The David Foster Wallace Reader

The David Foster Wallace Reader is a compilation from one of the most original writers of our age, featuring selections of his brilliant fiction and nonfiction. For new readers, this is an accessible introduction to the pleasures of reading Wallace; for fans, a must-have best-of; and for teachers, an invaluable tool.

Astounding chapters from the novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King are here, along with legendary stories including "The Depressed Person," "Good Old Neon," and his previously uncollected first story. This collection also features Wallace's essays delving into luxury ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"), morality ("Consider the Lobster"), sports ("Roger Federer Both Flesh and Not"), literature, and the deep paradoxes of American life, plus reading lists from his life as a teacher.

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.