Name: The David Foster Wallace Reader
ISBN: 9780316182409

The David Foster Wallace Reader

"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..."

What Hacker News says

havblueJul 2022

I liked the David Foster Wallace reader to start with. It was basically a greatest hits of his best material including a decent chunk of Infinite Jest.

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jeffbeeDec 2021

The David Foster Wallace Reader has these and more including the brilliant “Both Flesh and Not” and some trivia like his course syllabi and correspondence.

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kevstevNov 2018

DFW in my opinion can craft a sentence like no other author I have ever read- and that's not an overstatement, they are real works of art that may change how you view writing.

Where I feel he falls down is telling a story. The longer he tries to string those sentences together into a coherent whole, the more things fall apart. None of his stories really end, they all have this sopranos-esque ending where it all just kind of ends suddenly and then you have to conclude for yourself what the actual ending was, and what the point of all this was.

With that said, I feel his essays are great and enjoyable reads, his shorter stories are ok too, but then his longer fiction stuff... enjoy it for the sentences.

You can find "Consider the Lobster" online very easily with a google search. If you enjoy that, you can google his name and find some other small works of his, but if you want to dive in and get a compilation/distillation of his major works, the David Foster Wallace Reader is something you should buy: https://www.amazon.com/David-Foster-Wallace-Reader/dp/031618... Personally, I would read the non-fiction first, and then go back to the fiction stuff.

Honestly, at $13 for the paperback, I'd say its a no-brainer to pick up if you have even a passing interest.

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