He found an answer

Author and postmodern critic David Foster Wallace is dead — he apparently committed suicide.

In The Atlantic, last November, he asked:

'What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?'

The answer is probably 'no'. I can't help feeling that his question is itself naive.

[David Foster Wallace photographed at the Strand Book Store, 2006].