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David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, essays and short-stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[1][2] which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923-2006). [3]
Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years."[1]
Contents
Biography
Personal
Wallace was born in 1962 in Ithaca, New York to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. As a young child, Wallace and his family lived in Champaign, Illinois. In fourth grade, Wallace moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked player.
He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic, titled Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality (described in James Ryerson's 2008 New York Times essay "Consider the Philosopher"[4]) was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize[5]. His other senior thesis, in English, would later become his first novel.[6] Wallace graduated with summa cum laude honors for both theses in 1985 and next pursued a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona, earning that degree in 1987.
Family
His father, James Wallace, having finished his graduate course work in philosophy at Cornell University, accepted a teaching job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 1962. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1963. His mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and 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. His younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005. Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004.[7] [8] He had a close relationship with their two rescued dogs, Bella and Warner.[8]
Death
Wallace committed suicide on September 12, 2008,[1][2][7][9] as confirmed by the October 27, 2008, autopsy report.[10]
In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than twenty years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.[7] When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, [1] Nardil].[8] On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007,[7] and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to Nardil, he found it had lost its effectiveness.[8] In the months before his death, his depression became severe.[7]
Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University — the latter with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at Harper's Magazine; Michael Pietsch, the editor of Infinite Jest and Wallace's later work; Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor at The New Yorker; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, [George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim and Jonathan Franzen.[11]
Writing and other media
Career
Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System, garnered national attention and critical praise. Caryn James of the New York Times called it a successful "manic, human, flawed extravaganza", "emerging straight from the excessive tradition of Stanley Elkin's Franchiser, "Main_Page" V., John Irving's World According to Garp." [2] Wallace moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard University, only later to abandon those same studies. In 1991 he began teaching literature as an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston.
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.
Wallace published short fiction in Might, GQ, Playboy, The Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Conjunctions, Esquire, Open City, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The New Yorker and Science.
Wallace received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 1997. 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.
In 2002, he moved to Claremont, California, to become the first Roy E. Disney Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College. He taught one or two undergraduate courses per semester, and focused on his writing.
Wallace's literary agent during his entire career was Bonnie Nadell.[12] His editor on Infinite Jest was Michael Pietsch.[13]
Themes and styles
Wallace's fiction is often concerned with irony. His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction",[14] originally published in the small-circulation Review of Contemporary Fiction in 1993, proposes that television has an ironic influence on fiction writing, and urges literary authors to avoid irony. Wallace used many forms of irony, focusing on individuals' continued longing for earnest, unselfconscious experience and communication in a media-saturated society.[15]
Wallace's novels often combine various writing modes or voices, and incorporate jargon and vocabulary (sometimes invented) from a wide variety of fields. His writing featured self-generated abbreviations and acronyms, long multi-clause sentences, and a notable use of explanatory footnotes and endnotes — often nearly as expansive as the text proper. He used endnotes extensively in Infinite Jest and footnotes in Octet as well as the great majority of his nonfiction after 1996. On the Charlie Rose talk 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 instead jumbled up the sentences, "but then no one would read it."[16]
Nonfiction work
Wallace covered Senator John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign,[17] and 9/11 for Rolling Stone; cruise ships (the humorous title essay for his first nonfiction book), state fairs and tornadoes for Harper's Magazine; the U.S. Open 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;[18] and a lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. He also reviewed books in several genres for the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, which commemorated the magazine's 150th anniversary, Wallace was among the authors, artists, politicians and others who wrote short pieces on "the future of the American idea".
Other media
In late 2006, John Krasinski began directing his own script of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.[19], starring Julianne Nicholson and a long list of well-known character actors such as Christopher Meloni, Rashida Jones, Timothy Hutton, Josh Charles and Will Forte. The movie does not have a scheduled release date.
In memory of Wallace, micro-sound composer Kim Cascone solicited and collected contributions of soundtracks composed for the fictional films in Infinite Jest.
Awards
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Fellowship, 1997-2002
- Lannan Foundation, Marfa TX Residency Fellow, July - August 2000
- Named to Usage Panel, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 4th Edition et seq., 1999
- Inclusion of "The Depressed Person" in Prize Stories 1999: The O. Henry Awards
- Illinois State University, Outstanding University Researcher, 1998 and 1999 [20]
Partial bibliography
Novels
- The Broom of the System (1987)
- Infinite Jest (1996)
Short story and essay collections
- 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
- 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: A Compact History of Infinity (2003) (Hardcover ed.: ISBN 0-393-00338-8)
- Consider the Lobster (2005) (Hardcover ed.: ISBN 0-316-15611-6)
- McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope (June 2008) ISBN 0316040533
- paperback reprint of Up, Simba!
- This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (a commencement speech given at Kenyon College in 2005) (April 14, 2009) (Hardcover ed.: ISBN 0-316-06822-5)
Contributor
- Fiction International 19:2 (Aids Art, Photomontages from Germany and England) (1991), contributing author, ISBN 1879691000
- Grand Street 42 (1992), contributor. ISBN 0393308588
- Grand Street 46 (1993), contributor. ISBN 0393309932
- The Review of Contemporary Fiction: The Future of Fiction, A Forum Edited by David Foster Wallace (1996), Editor. ISBN 156478097X
- Open City Number Five : Change or Die (1997), contributing author. ISBN 1890447161
- The Best American Essays 2007 (2007), Guest Editor (Hardcover ed.: ISBN 0618709266)
- The New Kings of Nonfiction (2007), contributing author. (Paperback ed.: ISBN 978-1-59448-267-0)
- The Mechanics' Institute Review, Issue 4 (September 2007), contributing author. ISBN 978-0-9547933-4-0
Interviews
- 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 via Archive.org)
- Laura Miller, "The Salon Interview: David Foster Wallace." Salon 9 (1996).[21]
- "The Usage Wars." Radio interview with David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner. The Connection (March 30, 2001).
- Caleb Crain, "Approaching Infinity: David Foster Wallace talks about writing novels, riding the Green Line, and his new book on higher math." Boston Globe. October 26, 2003.[22]
- Michael Goldfarb, "David Foster Wallace." radio interview for The Connection (June 25, 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.[23]
- Dave Eggers, "David Foster Wallace." The Believer. November 2003.[24]
- See The Know(e): dfw for a complete bibliography.
References
Further reading
- Benzon, Kiki. "Darkness Legible, Unquiet Lines: Mood Disorders in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace." Creativity, Madness and Civilization. Ed. Richard Pine. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007: 187-198.
- 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. "Fußnoten und Performativität bei David Foster Wallace. Fallstudien." Am Rande bemerkt. Anmerkungspraktiken in literarischen Texten. Ed. Bernhard Metz & Sabine Zubarik. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2008: 387-408.
- 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.” Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 271. Ed. Jeffrey Hunter. New York: Gale, 2009.
- 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 T. 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.
External links
Sources
- 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)
- Wallace pieces for Harper's Magazine
Biographical
- "The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 30, 2008
- "Getting to Know David Foster Wallace", by Sean Woods, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 30, 2008
- "An Appraisal: Writer Mapped the Mythic and the Mundane", by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, September 14, 2008
- "On David Foster Wallace", by Dustin Luke Nelson, from Guernica Magazine, September 14, 2008.
- "David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008", by David Gates, Newsweek, September 14, 2008.
Interviews
- Charlie Rose Show: An interview with Wallace following the publication of Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Mar 27, 1997
- Charlie Rose Show: A roundtable discussion on fiction with Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner, May 17, 1996
- 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)
- "David Foster Wallace: A Profile" -(By Bill Katovsky)
Portals
