David Foster Wallace
Born	February 21, 1962 (1962-02-21) (age 46) Ithaca, New York
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, essayist
Nationality	United States
Writing period	1987 - present
Genres	Literary fiction
Literary movement	Postmodern literature
Influences John Barth, Don DeLillo, William Gaddis, Donald Barthelme

David Foster Wallace (born February 21, 1962) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State. ... This article is about work. ... This article is about the literary concept. ... This article is in need of attention. ... For other uses, see Essay (disambiguation). ... In English usage, nationality is the legal relationship between a person and a country. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar). ... A literary genre is one of the divisions of literature into genres according to particular criteria such as literary technique, tone, or content. ... Literary fiction is a somewhat uneasy term that has come into common usage since around 1970, principally to distinguish serious fiction from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction. ... ... The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. ... John Simmons Barth (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work. ... Don DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American author best known for his novels, which paint detailed portraits of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. ... William Gaddis (December 29, 1922 - December 16, 1998) was an American novelist. ... Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 - July 23, 1989) was an American author of short fiction and novels. ... is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... For other uses, see Essay (disambiguation). ... This article is in need of attention. ... A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Pomona College is a private residential liberal arts college located 33 miles (53 km) east of downtown Los Angeles in Claremont, California. ... Claremont is a city in eastern Los Angeles County, California, USA, about 30 miles (45 km) east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Pomona Valley. ...

Biography

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. James Wallace had recently finished his Ph.D. at Cornell University; the family soon relocated to central Illinois, where James found work as a philosophy instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1962. The City of Ithaca (named for the Greek island of Ithaca) sits on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, in Central New York State. ... Cornell redirects here. ... Official language(s) English[1] Capital Springfield Largest city Chicago Largest metro area Chicago Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 25th  - Total 57,918 sq mi (140,998 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 390 miles (629 km)  - % water 4. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... A Corner of Main Quad The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, or simply Illinois), is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious campus in the University of Illinois system. ...

James won a professorial appointment within a year and became tenured in 1968. Sally attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and eventually became a professor of English at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996. David's younger sister, Amy, has practiced law in Arizona since 2005. Parkland College is a community college located in Champaign, Illinois. ... Official language(s) English Spoken language(s) English 74. ...

As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and double-majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize,[1] and he graduated summa cum laude in 1985. Wallace next pursued an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona, which he earned in 1987. His first novel, The Broom of the System, was published concurrently, and garnered significant national attention and critical praise. Wallace moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to pursue graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard but later abandoned them. Alma mater is Latin for nourishing mother. It was used in ancient Rome as a title for the mother goddess, and in Medieval Christianity for the Virgin Mary. ... Amherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. It is the third oldest college in Massachusetts. ... In formal logic, a modal logic is any logic for handling modalities: concepts like possibility, existence, and necessity. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. ... In the United States, a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) is a terminal graduate degree in an area of visual, plastic, literary or performing arts typically requiring two to three years of study beyond the bachelor level. ... The University of Arizona (UA or U of A) is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. ... The Broom of the System (ISBN 0142002429) is the first novel by writer David Foster Wallace. ... Boston redirects here. ... Harvard redirects here. ...

In 1992, at the behest of colleague and supporter Steven Moore, Wallace applied for and won a position in the English Department at Illinois State University. He had begun work on his second novel, Infinite Jest, in 1991, and submitted a draft to his editor in December 1993. After the publication of excerpts throughout 1995, the book was published in 1996. Illinois State University is a public university in Normal, Illinois and is the oldest public institution of higher education in the state. ... Infinite Jest (1996) is a critically acclaimed novel written by David Foster Wallace. ...

Wallace received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 1997. In 2002, he moved to Claremont, California, to become the first Roy E. Disney Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College. He teaches one or two undergraduate courses per semester, and focuses on his writing. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking institution. ... Roy Edward Disney (born January 10, 1930) is the son of Roy Oliver Disney and the former Edna Francis. ...

Signature themes and style

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Wallace's fiction is often concerned with what he considers the prevalent contemporary mode of irony, which he believes hinders and complicates authentic communication in fiction and culture as a whole. His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction",^[1] originally published in the small-circulation Review of Contemporary Fiction in 1993, pointed out the often corrosively ironic effect of television's influence on fiction writing, and urged literary authors to avoid irony's many pitfalls. Wallace himself does use many different forms of irony in his work, but he also focuses on individuals' continued longing for earnest unselfconscious experience and communication in a deeply self-conscious, cynical, media-saturated society.^[2] Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... Ironic redirects here. ...

Wallace's novels are sprawling and ambitious; they often meld writing in various modes or voices, and incorporate jargon and vocabulary (sometimes invented) from a wide variety of fields. He is well-known for his use of obscure words and his self-proclaimed love affair with the Oxford English Dictionary. Wallace's unique prose style uses many odd stylistic devices, from self-generated abbreviations and acronyms to long dense sentences of many clauses. His most notable rhetorical move is the liberal use of lengthy explanatory footnotes and endnotes, often nearly as expansive as the text proper; Wallace used endnotes extensively in Infinite Jest, as well as footnotes in "Octet", and the great majority of his nonfiction after 1996. On the Charlie Rose Show in 1997, Wallace claimed that the notes were used to disrupt the linearity of the narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the entire structure. He suggested that he could have alternatively jumbled up the sentences, "but then no one would read it."^[3] The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most successful dictionary of the English language, (not to be confused with the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, formerly New Oxford Dictionary of English, of...

His shorter fiction is frequently more aggressively experimental, and has sometimes taken the problem of the authenticity of the authorial voice and the reflexivity of the project of writing to incredible lengths. This can be seen in the story "Octet" in his short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which carries the problem of the author/reader relationship to what might be called either parodic lengths or the limits of sanity, depending on the mood of the reader. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a collection of twenty-three short stories by David Foster Wallace. ...

In 1997 Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by editors of The Paris Review for one of the stories in Brief Interviews — "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6" — which had appeared in the magazine. See also: 1996 in literature, other events of 1997, 1998 in literature, list of years in literature. ... The Aga Khan Prize for Fiction is awarded by the editors of The Paris Review for what they deem to be the best short story published in the magazine in a given year. ... // The Paris Review is an English-language literary magazine based in New York City. ...

Wallace is a prominent figure in contemporary U.S. literary fiction, and his writing has been published in widely distributed popular publications. Wallace has published his short fiction in Might, GQ, Playboy, Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Conjunctions, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Science. His nonfiction has also been widely published. He covered Senator John McCain ("It feels like we know, for a proven fact," Wallace wrote, "that he's capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self interest."),^[4] and 9/11 for Rolling Stone; state fairs and cruise ships for Harper's Magazine; the U.S. Open tennis tournament for Tennis magazine; the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for Premiere magazine; the special-effects film industry for Waterstone's magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for The Atlantic Monthly; and a lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. He has also reviewed books in several genres for the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Literary fiction is a somewhat uneasy term that has come into common usage since around 1970, principally to distinguish serious fiction from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction. ... Might is a now defunct magazine founded by Dave Eggers in the early 90s, the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This magazine can be described as an effort of 20-somethings to say something, instead of nothing. ... Gq redirects here. ... For other uses, see Playboy (disambiguation). ... Harpers redirects here. ... August 2005 issue of Esquire Esquire is a mens magazine by the Hearst Corporation. ... For other uses, see New Yorker. ... Science is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). ... McCain redirects here. ... A sequential look at United Flight 175 crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center The September 11, 2001 attacks (often referred to as 9/11—pronounced nine eleven or nine one one) consisted of a series of coordinated terrorist[1] suicide attacks upon the United States, predominantly... This article is about the magazine. ... For other uses, see U.S. Open. ... For other persons named David Lynch, see David Lynch (disambiguation). ... Porn redirects here. ... Premiere is an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Médias, beginning publication in 1987. ... John Ziegler (born March 28, 1967) is the evening (7-10 PM) host of a radio talk show called The John Ziegler Show on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, California. ... The Atlantic redirects here; for the ocean, see Atlantic Ocean. ... Gourmet magazine, a monthly publication of Condé Nast Publications (which also produces its sister publication Bon Appétit) first started publication in 1941. ... This just IN !!!:paris hiltons new dog. ... The Washington Post is the largest newspaper in Washington, D.C.. It is also one of the citys oldest papers, having been founded in 1877. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of a two Knight Ridder newspaper duopoly daily for the Philadelphia area. ...

Of his most recent work of fiction, the story collection Oblivion (2004), Wyatt Mason, writing in the London Review of Books, commented: Wyatt Mason (born 1969) is an American critic, translator and essayist. ... The London Review of Books (or LRB) is a twice-monthly British literary magazine. ...

The typical mode of narration is digressive; the digressions, in keeping with Wallace's reputation as a humorist of the first rank, are not infrequently very funny. The stories also tend to feature an abundance of neologisms, arcane vocabulary and foreign terms. The settings for the stories include, as well as intimate domesticity, the more public spheres of advertising and publishing, with their own argots, often whipping up blizzards of acronyms. Perhaps more than anything, the defining quality of these fictions is the degree to which they leave the reader unsure about very basic narrative issues: who is telling this story? Where are we? What exactly is happening? In this regard, the title novella of the collection is both representative of what Wallace has been up to, and a test case for the extent to which he has succeeded, according to the demanding terms he has set for himself and for his readers. [2]

In the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, which commemorated the magazine's 150th year, an invited series of authors, artists, politicians and others were asked to prepare 300 words or so on "the future of the American idea." Wallace asked whether some things were still worth dying for, and presented a "thought experiment" in which "we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea." He goes on to say that we might have to accept that every now and then "a democratic republic cannot 100% protect itself [from terrorism] without subverting the very principles that made it worth protecting." By comparison, he continues, we accept the 40,000 highway deaths each year as the price we pay for the convenience of the motor car. Finally, he asks, in the context of Guantanamo, Patriot Acts I and II, and warrantless surveillance, "Have we become so selfish and scared that we don't even want to consider whether some things trump safety?"

Bibliography

Novels

• The Broom of the System (1987)
• Infinite Jest (1996)

Short story collections The Broom of the System (ISBN 0142002429) is the first novel by writer David Foster Wallace. ... Infinite Jest (1996) is a critically acclaimed novel written by David Foster Wallace. ...

• Girl with Curious Hair (1989) (published in Europe as Westward the Course of the Empire Takes Its Way)
• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)
• Oblivion: Stories (2004)

Nonfiction Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace, first published in 1990. ... Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a collection of twenty-three short stories by David Foster Wallace. ...

• Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race In the Urban Present (1990), coauthored with Mark Costello
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997)
• Up Simba! (2000)
• Everything and More (2003) (First hardcover ed.: ISBN 0-393-00338-8)
• Consider the Lobster (2005) (First hardcover ed.: ISBN 0-316-15611-6)

On Wallace A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do Again is the title essay of a collection of non-fiction writing by David Foster Wallace. ... Everything and More by novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace examines the history of infinity in about 400 pages. ... Cover Consider the Lobster (2005) is a collection of essays by novelist David Foster Wallace. ...

• Boswell, Marshall. Understanding David Foster Wallace. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. ISBN 1-57003-517-2
• Burn, Stephen. "Generational Succession and a Source for the Title of David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System." Notes on Contemporary Literature 33.2 (2003), 9-11.
• Burn, Stephen. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide. New York, London: Continuum, 2003 (= Continuum Contemporaries) ISBN 0-8264-1477-X
• Carlisle, Greg. "Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Austin, L.A.: Sideshow Media Group Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9761465-3-7
• Cioffi, Frank Louis. "An Anguish Becomes Thing: Narrative as Performance in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Narrative 8.2 (2000), 161-181.
• Delfino, Andrew Steven. "Becoming the New Man in Post-Postmodernist Fiction: Portrayals of Masculinities in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club." MA Thesis, Georgia State University. [3]
• Dowling, William, and Bell, Robert. A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest. Xlibris, 2004. ISBN 1-4134-8446-8 ([4])
• Goerlandt, Iannis and Luc Herman. "David Foster Wallace." Post-war Literatures in English: A Lexicon of Contemporary Authors 56 (2004), 1-16; A1-2, B1-2.
• Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Put the book down and slowly walk away': Irony and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 47.3 (2006), 309-328.
• Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Still steaming as its many arms extended': Pain in David Foster Wallace's Incarnations of Burned Children." Sprachkunst 37.2 (2006), 297-308.
• Harris, Michael. "A Sometimes Funny Book Supposedly about Infinity: A Review of Everything and More." Notices of the AMS 51.6 (2004), 632-638. (full pdf-text)
• Holland, Mary K. "'The Art's Heart's Purpose': Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 47.3 (2006), 218-242.
• Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49.3 (2007): 265-292.
• Jacobs, Timothy. "American Touchstone: The Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace." Comparative Literature Studies 38.3 (2001): 215-231.
• Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System." Ed. Alan Hedblad. Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction. Detroit: Gale Research Press, 2001. 41-50.
• Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." The Explicator 58.3 (2000): 172-175.
• LeClair, Tom. "The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 38.1 (1996), 12-37.
• Mason, Wyatt. "Don't like it? You don't have to play." London Review of Books 26.22 (2004). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n22/maso02_.html
• Nichols, Catherine. "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.1 (2001), 3-16.
• Rother, James. "Reading and Riding the Post-Scientific Wave. The Shorter Fiction of David Foster Wallace." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.2 (1993), 216-234. ISBN 1-56478-123-2
• Tysdal, Dan. "Inarticulation and the Figure of Enjoyment: Raymond Carver's Minimalism Meets David Foster Wallace's 'A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life.'" Wascana Review of Contemporary Poetry and Short Fiction 38.1 (2003), 66-83.

Interviews Charles Michael Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced )[1] (born February 21, 1962) is an American satirical novelist and freelance journalist of Ukrainian ancestry born in Pasco, Washington. ... Fight Club[1] (1996) is the first published novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk. ... Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is a novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. ... William T. Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist. ... The London Review of Books (or LRB) is a twice-monthly British literary magazine. ...

• Larry McCaffery, "An Interview with David Foster Wallace." Review of Contemporary Fiction 13.2 (Summer 1993), 127-150. ISBN 1-56478-123-2 (text at the Center for Book Culture)
• Laura Miller, "The Salon Interview: David Foster Wallace." Salon 9 (1996). [5]
• "The Usage Wars." Radio interview with David Foster Wallace and Bryan Garner. The Connection (30 March 2001).
• Michael Goldfarb, "David Foster Wallace." radio interview for The Connection (25 June 2004). (full audio interview)
• Charlie Rose, "David Foster Wallace." Interview by Charlie Rose 03/27/1997
• Zachary Chouteau, "Infinite Zest: Words with the Singular David Foster Wallace." Complete interview done for Bookselling This Week, a publication of the American Bookseller's Association. [6]
• Dave Eggers, "David Foster Wallace." The Believer. November 2003. [7]

is the 89th day of the year (90th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Charlie Rose Charles Peete Rose Jr. ... Cover of The Believer, April 2005 The Believer is an intellectual yet playful magazine mainly about literature. ...

Other

• In 2006, Wallace participated in The Top Ten, by J. Peder Zane, a book compiling lists the "top ten novels" from over one hundred "top" contemporary novelists. Wallace's entry included works by Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and Thomas Harris. This has raised a good deal of speculation as to whether he was serious.^[5]

• According to the Huffington Post's Fundrace site, Wallace donated to the Barack Obama in 2008. ^[6]

For other persons named Stephen King, see Stephen King (disambiguation). ... For the member of the Irish folk band The Clancy Brothers, see Tom Clancy (singer) and for the American Celticist, see Thomas Owen Clancy. ... This article is about the author Thomas Harris. ... The Huffington Post is a group weblog and news site started by Arianna Huffington on May 9, 2005. ... “Barack” redirects here. ...

References

is the 94th day of the year (95th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 96th day of the year (97th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 82nd day of the year (83rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

General

• THE HOWLING FANTODS! - David Foster Wallace: News, Info, Links
• Infinite Jest. Reviews, Articles, & Miscellany
• Waste - Wallace mailing list

Miscellaneous

• Reprint of Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage, 2001 essay for Harper's on usage dictionaries and Standard Written English
• Reprint of Consider the Lobster, 2004 essay on lobsters for Gourmet magazine
• New York Times "Play Magazine" article on Roger Federer, "Federer as Religious Experience"
• Commencement speech at Kenyon College, May 21, 2005 (excerpt)
• This American Life Episode 160 broadcast May 19, 2000 "Character Assassination" Act 2 'Sonny Takes a Fall,' 19 minute radio where David Foster Wallace "reports on a turning point in 2000's Presidential primaries: the moment when John McCain failed to respond well to an attack by George Bush". Description of broadcast from thislife.org
• Charlie Rose Show: An interview with Wallace following the publication of Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
• Charlie Rose Show: A roundtable discussion on fiction with Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner
• The Writer's Almanac highlights Wallace on the February 21, 2007 broadcast.

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