David Foster Wallace

William Allen (University of Glasgow)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 21 Feb 1962
Died 12 Sep 2008
Activity 1987-2008

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Foster Wallace's Works

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David Foster Wallace was an American writer, born in 1962. Between 1987 and 2005, he published five works of fiction:

The Broom of the System

(1987),

Girl with Curious Hair

(1989);

Infinite Jest

(1996),

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

(1999); and

Oblivion

(2004); and four works of non-fiction:

Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present

(co-authored with Mark Costello, 1990)

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

(1997),

Everything and More

(2003), and

Consider the Lobster

(2005). He died in September 2008, and the unfinished manuscript of his novel

The Pale King

was published posthumously three years later. Wallace’s writing engages, with luminously hyperreal, often nauseating, clarity, some of the darkest, least photogenic facets of contemporary life, spanning…

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3934 words

Citation: Allen, William. "David Foster Wallace". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 May 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14491, accessed 21 November 2024.]