David Foster Wallace

I have become addicted to David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction essays, several of which were published in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.*

The essay “Getting Away From Already Pretty Much Being Away From It All” describes his visit to the Illinois State Fair. His essay “Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff About Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness”  describes what it is like to succeed, or not, on the professional tennis circuit. Both are filled with incredibly insightful observations that get at the heart of an experience. My personal favorite is the title essay about his excursion on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. I now understand why even the most perfect vacation can be boring.

Mr. Wallace’s work includes the novel Infinite Jest, short-story collections Girl With Curious Hair, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and Oblivion, and another collection of essays called Consider The Lobster And Other Essays. Too bad he committed suicide in 2008.

If anyone knows of another author with the intelligence and wit of DFW, please let me know.

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*Wallace DF. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. New York, NY: Little Brown; 1997.