:David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, to Sally Jean Wallace ({{Nee}} Foster) and James Donald Wallace.Boswell and Burn, eds., p. 94. The family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he was raised along with his younger sister, Amy Wallace-Havens.{{Cite interview |last=Wallace-Havens |first=Amy |interviewer=Anne Strainchamps |title=Amy Wallace-Havens on Her Brother |url=http://www.ttbook.org/book/amy-wallace-havens-her-brother |access-date=April 19, 2018 |work=To the Best of Our Knowledge |publisher=WCAI |place=Woods Hole, Massachusetts |date=August 23, 2009}} His father was a philosophy professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.{{Cite web |title=Curriculum Vitae (James D. Wallace) |url=http://www.phil.uiuc.edu/faculty/list/Wallace/cv.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081006135059/http://www.phil.uiuc.edu/faculty/list/Wallace/cv.htm |archive-date=October 6, 2008 |access-date=September 12, 2019}} His mother was an English professor at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, which recognized her work with a "Professor of the Year" award in 1996.{{Cite web |date=2018-02-17 |title=U.S Professor of the Year Awards – 1996 Professors of the Year National Winners |url=http://www.usprofessorsoftheyear.org/Winners/Previous_Natl_Winners/1996_Professors_of_the_Year.html#.WofntHbP1D8 |access-date=2023-03-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180217082833/http://www.usprofessorsoftheyear.org/Winners/Previous_Natl_Winners/1996_Professors_of_the_Year.html#.WofntHbP1D8 |archive-date=February 17, 2018 }} From fourth grade, Wallace lived with his family in Urbana, where he attended Yankee Ridge Elementary School, Brookens Junior High School and Urbana High School.{{cite book |last1=Max |first1=D. T. |title=Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallce |date=2012 |publisher=Granta |location=London |pages=7–9}}

As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He wrote about this period in the essay "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley", originally published in Harper's Magazine as "Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes". Although his parents were atheists, Wallace twice attempted to join the Catholic Church, but "flunk[ed] the period of inquiry". He later attended a Mennonite church.{{Cite web |last=Knox |first=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm Knox (author) |date=November 2008 |title=Everything & More: The Work of David Foster Wallace |url=https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2008/november/1277253270/malcolm-knox/everything-more |website=The Monthly}}{{Cite web |last=Arden |first=Patrick |title=David Foster Wallace warms up |url=http://patrickarden.com/DavidFosterWallace.html |website=Book}}{{Cite web |last=Zahl |first=David |date=August 20, 2012 |title=David Foster Wallace Went to Church Constantly? |url=http://www.mbird.com/2012/08/david-foster-wallace-went-to-church-constantly/ |website=Mockingbird}}

Wallace attended Amherst College, his father's alma mater, where he majored in English and philosophy and graduated summa cum laude in 1985. Among other extracurricular activities, he participated in glee club; his sister recalls that he "had a lovely singing voice". In studying philosophy, Wallace pursued modal logic and mathematics, and presented in 1985 a senior thesis in philosophy and modal logic that was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize and posthumously published as Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2010).{{Cite news |last=Ryerson |first=James |date=December 12, 2008 |title=Consider the Philosopher |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14wwln-Wallace-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine |access-date=April 2, 2010}}{{Cite web |date=November 17, 2007 |title=Our Alumni, Amherst College |url=https://cms.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/philosophy/alumni |access-date=February 26, 2011 |publisher=Amherst College}}

Wallace adapted his honors thesis in English as the manuscript of his first novel, The Broom of the System (1987),{{Cite web |date=September 14, 2008 |title=In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace '85, Amherst College |url=https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/memoriam/node/65728 |access-date=February 26, 2011 |publisher=Amherst College |archive-date=October 29, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141029061439/https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/memoriam/node/65728 |url-status=dead }} and committed to being a writer. He told David Lipsky: "Writing The Broom of the System, I felt like I was using 97 percent of me, whereas philosophy was using 50 percent."{{Cite web |last=Ryerson |first=James |date=2010-12-21 |title=Philosophical Sweep |url=https://slate.com/culture/2010/12/the-philosophical-underpinnings-of-david-foster-wallace-s-fiction.html |access-date=2022-06-19 |website=Slate |language=en}} Wallace completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona in 1987. He moved to Massachusetts to attend graduate school in philosophy at Harvard University, but soon left the program.

In 2002, Wallace met the painter Karen L. Green, whom he married on December 27, 2004.{{Cite journal |last=Williams |first=John |date=September 12, 2012 |title=God, Mary Karr and Ronald Reagan: D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace |url=http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/god-mary-karr-and-ronald-reagan-d-t-max-on-david-foster-wallace/?_r=0 |issue=Arts Beat blog |journal=The New York Times}}{{Cite news |last=Weber |first=Bruce |date=September 14, 2008 |title=David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html?em |access-date=April 2, 2010}}{{Cite magazine |last=Lipsky |first=David |date=October 30, 2008 |title=The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace/print |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090503103755/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace/print |archive-date=May 3, 2009 |access-date=April 2, 2012 |magazine=Rolling Stone}}

Wallace struggled with depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicidal tendencies, and was repeatedly hospitalized for psychiatric care. In 1989, he spent four weeks at McLean Hospital—a psychiatric institute in Belmont, Massachusetts, affiliated with Harvard Medical School—where he completed a drug and alcohol detoxification program. He later said his time there changed his life.{{Cite book |last=Max |first=D. T. |title=Every Love Story is a Ghost Story |date=2012 |publisher=Granta |isbn=9781847084958 |pages=134–135}}

Dogs were important to Wallace,{{Cite magazine |last=Max |first=D. T. |date=March 9, 2009 |title=The Unfinished |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all |magazine=The New Yorker}} and he spoke of opening a shelter for stray canines. According to his friend Jonathan Franzen, he "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them".

In the early 1990s, Wallace was in a relationship with writer Mary Karr. She later described Wallace as obsessive about her and said the relationship was volatile, with Wallace once throwing a coffee table at her as well as physically forcing her out of a car, leaving her to walk home.{{Cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Evan |date=October 9, 2011 |title=Just Kids Jeffrey Eugenides insists his new novel is not a roman à clef |url=http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/jeffrey-eugenides-2011-10/ |journal=New York}} In 2018, she alleged that Wallace's biographer D. T. Max underreported Wallace's abuse. Of Max's account of their relationship, she tweeted: "That's about 2% of what happened." She said that Wallace kicked her, climbed up the side of her house at night, and followed her five-year-old son home from school.{{cite web|first=Kristian|last=Wilson|date=May 7, 2018|url=https://www.bustle.com/p/mary-karr-speaks-out-about-david-foster-wallace-amid-literatures-metoo-movement-9003387|title=Mary Karr Speaks Out About David Foster Wallace Amid Literature's #MeToo Movement|website=Bustle|accessdate=March 11, 2019}} Wallace also attempted to buy a gun to kill Karr's ex-husband.{{Cite web|url=https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/05/15/mary-karr-tropic-squalor|title=Memoirist Mary Karr On God, #MeToo And Speaking Up About David Foster Wallace|date=May 15, 2018|website=www.wbur.org}}{{Cite web|url=https://x.com/marykarrlit/status/992735594060148737|title=x.com}} In a 2015 interview, Karr said, "I'm not the only woman he was violent with. It was—it's common knowledge among women who dated him, you know, that he was violent."{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2016/09/23/495161071/mary-karr-on-writing-memoirs-no-doubt-ive-gotten-a-million-things-wrong|title=Mary Karr On Writing Memoirs: 'No Doubt I've Gotten A Million Things Wrong'|website=NPR|date=September 23, 2016}} In the wake of the #MeToo movement and her own public statements, Karr said several women, including his former students, contacted her to share their stories of Wallace's physical and emotional abuse.

The Broom of the System (1987) garnered national attention and critical praise. In The New York Times, Caryn James called it a "manic, human, flawed extravaganza ... emerging straight from the excessive tradition of Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser, Thomas Pynchon's V., [and] John Irving's World According to Garp".{{Cite news |last=James |first=Caryn |author-link=Caryn James |date=March 1, 1987 |title=Wittgenstein Is Dead and Living in Ohio – The Broom of the System |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/wallace-r-broom.html |access-date=March 23, 2017}}

File:Infinite Jest 2.jpg]]

In 1991, Wallace began teaching literature as an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston. The next year, at the suggestion of colleague and supporter Steven Moore, Wallace obtained 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.

In 1997, Wallace received a MacArthur Fellowship. He also received the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, awarded by editors of The Paris Review for one of the stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which had been published in the magazine.{{Cite journal |last=Wallace |first=David Foster |date=Fall 1997 |title=Brief Interviews with Hideous Men |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/1225/brief-interviews-with-hideous-men-david-foster-wallace |journal=The Paris Review |volume=Fall 1997 |issue=144 |access-date=March 23, 2017}}

In 2002, Wallace moved to Claremont, California, to become the first Roy E. Disney endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College.{{cite news |last1=Reynolds |first1=Susan Salter |title=David Foster Wallace mourned at Pomona College |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-wallace6-2008oct06-story.html |access-date=28 July 2023 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=6 October 2008}} He taught one or two undergraduate courses per semester and focused on writing.

Wallace delivered the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. The speech was published as a book, This Is Water, in 2009.{{Cite news |last=Bissell |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Bissell |date=April 26, 2009 |title=Great and Terrible Truths |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.html |access-date=December 8, 2010}} In May 2013, parts of the speech were used in a popular online video, also titled "This Is Water".{{Cite news |last=McGuinness |first=William |date=May 8, 2013 |title=David Foster Wallace's Brilliant 'This Is Water' Commencement Address Is Now a Great Short Film |work=The Huffington Post |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-mcguinness/david-foster-wallaces-bri_b_3239411.html |access-date=May 9, 2013}}

Bonnie Nadell was Wallace's literary agent during his entire career.{{Cite web |last=Neyfakh |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Neyfakh |date=September 17, 2008 |title=Remembering David Foster Wallace: 'David Would Never Stop Caring' Says Lifelong Agent |url=http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/09/17/Remembering_David_Foster_Wallace_David_1209.html |publisher=Bay Ledger News Zone}} Michael Pietsch was his editor on Infinite Jest.{{Cite web |last=Neyfakh |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Neyfakh |date=September 19, 2008 |title=Infinite Jest Editor Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown on David Foster Wallace |url=http://www.observer.com/2008/media/little-brown-publisher-michael-pietsch-his-writer-david-foster-wallace |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080921164844/http://www.observer.com/2008/media/little-brown-publisher-michael-pietsch-his-writer-david-foster-wallace |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 21, 2008 |website=The New York Observer}}

Wallace died in 2008. In March 2009, Little, Brown and Company announced that it would publish the manuscript of an unfinished novel, The Pale King, that Wallace had been working on before his death. Pietsch pieced the novel together from pages and notes Wallace left behind.{{Cite news |last=Kakutani |first=Michiko |author-link=Michiko Kakutani |date=March 31, 2011 |title=Maximized Revenue, Minimized Existence |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/books/the-pale-king-by-david-foster-wallace-book-review.html |access-date=April 2, 2012}}{{Cite news |date=March 1, 2009 |title=Unfinished novel by Wallace coming next year |work=USA Today |agency=Associated Press |url=https://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-03-01-wallace-novel_N.htm |access-date=April 2, 2012}} Several excerpts were published in The New Yorker and other magazines. The Pale King was published on April 15, 2011, and received generally positive reviews.{{Cite web |last=Willa Paskin |date=April 5, 2011 |title=David Foster Wallace's The Pale King Gets Thoughtful, Glowing Reviews |url=http://www.vulture.com/2011/04/david_foster_wallace.html |access-date=April 2, 2012 |website=New York}} Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote that The Pale King "showcases [Wallace's] embrace of discontinuity; his fascination with both the meta and the microscopic, postmodern pyrotechnics and old-fashioned storytelling; and his ongoing interest in contemporary America's obsession with self-gratification and entertainment."{{Cite news |last=Kakutani |first=Michiko |title=Maximized Revenue, Minimized Existence |work=The New York Times |date=March 31, 2011 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/books/the-pale-king-by-david-foster-wallace-book-review.html}} The book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.{{Cite web |title=Fiction |url=http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/219 |publisher=The Pulitzer Prizes}}

Throughout his career, Wallace published short fiction in periodicals such as The New Yorker, GQ, Harper's Magazine, Playboy, The Paris Review, Mid-American Review, Conjunctions, Esquire, Open City, Puerto del Sol, and Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.

Wallace wanted to progress beyond the irony and metafiction associated with postmodernism and explore a post-postmodern or metamodern style. In the essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (written 1990, published 1993),{{Cite journal |last=Wallace |first=David Foster |title=E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction |journal=Review of Contemporary Fiction |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=151–194}}{{cite web |url=https://www.nottinghilleditions.com/essay/e-unibus-pluram-television-and-us-fiction-written-1990-published-in-the-review-of-contemporary-fiction-1993-and-reprinted-in-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again-1997/|title=E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction|website=Notting Hill Editions|access-date=March 29, 2021}} he proposed that television has an ironic influence on fiction, and urged literary authors to eschew TV's shallow rebelliousness:

{{Blockquote|I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird, pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I'm going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that, at the same time, they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that, for aspiring fictionists, they pose terrifically vexing problems.}}

Wallace used many forms of irony, but tended to focus on individual persons' continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience and communication in a media-saturated society.{{Cite web |last=Dowling |first=William C. |author-link=William C. Dowling |title=A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest |url=http://rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ewcd/jestcomp.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110412061813/http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/jestcomp.htm |archive-date=April 12, 2011 |access-date=February 26, 2011 |publisher=Rutgers University}}

Wallace's fiction combines narrative modes and authorial voices that incorporate jargon and invented vocabulary, such as self-generated abbreviations and acronyms, long, multi-clause sentences, and an extensive use of explanatory endnotes and footnotes, as in Infinite Jest and the story "Octet" (collected in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men), and most of his non-fiction after 1996. In a 1997 interview on Charlie Rose, Wallace said that the notes were to disrupt the linear narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the narrative structure, and that he could have jumbled the sentences "but then no one would read it".{{Cite web |title=Charlie Rose – Jennifer Harbury & Robert Torricelli / David Foster Wallace | date=April 11, 2010 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLPStHVi0SI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/mLPStHVi0SI| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|access-date=February 26, 2011 |publisher=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}

D. T. Max has described Wallace's work as an "unusual mixture of the cerebral and the hot-blooded",{{Cite web |last=Max |first=D. T. |date=December 2012 |title=A Meaningful Life |url=http://untitledbooks.com/features/features/a-meaningful-life-by-dt-max/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150217050118/http://untitledbooks.com/features/features/a-meaningful-life-by-dt-max/ |archive-date=February 17, 2015 |access-date=September 21, 2014 |website=Untitled Books |issue=50}} often featuring multiple protagonists and spanning different locations in a single work. His writing comments on the fragmentation of thought,{{Cite web |last1=Stern |first1=Travis W. |last2=McLaughlin |first2=Robert L. |date=Spring 2000 |title="I Am in Here": Fragmentation and the Individual in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest |url=http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/iaminhere.htm |access-date=September 21, 2014 |publisher=The Howling Fantods}} the relationship between happiness and boredom, and the psychological tension between the beauty and hideousness of the human body.{{Cite web |last=Feeney |first=Matt |date=April 12, 2011 |title=Infinite Attention – David Foster Wallace and being bored out of your mind |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/04/infinite_attention.html |access-date=September 21, 2014 |website=Slate}} According to Wallace, "fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being", and he said he wanted to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help the reader "become less alone inside".{{Cite magazine |last=Max |first=D. T. |date=January 7, 2009 |title=David Foster Wallace's Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max |access-date=February 26, 2011 |magazine=The New Yorker}} In his Kenyon College commencement address, Wallace described the human condition as daily crises and chronic disillusionment and warned against succumbing to solipsism,{{Cite magazine |last=Krajeski |first=Jenna |date=September 22, 2008 |title=This is Water |url=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/09/this-is-water.html |magazine=The New Yorker}} invoking the existential values of compassion and mindfulness:

{{Blockquote|The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. ... The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. ... The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.{{Cite news |date=September 19, 2008 |title=David Foster Wallace on Life and Work |work=The Wall Street Journal |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122178211966454607}}}}

Wallace covered Senator John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign{{Cite magazine |first=David Foster|last=Wallace|date=April 13, 2000 |title=The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub/1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090519105330/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18420304/the_weasel_twelve_monkeys_and_the_shrub/1 |archive-date=May 19, 2009 |access-date=April 2, 2012 |url-status=dead |magazine=Rolling Stone}}{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/2000/04/04/wallace_6/|title=David Foster Wallace: Ain't McCain Grand|website=Salon|date=April 4, 2000}} and the September 11 attacks for Rolling Stone;{{Cite magazine |first=David Foster |last=Wallace |date=October 25, 2001 |title=9/11: The View From the Midwest |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/9-11-the-view-from-the-midwest-20110819 |magazine=Rolling Stone |issue=880}} cruise ships{{Cite magazine |first=David Foster |last=Wallace |date=January 1996 |title=Shipping Out |magazine=Harper's Magazine |format=PDF |url=http://harpers.org/archive/1996/01/shipping-out/}} (in what became the title essay of his first nonfiction book), state fairs, and tornadoes for Harper's Magazine; the US Open tournament for Tennis magazine; Roger Federer for The New York Times;{{Cite news |last=Wallace |first=David Foster |date=2006-08-20 |title=Roger Federer as Religious Experience |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html |access-date=2024-03-04 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for Première magazine; the tennis player Michael Joyce for Esquire; the movie-special-effects industry for Waterstone's magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for The Atlantic;{{Cite journal |last=Wallace |first=David Foster |date=April 2005 |title=Host |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200504/wallace |journal=The Atlantic Monthly}} and a Maine lobster festival for Gourmet magazine.{{Cite magazine |last=Wallace |first=David Foster |date=August 2004 |title=Consider the Lobster |url=http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf |magazine=Gourmet |pages=50–64}} 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".{{Cite book |last=Hoffmann |first=Lukas |title=Postirony: The Nonfictional Literature of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers |date=2016 |publisher=transcript |isbn=978-3-8376-3661-1 |location=Bielefeld, Germany}}

These and other essays appear in three collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster and the posthumous Both Flesh and Not, the last of which contains some of Wallace's earliest work, including his first published essay, "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young".{{Cite news |last=Max |first=D. T. |date=November 14, 2012 |title=D.F.W.'s Nonfiction: Better with Age |magazine=The New Yorker |url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/d-f-w-s-nonfiction-better-with-age |access-date=February 21, 2016 |issn=0028-792X}} Wallace's tennis writing was compiled into a volume titled String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis, published in 2016.{{Cite web |last=Oregonian/OregonLive |first=Douglas Perry {{!}} The |date=2016-05-02 |title=David Foster Wallace's 'String Theory' defines Roger Federer, but that's only the beginning |url=https://www.oregonlive.com/the-spin-of-the-ball/2016/05/david_foster_wallaces_string_t.html |access-date=2024-03-04 |website=oregonlive |language=en}}

Some writers have found parts of Wallace's nonfiction implausible. Jonathan Franzen has said that he believes Wallace made up dialogue and incidents: "those things didn't actually happen".{{Cite web |last=Dean |first=Michelle |author-link=Michelle Dean |title=A Supposedly True Thing Jonathan Franzen Said About David Foster Wallace |url=https://theawl.com/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonathan-franzen-said-about-david-foster-wallace-8f37fd7c0bfd#.t1qt4lyho |access-date=December 25, 2016 |website=The Awl |archive-date=May 17, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517081627/https://theawl.com/a-supposedly-true-thing-jonathan-franzen-said-about-david-foster-wallace-8f37fd7c0bfd#.t1qt4lyho |url-status=dead }} Of the essays "Shipping Out" and "Ticket to the Fair", John Cook has remarked that in Wallace's nonfiction:

Wallace encounters pitch-perfect characters who speak comedically crystalline lines and place him in hilariously absurd situations...I used both stories [when teaching journalism] as examples of the inescapable temptation to shave, embellish, and invent narratives.{{Cite web |last=Cook |first=John |title=There Is No Such Thing as a 'Larger Truth': This American Life's Rich History of Embellishment |url=http://gawker.com/5894913/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-larger-truth-this-american-lifes-rich-history-of-embellishment |access-date=December 25, 2016 |website=Gawker|date=March 21, 2012 }}

Wallace's father said that David had suffered from major depressive disorder for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. Wallace suffered what was believed to be a severe interaction of the medication with the food he had eaten one day at a restaurant;{{Cite magazine|last=Max|first=D.T.|date=2009-02-28|title=David Foster Wallace's Struggle to Surpass "Infinite Jest"|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/09/the-unfinished|access-date=2021-07-21|magazine=The New Yorker|language=en-US}} in June 2007, on his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking phenelzine, his primary antidepressant drug. His depression recurred, and he tried other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. Eventually he went back on phenelzine but found it ineffective. On September 12, 2008, at age 46, Wallace wrote a private two-page suicide note to his wife, arranged part of the manuscript for The Pale King, and hanged himself on the back porch of his house in Claremont, California.{{Cite web |last= |date=2008-09-14 |title=Writer David Foster Wallace found dead |url=https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-wallace14-2008sep14-story.html |access-date=2023-07-14 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}

Memorial gatherings were held at Pomona College, Amherst College, the University of Arizona, Illinois State University, and on October 23, 2008, at New York University (NYU). The eulogists at NYU included his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens; his literary agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, an editor at Harper's Magazine; Michael Pietsch, editor of Infinite Jest and later works; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker magazine; and the writers Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen.{{Cite web |last=Begley |first=Adam |author-link=Adam Begley |date=October 27, 2008 |title=Jonathan Franzen Remembers David Foster Wallace |url=http://observer.com/2008/10/our-critics-tip-sheet-on-current-reading-jonathan-franzen-remembers-david-foster-wallace-mencken-disses-joe-sixpack/ |website=The New York Observer}}{{Cite web |title=Celebrating the Life and Work of David Foster Wallace |url=http://fivedials.com/files/fivedials_no10.pdf |access-date=May 11, 2013 |website=Five Dials |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |archive-date=January 20, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120184513/http://fivedials.com/files/fivedials_no10.pdf |url-status=dead }}{{Cite news |last=Konigsberg |first=Eric |date=October 24, 2008 |title=Remembering Writer of 'Infinite Jest' |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/books/24wallace.html?_r=0 |access-date=May 11, 2013}}

In March 2010, it was announced that Wallace's personal papers and archives—drafts of books, stories, essays, poems, letters, and research, including the handwritten notes for Infinite Jest—had been purchased by the University of Texas at Austin. They are held at that university's Harry Ransom Center.{{Cite news |last=Cohen |first=Patricia |date=March 9, 2010 |title=David Foster Wallace Papers Are Bought |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/books/09arts-DAVIDFOSTERW_BRF.html |access-date=April 2, 2010}}

Since 2011, Loyola University New Orleans has offered English seminar courses on Wallace. Similar courses have also been taught at Harvard University.{{cite web |last1=Warren |first1=Andrew |title=David Foster Wallace & Environs |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/warren/classes/david-foster-wallace-environs |website=Harvard |access-date=26 October 2021}} The first David Foster Wallace Conference was hosted by the Illinois State University Department of English in May 2014; the second was held in May 2015.{{Cite web |title=David Foster Wallace Conference Program 2015 |url=https://faculty.sharepoint.illinoisstate.edu/dfw/Pages/Conference-Program.aspx |access-date=July 23, 2015 |publisher=Illinois State University |archive-date=October 6, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181006000731/https://faculty.sharepoint.illinoisstate.edu/dfw/Pages/Conference-Program.aspx |url-status=dead }}

In January 2017, the International David Foster Wallace Society and the Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies were launched.{{Cite web |title=DFW Society |url=https://www.dfwsociety.org/ |website=DFW Society}}

Among the writers who have cited Wallace as an influence are Dave Eggers,{{Cite news |date=November 14, 2006 |title=Jest Fest |work=LA Weekly |url=http://www.laweekly.com/arts/jest-fest-2611625}} Jonathan Franzen,{{Cite web |last=Franzen |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Franzen |date=November 30, 2010 |title=David Foster Wallace: An elegy by Jonathan Franzen |url=https://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/david-foster-wallace-elegy-jonathan-franzen |access-date=September 21, 2014 |publisher=The University of Arizona Poetry Center}} Rivka Galchen, Matthew Gallaway, David Gordon, John Green,{{Cite web |last=IncitingSparks |date=February 6, 2017 |title=John Green, Genre Fiction, and the Influence of David Foster Wallace |url=https://incitingsparks.org/2017/02/06/john-green-genre-fiction-and-the-influence-of-david-foster-wallace/ |access-date=March 11, 2019 |website=Inciting Sparks |language=en |archive-date=April 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200413104847/https://incitingsparks.org/2017/02/06/john-green-genre-fiction-and-the-influence-of-david-foster-wallace/ |url-status=usurped }} Porochista Khakpour,{{Cite web |date=October 3, 2008 |title=Porochista Khakpour and Flammable Fiction |url=http://artsfuse.org/488/porochista-khakpour-and-flammable/ |access-date=March 13, 2019 |website=The Arts Fuse |language=en-US}} George Saunders,{{Cite web |last=Saunders |first=George |author-link=George Saunders |date=January 2, 2010 |title=Living in the Memory: A Celebration of the Great Writers Who Died in the Past Decade — David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/02/noughties-writers-obituaries-review |access-date=September 21, 2014 |website=The Guardian}} Michael Schur,{{Cite web|url=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/already-great/|title=Already Great}} Zadie Smith,{{Cite magazine |last=Franklin |first=Ruth |date=October 4, 2012 |title=Reader: Keep Up! The Identity Crisis of Zadie Smith |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/107209/reader-keep |magazine=The New Republic |access-date=September 21, 2014}} Darin Strauss,{{Cite web |last=Hayes-Brady |first=Steve Paulson interviews Clare |date=September 10, 2018 |title=David Foster Wallace in the #MeToo Era: A Conversation with Clare Hayes-Brady |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/david-foster-wallace-in-the-metoo-era-a-conversation-with-clare-hayes-brady/ |access-date=March 13, 2019 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}} Deb Olin Unferth, Elizabeth Wurtzel,{{Cite news |last=Wurtzel |first=Elizabeth |author-link=Elizabeth Wurtzel |date=September 21, 2008 |title=Elizabeth Wurtzel on Depression and David Foster Wallace |work=New York |url=http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/50515/ |access-date=September 21, 2014}} and Charles Yu.{{Cite news |last=Walls |first=Seth Colter |date=April 7, 2011 |title=David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, Roundtable Discussion |website=The Daily Beast |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/07/david-foster-wallace-the-pale-king-roundtable-discussion.html |access-date=September 21, 2014}}

A feature-length film adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, directed by John Krasinski with an ensemble cast, was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.{{Cite news |last=Lee, Chris |date=January 19, 2009 |title=John Krasinski, 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men' |work=Los Angeles Times |url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-krasinski19-2009jan19,0,364630.story |access-date=April 2, 2012}}

The 19th episode of the 23rd season of The Simpsons, "A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again" (2012), is loosely based on Wallace's essay "Shipping Out" from his 1997 collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. The Simpson family takes a cruise, and Wallace appears in the background of a scene, wearing a tuxedo T-shirt while eating in the ship's dining room.

The 2015 film The End of the Tour is based on conversations David Lipsky had with Wallace, transcribed in Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010). Jason Segel played Wallace, and Jesse Eisenberg played Lipsky. The film won an Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival,{{Cite news |date=April 19, 2015 |title=2015 Sarasota Film Festival Awards |work=The Bradenton Herald |url=http://www.bradenton.com/2015/04/19/5753400/2015-sarasota-film-festival-awards.html |url-status=dead |access-date=September 11, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919044337/http://www.bradenton.com/2015/04/19/5753400/2015-sarasota-film-festival-awards.html |archive-date=September 19, 2015}} and Segel was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.

"Partridge", a Season 5 episode of NBC's Parks and Recreation, repeatedly references Infinite Jest, of which the show's co-creator, Michael Schur, is a noted fan. Schur also directed the music video for The Decemberists' "Calamity Song", which depicts the Eschaton game from Infinite Jest.{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJpfK7l404I |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/xJpfK7l404I| archive-date=2021-12-11 |url-status=live|title=The Decemberists – Calamity Song |date=August 16, 2011 |work=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}

Twelve of the interviews from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men were adapted as a stage play in 2000 by Dylan McCullough. This was the first theatrical adaptation of Wallace's work. The play, Hideous Men, was also directed by McCullough, and premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2000.{{Cite web |date=2022-05-27 |title=FRINGE WATCH: Wallace's Hideous Men Live in NYC Through Aug. 26 {{!}} Playbill |url=https://www.playbill.com/article/fringe-watch-wallaces-hideous-men-live-in-nyc-through-aug-26-com-91484 |access-date=2023-03-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220527194844/https://www.playbill.com/article/fringe-watch-wallaces-hideous-men-live-in-nyc-through-aug-26-com-91484 |archive-date=May 27, 2022 }}

Brief Interviews was also adapted by director Marc Caellas as a play, Brief Interviews with Hideous Writers, which premiered at Fundación Tomás Eloy Martinez in Buenos Aires on November 4, 2011.{{Cite news |last=Hax |first=Andrés |date=November 1, 2011 |title=Entrevistas repulsivas en la Fundación Tomás Eloy Martínez |language=es |work=Clarín |url=http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/escenarios/teatro/Entrevistas_breves_con_escritores_repulsivos-Fundacion_TEM_0_583141891.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160315141724/http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/escenarios/teatro/Entrevistas_breves_con_escritores_repulsivos-Fundacion_TEM_0_583141891.html |archive-date=March 15, 2016}} In 2012 it was adapted as a play by artist Andy Holden for a two-night run at the ICA in London.{{Cite web |title=Brief Interviews with Hideous Men |url=https://archive.ica.art/whats-on/brief-interviews-hideous-men |access-date=August 22, 2020 |website=archive.ica.art |language=en }}{{Dead link|date=January 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

The short story "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko", from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, was adapted by composer Eric Moe{{Cite web |last=Moe |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Moe (composer) |date=October 19, 2011 |title=DFW + Me = An 'Arranged' Marriage of Music and Fiction |url=http://fictionwritersreview.com/essays/dfw-me-an-arranged-marriage-of-music-and-fiction |access-date=October 19, 2011 |website=Fiction Writers Review}} into a 50-minute operatic piece, to be performed with accompanying video projections.{{Cite web |last=Moe |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Moe (composer) |title=Tri-Stan |url=http://www.ericmoe.net/tristan.html |access-date=February 26, 2011 |publisher=ericmoe.net |archive-date=June 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626151538/http://www.ericmoe.net/tristan.html |url-status=dead }} The piece was described as having "subversively inscribed classical music into pop culture".{{Cite news |last=Midgette |first=Anne |author-link=Anne Midgette |date=April 2, 2005 |title=A Menu of Familiar Signposts and a One-Woman Opera |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/arts/music/02sequ.html |access-date=April 2, 2010}}

Infinite Jest was performed once as a stage play by Germany's experimental theater Hebbel am Ufer. The play was staged in various locations throughout Berlin, and the action took place over a 24-hour period.{{Cite web |last=Wiener, Aaron |date=June 18, 2012 |title=Infinite Jest! Live! On Stage! One Entire Day Only! |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/06/infinite_jest_on_stage_berlin_theater_adaptation_of_david_foster_wallace_s_novel_.html |access-date=September 21, 2014 |website=Slate}}

"Good Old Neon", from Oblivion: Stories, was adapted and performed by Ian Forester at the 2011 Hollywood Fringe Festival, produced by the Los Angeles independent theater company Needtheater.{{Cite web |title="Hollywood Fringe Festival 2011: 'Deity Clutch,' 'Dumb Waiter,' 'Glint'", LAist. |url=http://laist.com/2011/06/17/hollywood_fringe_festival_2011_deit.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171105200702/http://laist.com/2011/06/17/hollywood_fringe_festival_2011_deit.php |archive-date=November 5, 2017 |access-date=September 21, 2014 |website=LAist}}

The song "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies", from the album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships by The 1975, borrows its title from the opening line of Infinite Jest.{{Cite web |title=The 1975's Matty Healy Dissects Every Song on A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships |url=https://pitchfork.com/features/song-by-song/the-1975s-matty-healy-dissects-every-song-on-a-brief-inquiry-into-online-relationships/ |website=Pitchfork|date=November 27, 2018 }} Matty Healy, The 1975's lead singer, said in an interview with Pitchfork that he was inspired by the novel after reading it during a stint in rehabilitation:

{{Blockquote|I was reading [Infinite Jest] when I was in rehab. There was no one there. It was me and my nurses, who'd come in and check on me, and then Angela [the protagonist of the song], miles away. I was surrounded by no one, and the book was just open on the front page, as most copies of Infinite Jest are ... nobody reads [Infinite Jest] all the way! Everyone our age has got a battered, quarter-read copy of Infinite Jest.}}

{{main|David Foster Wallace bibliography}}

• The Broom of the System (1987). {{ISBN|9781101153536}}
• Infinite Jest (1996). {{ISBN|9780316920049}}
• The Pale King (2011, posthumous). {{ISBN|9780316175296}}

• Girl with Curious Hair (1989). {{ISBN|9780393313963}}
• Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). {{ISBN|9780316086899}}
• Oblivion: Stories (2004). {{ISBN|9780759511569}}

• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997). {{ISBN|9780316090520}}
• Consider the Lobster (2005). {{ISBN|9780349119519}}
• Both Flesh and Not (2012, posthumous). {{ISBN|9780316214698}}

• Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003).
• Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2010). Columbia University Press [reprint of 1985 thesis]. {{ISBN|978-0231151573}}. An essay collection.
• The David Foster Wallace Reader (2014, posthumous). {{ISBN|9780316182393}} A collection of excerpts.
• Something to Do with Paying Attention (2022, posthumous). {{ISBN|9781946022271}} A novella excerpted from The Pale King.

• Pulitzer Prize nomination for The Pale King, 2012. No prize was awarded for the fiction category that year
• Inclusion of "Good Old Neon" in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002
• John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 1997–2002
• Lannan Foundation Residency Fellow, July–August 2000
• Named to Usage Panel, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 4th Ed. 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[http://pomona.edu/ Pomona College, Faculty Directory], Archived September 2008, last updated October 13, 2005.
• Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for the story "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6", 1997
• Time magazine's Best Books of the Year (Fiction), 1996
• Salon Book Award (Fiction), 1996
• Lannan Literary Award (Fiction), 1996
• Inclusion of "Here and There" in Prize Stories 1989: The O. Henry Awards
• Whiting Award, 1987

• Hysterical realism
• Postmodern literature
• Inverse cost and quality law

{{Reflist}}

{{see also|David Foster Wallace bibliography#Works about David Foster Wallace|label 1=David Foster Wallace bibliography § Works about David Foster Wallace}}

• {{Cite book |title=A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies |date=2013 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=9781137078346 |editor-last=Boswell |editor-first=Marshall |series=American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century |location=New York, New York |oclc=832399604 |editor-last2=Burn |editor-first2=Stephen}}

{{Commons category}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• [http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingaid.cfm?eadid=00503 David Foster Wallace Archive], The University of Texas at Austin
• [http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/david-foster-wallace#/ Whiting Foundation Profile]

• [http://www.dfwaudioproject.org/ David Foster Wallace AUDIO PROJECT]
• [https://www.dfwsociety.org/ International David Foster Wallace Society]

{{David Foster Wallace}}

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