Among his many fine and publicly apparent qualities was a genuine kindness. Maybe folks who attended his reading in 2004 at the Free Library in Philadelphia remember an unusual moment with a man who seemed not to be familiar with Wallace and had perhaps wandered into the reading. I think this may even have later been recapped here.
 Anyway, as I remember it, this fellow spoke during a question and answer period, from his seat, I think. I can’t remember if someone was walking around with a microphone or if this man just called out loudly. He seemed … bedraggled and he spoke in an uneducated manner. I have to admit that I assumed he was homeless and just looking for a cool place to spend a summer afternoon. But he wanted to tell Wallace that he liked the story the author had just read aloud. It was Incarnations of Burned Children. I won’t forget the power of that reading, either. I believe this guy was just trying to say that he liked it, but maybe there was some sort of question in what he said. It wasn’t clear to me, and it wasn’t clear to Wallace.
And suddenly, Wallace made everyone in the room disappear apart from himself and this man who was trying to communicate. He asked the man a question or two to clarify, then he gave some sort of answer. I wish I could remember the content of the discussion, but I think it’s more important that it happened, that it was back-and-forth and that it was so earnest. It clearly became important to Wallace that the two of them interact. I was uncomfortable. I suspect others were. It was this weird, possibly drunk, possibly homeless man interrupting our little meeting of smart people and one of our heroes. Precious little time and he was wasting it. But to Wallace, here was a human being reaching out to another one, and he wasn’t going to let that effort go unrequited.
Ben T.