David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, January 2006.
Born February 21, 1962(1962-02-21)
Ithaca, New York
Died September 12, 2008(2008-09-12) (aged 46)
Claremont, California
Occupation novelist, short story writer, essayist, college professor
Nationality United States
Period 1987–2008
Genres

Literary fiction

Nonfiction
Literary movement Postmodern literature, hysterical realism
Notable work(s) Infinite Jest

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 widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest,[2][3] which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006).[4]

Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years."[2]

Contents

Biography

Personal

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois. In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He was "a rare combination of sporting and academic prowess. His was an omnivorous brain, able to ingest complex mathematics, logic and philosophy. Wallace was so uncomfortable among strangers that his shyness was its own defensive barrier."[5]

He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal 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"[6]) was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize.[7] His other senior thesis, in English, would later become his first novel.[8] Wallace graduated with summa cum laude honors for both theses in 1985, and in 1987 received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.

Family

Wallace's 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. She used to fake coughing fits if her children uttered a solecism at dinner, stopping only when they figured out the error and corrected it. Wallace wrote that he was "slightly chilled by the idea of children being brought up to think that a linguistic error might deprive their mother of oxygen."[5] David's younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005.

In the early 1990s, Wallace had a relationship with the poet and memoirist Mary Karr (The Liars' Club). Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004.[9][10] Dogs played an important role in Wallace's life;[11] he was very close to his two dogs, Bella and Warner,[10] had spoken of opening a dog shelter,[11] and according to Jonathan Franzen "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."[10]

Death

Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008,[2][3][9][12] as confirmed by the October 27, 2008 autopsy report.[13]

In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.[9] When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine.[10] On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007,[9] and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness.[10] In the months before his death, his depression became severe.[9]

Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, University of Arizona, and on October 23, 2008, at NYU—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.[14]

Writing and other media

Career

David Foster Wallace giving a reading for Booksmith at All Saints Church in 2006 in San Francisco.

Wallace's first novel, 1987's 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, Thomas Pynchon's V., John Irving's World According to Garp."[15] Wallace moved to Boston, Massachusetts, for graduate school in philosophy at Harvard University, but soon abandoned it. 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, Mid-American Review, Conjunctions, Esquire, Open City, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The New Yorker, and Science.

In 1997, Wallace received a MacArthur Fellowship, as well as the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, awarded 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.

Bonnie Nadell was Wallace's literary agent during his entire career.[16] Michael Pietsch was his editor on Infinite Jest.[17]

In March 2009, Little, Brown and Company announced that it would publish the manuscript of an unfinished novel, The Pale King, that Wallace was working on at the time of his death.[18] An excerpt from the novel was published in the March 9, 2009, issue of The New Yorker.[19][20]

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 and will reside at the University's Harry Ransom Center.[21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

Themes and styles

Wallace's fiction is often concerned with irony. His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction",[28] 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 eschew irony. Wallace used many forms of irony, focusing on individuals' continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience, and communication in a media-saturated society.[29]

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 in 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 instead jumbled up the sentences, "but then no one would read it."[30]

According to Wallace, "fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being," and he expressed a desire to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help readers "become less alone inside."[31] In his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, he describes the human condition of daily crises and chronic disillusionment and rejects solipsism,[32] invoking compassion, mindfulness, and existentialism:[33]

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.

Nonfiction work

Wallace covered Senator John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign[34] and had been commissioned shortly before his death to write a story about Barack Obama.[35] He wrote about the September 11 attacks for Rolling Stone; cruise ships (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; the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for Premiere magazine; the tennis player Michael Joyce for Esquire; the special-effects film industry for Waterstone's magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for The Atlantic Monthly;[36] and a Maine 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

Twelve of the interviews from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men were adapted into a stage play in 2000, the first theatrical adaptation of Wallace's work. The play, Hideous Men, adapted and directed by Dylan McCullough, premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2000.

A filmed adaptation of Brief Interviews, directed by John Krasinski, was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.[37] The film stars Julianne Nicholson and an ensemble cast including Christopher Meloni, Rashida Jones, Timothy Hutton, Josh Charles and Will Forte.[38]

The short story "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was adapted by composer Eric Moe into a 50-minute operatic piece, to be performed with accompanying video projections.[39] The piece was described as having "subversively inscribed classical music into pop culture", but received tepid reviews overall.[40]

Awards

Partial bibliography

Novels

Short story collections

Nonfiction

Contributor

Interviews

See The Know(e): dfw for a complete bibliography.

References

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Writer David Foster Wallace found dead". The Los Angeles Times, Claire Noland and Joel Rubin, September 14, 2008. September 14, 2008. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wallace14-2008sep14,0,7461856.story. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Writer David Foster Wallace Dies". The Wall Street Journal, AP, September 14, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122136457102232845.html?mod=yahoo_buzz. 
  4. ↑ Grossman, Lev; Lacayo, Richard (2005). "TIME's Critics pick the 100 Best Novels, 1923 to present". TIME. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Malcolm Knox. "Everything & More: The Work of David Foster Wallace". The Monthly. http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-malcolm-knox-everything-more-work-david-foster-wallace-1291. 
  6. ↑ Ryerson, James (December 14, 2008). "Consider the Philosopher". The New York Times,. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazine/14wwln-Wallace-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
  7. ↑ Our Alumni | Amherst College
  8. ↑ In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace '85 | Amherst College
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 "David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at 46". The New York Times, Bruce Weber, September 14, 2008. September 15, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html?em. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Lipsky, Dave (October 30, 2008, Issue Issue 1064). "The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace". Rolling Stone,. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "The Unfinished". The New Yorker, D.T. Max, March 9, 2009. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all. 
  12. ↑ Carlson, Scott (September 14, 2008). "David Foster Wallace, Postmodern Novelist and Writing Teacher, Is Dead at 46". Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/David-Foster-Wallace/41608. Retrieved May 30, 2010. 
  13. ↑ David Foster Wallace Autopsy at The Smoking Gun
  14. ↑ "Jonathan Franzen Remembers David Foster Wallace". The Observer, Adam Begley, October 27, 2008. http://www.observer.com/2008/o2/books/our-critics-tip-sheet-current-reading-jonathan-franzen-remembers-david-foster-wallace-. 
  15. ↑ The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/reviews/wallace-r-broom.html. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
  16. ↑ Neyfakh, Leon (September 17, 2008). "Remembering David Foster Wallace: 'David Would Never Stop Caring' Says Lifelong Agent". The New York Observer,. http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/david-foster-wallaces-agent. 
  17. ↑ Neyfakh, Leon (September 19, 2008). "Infinite Jest Editor Michael Pietsch of Little, Brown on David Foster Wallace". The New York Observer,. http://www.observer.com/2008/media/little-brown-publisher-michael-pietsch-his-writer-david-foster-wallace. 
  18. ↑ Associated Press, "Unfinished novel by Wallace coming next year". March 1, 2009.
  19. ↑ Wallace, David Foster. "Wiggle Room". The New Yorker: March 9, 2009.
  20. ↑ New Yorker Publishes Part of Unfinished Wallace Novel, The Washington Post, March 2, 2009
  21. ↑ http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/08/david-foster-wallace-archive-acquired-by-harry-ransom-center/
  22. ↑ Cohen, Patricia (March 9, 2010). "David Foster Wallace Papers Are Bought". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/books/09arts-DAVIDFOSTERW_BRF.html. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
  23. ↑ http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i-qNuqBV5RRsLtNCGdlSC9xATVWgD9EAQEA00
  24. ↑ http://www.observer.com/2010/daily-transom/dfws-papers-go-ut-austin
  25. ↑ http://www.statesman.com/news/local/ut-gets-papers-of-infinite-jest-author-david-333087.html
  26. ↑ http://www.dailytexanonline.com/top-stories/ransom-center-purchases-modern-author-s-archives-1.2186738
  27. ↑ http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/dfw/
  28. ↑ Wallace, David Foster. "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction". Review of Contemporary Fiction 13 (2): 151–194. 
  29. ↑ A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest
  30. ↑ Charlie Rose - Jennifer Harbury & Robert Torricelli / David Foster Wallace
  31. ↑ [2]
  32. ↑ Krajeski, Jenna. This is Water, The New Yorker, September 22, 2008.
  33. ↑ "David Foster Wallace on Life and Work". The Wall Street Journal. September 19, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html. 
  34. ↑ Wallace, David Foster (April 13, 2000) "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub." Rolling Stone. For a satire of Wallace's piece about McCain, see Wyman, Bill (April 4, 2000) "David Foster Wallace: Ain't McCain grand?" Salon.
  35. ↑ "Death is Not the End David Foster Wallace: His Legacy and his Critics". The Point, Jon Baskin. http://www.thepointmag.com/archive/death-is-not-the-end/?q=death1.html. 
  36. ↑ Wallace, David Foster (April, 2005) "Host." The Atlantic Monthly
  37. ↑ Lee, Chris. "John Krasinski, 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'" Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2009.
  38. ↑ "John Krasinski conducts Brief Interviews With Hideous Men". TotalFILM.com, Sep 19, 2006. http://www.totalfilm.com/movie_news/john_krasinski_conducts_brief_interviews_with_hideous_men. 
  39. ↑ http://www.ericmoe.net/tristan.html
  40. ↑ Midgette, Anne (April 2, 2005). "A Menu of Familiar Signposts and a One-Woman Opera". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/arts/music/02sequ.html. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
  41. ↑ Pomona College, http://www.pomona.edu, Faculty Directory, Archived September 2008, last updated 10/13/05.
  42. ↑ "SALON Features: David Foster Wallace". http://archive.salon.com/09/features/wallace1.html. 
  43. ↑ Crain, Caleb (October 26, 2003). "Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / Approaching infinity". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/26/approaching_infinity/. 
  44. ↑ "www.ptwi.com". http://www.ptwi.com/~bobkat/aba.html. 
  45. ↑ "The Believer—Interview with David Foster Wallace". http://www.believermag.com/issues/200311/?read=interview_wallace. 

Further reading

  • Baskin, Jon. "Death Is Not the End: David Foster Wallace: His Legacy and His Critics" The Point. Spring 2009.
  • 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. [4]
  • Dowling, William, and Bell, Robert. A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest. Xlibris, 2004. ISBN 1-4134-8446-8 ([5])
  • Ewijk, Petrus van. "'I' and the 'Other': The relevance of Wittgenstein, Buber and Levinas for an understanding of AA's Recovery Program in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." English Text Construction 2.1 (2009), 132-145.
  • 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, Jan Ll.'Addiction and the Societies of Control: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest'[6] ', paper delivered at Figuring Addictions/Rethinking Consumption conference, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, April 4–5, 2002
  • 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, Tim. "The Fight: Considering David Foster Wallace Considering You". Rain Taxi Review of Books. Online Edition, Part Two. Winter 2009.
  • 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.
  • Kelly, Adam. "David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline." Irish Journal of American Studies Online 2 (2010). Link.
  • 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.
  • Lipsky, David. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace. New York: Broadway, 2010.
  • 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
  • Morris, David. "Lived Time and Absolute Knowing: Habit and Addiction from Infinite Jest to the Phenomenology of Spirit." Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History 30 (2001), 375-415.
  • 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

Biographical

Interviews

Portals

Works by David Foster Wallace
Novels
The Broom of the System (1987)  · Infinite Jest (1996)  · The Pale King (2011; unfinished)
Story collections
Girl with Curious Hair (1989)  · Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)  · Oblivion: Stories (2004)
Nonfiction
Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present (1990)  · A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997)  · Up, Simba! (2000)  · Everything and More (2003) · Consider the Lobster (2005)  · McCain's Promise (2008)  · This Is Water (2009)
Related articles
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)