Most Popular Books by David Foster Wallace

Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of INFINITE JEST, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss . . . ''Wallace''s exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight, and he has deep things to say about the hollowness of contemporary American pleasure . . . sentences and whole pages are marvels of cosmic concentration . . . Wallace is a superb comedian of culture'' James Wood, GUARDIAN

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here — with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work — essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I''ll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King, and legendary stories like "The Depressed Person." Wallace''s explorations of morality, self-consciousness, addiction, sports, love, and the many other subjects that occupied him are represented here in both fiction and nonfiction. Collected for the first time are Wallace''s first published story, "The View from Planet Trillaphon as Seen In Relation to the Bad Thing" and a selection of his work as a writing instructor, including reading lists, grammar guides, and general guidelines for his students. A dozen writers and critics, including Hari Kunzru, Anne Fadiman, and Nam Le, add afterwords to favorite pieces, expanding our appreciation of the unique pleasures of Wallace''s writing. The result is an astonishing volume that shows the breadth and range of "one of America''s most daring and talented writers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) whose work was full of humor, insight, and beauty.

A book by American novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace that examines the history of infinity, focusing primarily on the work of Georg Cantor, the 19th-century German mathematician who created set theory.

In this thought-provoking and playful short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Wallace''s stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many guises. Among the stories are ''The Depressed Person,'' a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman''s mental state; ''Adult World,'' which reveals a woman''s agonized consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and ''Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,'' a dark, hilarious series of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the absurd, the surprising, and the illuminating from every situation. This collection will enthrall DFW fans, and provides a perfect introduction for new readers.

These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest -- on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more -- established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace''s death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life''s meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace''s unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

This celebrated collection of essays from the author of Infinite Jest is "brilliantly entertaining...Consider the Lobster proves once more why Wallace should be regarded as this generation''s best comic writer" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike''s deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of John McCain''s 2000 presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World''s Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters. "Wallace can do sad, funny, silly, heartbreaking, and absurd with equal ease; he can even do them all at once." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness -- a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father''s desperate loneliness by way of his son''s daydreaming through a teacher''s homicidal breakdown (The Soul Is Not a Smithy). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way (The Suffering Channel). Or capture the ache of love''s breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring (Oblivion). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate.

Remarkable, hilarious, and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent" (New York Times Book Review). David Foster Wallace was one of America''s most prodigiously talented and original young writers, and Girl with Curious Hair displays the full range of his gifts. From the eerily "real," almost holographic evocations of historical figures such as Lyndon Johnson and overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, the familiar strange.

Fifteen never-before-collected essays by "one of America''s most daring and talented writers" all published in book form for the first time ( Los Angeles Times Book Review). Never has Wallace''s seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language''s most irksome misused words; and much more. Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace''s essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions. "Scarily astute . . . For Wallace devotees, these essays are required reading." — Booklist "Displays the late author''s vast intellectual curiosity. . . . showcase[s] Wallace''s ever-evolving, intimate, and often humorous relationship with language." — The New Yorker "At their best these essays remind us of Wallace''s arsenal of talents: his restless, heat-seeking reportorial eye; his ability to convey the physical or emotional truth of things with a couple of flicks of the wrist; his capacity to make leaps, from the mundane to the metaphysical, with breathtaking velocity and ardor." — New York Times "Every one of these pieces,,,hums with Wallace''s contrary energy. . . . They show a mind at work, and it was one of the best this country has seen." — Boston Sunday Globe

An expanded edition featuring new interviews and an introduction by the editor, a New York Times journalist and friend of the author A unique selection of the best interviews given by David Foster Wallace, including the last he gave before his suicide in 2008. Complete with an introduction by Foster Wallace''s friend and NY Times journalist, David Streitfeld. And including a new, never-before-published interview between Streitfeld and Wallace.

A paean to the golden age of Hip-Hop and the first book to consider seriously its position as a vital force in American culture, ''Signifying Rappers'' is a must-read for fans of both Wallace and hip-hop. Set against the legendary 1980s scene, it maps the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom, with an energy and exuberance which is as fresh today as when it was written.

An instant classic of American sportswriting—the tennis essays of David Foster Wallace, “the best mind of his generation” (A. O. Scott) and “the best tennis-writer of all time” (New York Times) Gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector''s edition, here are David Foster Wallace''s legendary writings on tennis, five tour-de-force pieces written with a competitor''s insight and a fan''s obsessive enthusiasm. Wallace brings his dazzling literary magic to the game he loved as he celebrates the other-worldly genius of Roger Federer; offers a wickedly witty disection of Tracy Austin''s memoir; considers the artistry of Michael Joyce, a supremely disciplined athlete on the threshold of fame; resists the crush of commerce at the U.S. Open; and recalls his own career as a "near-great" junior player. Whiting Award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.

"February 3, 2006, Hilton Checkers Hotel, Los Angeles, California."

Beloved for his keen eye, sharp wit, and relentless self-mockery, David Foster Wallace has been celebrated by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. In this hilarious essay, originally published in the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I''ll Never Do Again, he chronicles seven days in the Caribbean aboard the m.v. Zenith. As he partakes in supposedly fun activities offered on the luxury tour, he offers riotous anecdotes and unparalleled insight into contemporary American culture.

The essays in The Story About the Story Vol. II chart a trajectory that digs deep into the past and aims toward a future in which literature can play a new and more profound role in how we think, read, live, and write. In the second volume of The Story About the Story, editor J. C. Hallman continues to argue for an alternative to the staid five-paragraph-essay writing that has inoculated so many against the effects of good books. Writers have long approached writing about reading from an intensely personal perspective, incorporating their pasts and their passions into their process of interpretation. Never before collected in a single volume, the many essays Hallman has compiled build on the idea of a "creative criticism," and offers new possibilities for how to write about reading. The Story About the Story Vol. II documents not only an identifiable trend in writing about books that can and should be emulated, it also offers lessons from a remarkable range of celebrated authors that amount to an invaluable course on both how to write and how to read well. Whether they discuss a staple of the canon (Thomas Mann on Leo Tolstoy), the merits of a contemporary (Vivian Gornick on Grace Paley), a pillar of genre-writing (Jane Tompkins on Louis L’Amour), or, arguably, the funniest man on the planet (David Shields on Bill Murray), these essays are by turns poignant, smart, suggestive, intellectual, humorous, sassy, scathing, laudatory, wistful, and hopeful—and above all deeply engaged in a process of careful reading. The essays in The Story About the Story Vol. II chart a trajectory that digs deep into the past and aims toward a future in which literature can play a new and more profound role in how we think, read, live, and write.

Is John McCain "For Real?" That''s the question David Foster Wallace set out to explore when he first climbed aboard Senator McCain''s campaign caravan in February 2000. It was a moment when Mccain was increasingly perceived as a harbinger of change, the anticandidate whose goal was "to inspire young Americans to devote themselves to causes greater than their own self-interest." And many young Americans were beginning to take notice. To get at "something riveting and unspinnable and true" about John Mccain, Wallace finds he must pierce the smoke screen of spin doctors and media manipulators. And he succeeds-in a characteristically potent blast of journalistic brio that not only captures the lunatic rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign but also delivers a compelling inquiry into John McCain himself: the senator, the POW, the campaign finance reformer, the candidate, the man.

Escrito en 2005 y debatido ampliamente tras la muerte del autor, este discurso es un legado conciso de uno de los grandes pensadores de nuestro tiempo. Transido con su humor único, su intelecto preciso y su filosofía práctica, Esto es agua muestra los retos de la vida diaria y ofrece consejos que nos renuevan con cada lectura. Había una vez dos peces jóvenes que iban nadando y se encontraron por casualidad con un pez mayor que nadaba en dirección contraria; el pez mayor les saludó con la cabeza y les dijo: «Buenos días, chicos. ¿Cómo está el agua?» A los seis años de la muerte de David Foster Wallace publicamos Esto es agua, la legendaria conferencia que impartió en la ceremonia de graduación de la Universidad de Kenyon, ante un auditorio plagado de alumnos embelesados. Escrito en 2005 y ampliamente debatido tras su muerte, este discurso es el conciso legado de uno de los más grandes autores de nuestro tiempo, que se quitó la vida en el momento álgido de su fama y con tan solo cuarenta y seis años. Reseña: «Era mi favorito.» Zadie Smith

Escritos con el corazón en la mano y con un entusiasmo contagioso, estos ensayos nos muestran la belleza, complejidad, perfección, brillantez y exigencia del deporte preferido de Wallace. «La belleza humana de la que hablamos aquí es de un tipo muy concreto; se puede llamar belleza cinética. Su poder y su atractivo son universales. No tiene nada que ver ni con el sexo ni con las normas culturales. Con lo que tiene que ver en realidad es con la reconciliación de los seres humanos con el hecho de tener cuerpo.» David Foster Wallace fue en su juventud un avezado jugador de tenis y durante un tiempo llegó a plantearse incluso la posibilidad de inscribirse en el circuito profesional de su país. No es extraño, por consiguiente, que dedicara al deporte de la raqueta tantos textos a lo largo de su vida. Escritos con la pasión desbordada y el entusiasmo contagioso tan propios de Foster Wallace, en los dos estupendos artículos que reunimos en este volumen, publicados en 1996 y 2006, nos asomamos a los entresijos del US Open y asistimos a la rivalidad entre Roger Federer y Rafa Nadal, dos tenistas con personalidades y formas de jugar opuestas. La opinión de la crítica: «Estos ensayos nos recuerdan el arsenal de talento de Foster Wallace: su incansable ojo para encontrar el nudo central de una historia y contarla, su capacidad para transmitir la verdad física o emocional de las cosas con un par de rápidos movimientos de muñeca, y su capacidad para saltar de lo mundano a lo metafísico con una velocidad y una pasión deslumbrantes.» Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times «Uno de los mejores escritores de nuestro tiempo [...]. Si nunca has leído a David Foster Wallace, su magistral estudio de Roger Federer incluido en esta antología es ideal para empezar.» Steph Opitz, Marie Claire English description: David Foster Wallace''s extraordinary writing on tennis, collected for the first time in an exclusive digital-original edition. A long-time rabid fan of tennis, and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. ON TENNIS presents David Foster Wallace''s five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time. This lively and entertaining collection begins with Wallace''s own experience as a prodigious tennis player (Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley). He also challenges the sports memoir genre (How Tracy Austen Broke My Heart), takes us to the US Open (Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open), and profiles of two of the world''s greatest tennis players (Tennis Player Michael Joyce''s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness and Federer Both Flesh and Not). With infectious enthusiasm and enormous heart, Wallace''s writing shows us the beauty, complexity, and brilliance of the game he loved best.

Recopilación de diez relatos que recrean -de manera exquisita y perturbadora a la vez- la realidad en la que vivimos. David Foster Wallace era uno de los escritores con mayor talento y más audaces de la narrativa norteamericana contemporánea. En La niña del pelo raro, la presente recopilación de diez relatos, recrea -de manera exquisita y perturbadora a la vez- la realidad en que vivimos. Desde la evocación de personajes históricos como el presidente Lyndon Johnson, los concursos televisivos de máxima audiencia o los presentadores estrella de programas al filo de la medianoche, hasta el relato que da título a la obra, en el que el nihilismo punk y las juventudes republicanas se dan la mano, Wallace siempre consigue que lo increíble parezca comprensible; lo raro, normal; lo absurdo, hilarante, y lo familiar, extraño. Reseñas: «Un escritor dinámico con un talento extraordinario... David Foster Wallace nos lleva, a cada instante, a lugares ocultos, míticos, desconocidos y extrañamente familiares a la vez. Restituye su grandiosidad a la narrativa contemporánea». J. Levin, The New York Times Review of Books «David Foster Wallace, admitámoslo, era el mejor de nosotros. El que tenía más talento, el más audaz, el más enérgico, el más original y el menos propenso a dormirse en los laureles o creerse las alabanzas». George Saunders «Él delineó el interior de nuestras cabezas, la enrevesada charla interna que mantenemos constantemente, de una manera en la que ningún otro escritor lo había hecho nunca. Y a la vez que capturaba las más diminutas granulosidades de la autoconciencia, advirtió y dibujó los contornos más amplios del panorama general. Sus libros son vastos terrenos que seguirán siendo explorados en las mentes de los lectores mientras sigan siendo lectores». Michael Pietsch

La gran novela en la que David Foster Wallace estaba trabajando cuando murió. Al recién llegado David F. Wallace los agentes del Centro Regional de Examen de la Agencia Tributaria de Peoria, Illinois, le parecen de lo más normal. A medida que se adentra en la tediosa y repetitiva rutina de su trabajo, conocerá la magnífica variedad de personalidades que han sentido la llamada de hacienda. Su llegada coincide, además, con el recrudecimientode fuerzas conspiratorias que pugnan por despojar el trabajo del rastro de humanidad y dignidad que todavía queda. David Foster Wallace fue uno de los escritores más importantes de su generación. El rey pálido es su novela póstuma. «Resulta que el éxtasis un placer sentido segundo a segundo y acompañado de gratitud por el don de estar vivo y de ser consciente- se encuentra al otro lado del aburrimiento absolutamente letal. Presta atención a la cosa más tediosa que puedas encontrar (las declaraciones de la renta, el golf retransmitido por televisión) y un aburrimiento como no hayas visto nunca se te echará encima en oleadas y a punto estará de matarte. Si consigues capear esas olas, será como si pasaras del blanco y negro al color. Como encontrar agua después de pasar varios días en el desierto. Un éxtasis constante en todos y cada uno de tus átomos.» David Foster Wallace

Prepare yourself for the best and brightest from Might magazine, the hottest, hippest publication of the ''90s. These provocative accounts of cultural chaos tackle every tacky and/or annoying issue that has made the 20th century so ripe for the Apocalypse from the lost diaries of H.R. Haldeman to David Hasselhoff''s world tour. Also includes: - "The Perverse Blessing of AIDS" by David Foster Wallace - "Hey America! There''s Gangs Under Your Bed!" by Jess Mowry - "The Future of Indentured Servitude" by R.U. Sirius - "College is for Suckers" by Ted Rall - "Get Out the Youth Vote, Then Get the Hell Out" by Marc Herman - "The T-Shirt: More Problems of Signification in American Low Culture" by Glasgow Phillips - "The Unsavory Rise of Faux-Cooler Than White People?" by Donnell Alexander - "The Tragic and Untimely Death of Adam Rich" by Christopher Pelham-Fence - "Why I Went Right Wing" by Paula Kamen - And much, much more!