Courtesy of Janus FilmsThe groundswell of grief that followed David Lynch’s death on January 15 caught me off guard, as I suspect it did many others, in its sheer reach and intensity. Short of raves, the distributor of Lost Highway emblazoned a Siskel & Ebert slam—“Two Thumbs Down!”—on the ads.) While no one would mistake Lynch for a social realist, he was attuned to the world at its subliminal frequencies. The fact and the meaning of death have loomed large in Lynch’s work from the start. Countless artists have sought in their work to confront or to deny death, and Lynch did both, in ways that transcended the sentimental commonplace.