David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace | |
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 Wallace in 2006 | |
| Born | February 21, 1962 Ithaca, New York, U.S. |
| Died | September 12, 2008 (aged 46) Claremont, California, U.S. |
| Education | |
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| Spouse | |
| Relatives | James D. Wallace (father) |
| Writing career | |
| Period | 1987–2008 |
| Genres | |
| Notable work | Infinite Jest (1996) |
Movements | |
| Signature | |
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David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is most known for his second novel Infinite Jest (1996). In 2008, the Los Angeles Times' David Ulin wrote that Wallace was "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years".
He grew up in Illinois, and graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts and the University of Arizona. His Amherst honors thesis on philosophy and modal logic was adapted into his debut novel The Broom of the System (1987). Amidst his writing career, Wallace taught English and creative writing at Illinois State University, Emerson College in Massachusetts, and Pomona College in California.
As a writer of 'post-postmodern' literature, Wallace in his works intentionally avoided many tropes of postmodern art, including forms of irony and metafiction, asserting in 1990 that such tropes were "agents of a great despair and stasis" in contemporary American culture. He often wrote about tennis, which he played as a teenager, such as with Infinite Jest which is largely set in a tennis academy. The novel is known for its length; unconventional narrative structure, involving numerous endnotes; and evolution on the 'encyclopedic novel' and 'hysterical realist' literary styles.
Wallace's short stories and essays were published in outlets like The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. His short stories were collected in three books: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion: Stories (2004)—as were his essays, with: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997), Consider the Lobster (2005), and Both Flesh and Not (2012).
At age 46 in 2008, after struggling with depression for decades, Wallace died by suicide at his California home. His unfinished novel The Pale King was published in 2011, and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.