For some reason David Foster Wallace has been finding his way into my bloodstream recently. The algorithm or my feed (a kind of mechanized bloodstream) has been suggesting a number of his interviews and his presence is riveting. Depression is like the common cold of mental illness. It tends to get ignored by the sufferers or those around them like being 'under the weather'. If it gets worse or persists there's a danger that something deeper and more serious is lurking below the surface. A depression in the literal sense is a kind of gap. Something that is below the surface of what surrounds it. Emotional troughs can be caused by a gap in expectations in one's life or the society at large. Wallace often spoke about the ways that society was failing us and how those controlling it were making decisions that went against the needs of its citizens. The arguments he made (reluctantly, almost apologetically) could sound painfully earnest or retrograde. He spoke of the basic tenets of citizenship and the value of reading books quietly, or simply being alone with your thoughts, something which was becoming increasingly difficult in modern America. When one is in a trough or stuck below the surface of the world emotionally, it's usually those types of things that are most likely to return one to a state of emotional balance, but ironically we seek  quick fixes that only make the problem worse. His worry (not unfounded and if anything reinforced by recent developments) was that our society was making this increasingly difficult. The public space was infused with a loud shouting voice impelling us to buy products, fear our political opponents and drown our sorrows in low forms of entertainment. Saying this now (and saying this then) makes you sound like a scold. And David Foster Wallace was aware of that and expressed that worry constantly. Ultimately he fell into that gap between his ideal of a world in which authors and morally sensitive people had esteem and the reality stretching before him — of a callous society loudly grinding sensibilities to dust.