David Foster Wallace

I don't know his work, and had not heard of him before reading this, I do believe, but having come across his name in the Q&A session conducted by Bruce Weber, obituary writer for the New York Times, and hyperlinking to his obituary, I became interest ed. Reading that obituary, my interest turned to fascination.


He wrote long books, complete with reflective and often hilariously self-conscious footnotes, and he wrote long sentences, with the playfulness of a master punctuater and the inventiveness of a genius grammarian.

In contrast to the lively spirit of his writing, Mr. Wallace was a temperamentally unassuming man, long-haired, unhappy in front of a camera, consumed with his work and its worth, perpetually at odds with himself. Journalists who interviewed him invariably commented on his discomfort with celebrity and his self-questioning. And those who knew him best concurred that Mr. Wallace was a titanically gifted writer with an equally troubled soul.

An Appreciation: Exuberant Riffs on a Land Run Amok (September 15, 2008)

Paper Cuts: His Head Pounded Like a Heart (September 15, 2008)