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David Foster Wallace

File:David_Foster_Wallace_in_2006.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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David Foster Wallace

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Also known as David Wallace

American fiction writer and essayist (1962–2008)

OverviewAI-generated

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) was an American writer, novelist, essayist, and university teacher. Born in Ithaca, New York, he was associated with the Postmodernism movement and began his professional work period in 1987. His notable works include *Infinite Jest*, *The Pale King*, and *The Broom of the System*. He received the MacArthur Fellows Program and Whiting Awards. Wallace taught at Illinois State University, Emerson College, and Pomona College. His archives and personal library are held at the Harry Ransom Center.

Wallace died on September 12, 2008, in Claremont. His manner of death was suicide, with the cause listed as hanging to death. He spoke, wrote, and signed in the English language.

Synthesized by Vinony from 41 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
21 Feb 1962
Died
12 Sep 2008
Works
141

Top works

  • The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006
  • 24 contes al dia
  • O rei pálido
  • Both Flesh and Not
  • Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più

via Open Library + Wikidata

Film & TV

Writing · Ithaca, New York, USA

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time magazine named one of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005. In 2008, David Ulin wrote for the Los Angeles Times that Wallace was "one of the most influential and…

Known for

  • The Unedited ZDF Interview — Himself

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Country
United States
Active from
1962
Active to
2008

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
4,671
Total plays
71,030

Tags

overlooked geniusliteratureamericanLoveAudiobook

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 best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time Magazine included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006). Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." <a href="https://www.last.fm/

via Last.fm · David Foster Wallace

Quotes

  • What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?
  • My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.
  • Severity is in the eye of the sufferer, it says. Pain is pain.
  • After a few weeks of this she'd spend a whole day weeping, beating at herself as if on fire.
  • Betraying her class and origin with the heartbreaking openness Joelle's always viewed as either terribly stupid or terribly brave
  • There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~22 min read

Encyclopedic overview

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time magazine named one of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005. In 2008, David Ulin wrote for the Los Angeles Times that Wallace was "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years".

Wallace grew up in Illinois. He graduated from Amherst College and the University of Arizona. His honors thesis at Amherst was adapted into his debut novel The Broom of the System (1987). In his writing, Wallace intentionally avoided tropes of postmodern art such as irony or forms of metafiction, saying in 1990 that they were "agents of a great despair and stasis" in contemporary American culture. Infinite Jest, his second novel, is known for its unconventional narrative structure and extensive use of endnotes.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “David Foster Wallace” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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