into the FBI as a communist spy. He wasn’t, of course, and the incident probably tells more about the madness of Philip K. Dick than it does about Tom Disch. Still, it’s typical of the odd events that seemed to punctuate Tom’s life.
So much wasted, so many wrong turns, so much lost. This death has taken all my breath for speech.
R.I.P.