could learn heart surgery in 20 minutes?

This is the kind of overblown BS about authors, especially ones who hang themselves, that turns folks off literature.

Or at least the serious study of it.

The man wrote novels.

You want the real stuff, read Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. Both deeply weird men, neither of whom killed himself.

DFW was the kind of man who killed himself. I.e., a murderer.