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David Foster Wallace Biography

David Foster Wallace aka
David Foster Wallace
Born: 1962-02-21
Birthplace: Ithaca, NY
Died: 2008-09-12
Location of Death: Claremont, CA
Cause of Death: Suicide

Race: White
Field: Novelist, Essayist
Famous for: Infinite Jest

Field: Novelist

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest.

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. James Wallace had recently finished his Ph.D. at Cornell University; the family soon relocated to central Illinois, where James found work as a philosophy instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1962. Sally attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and eventually became a professor of English at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996. Wallace's younger sister, Amy, has practiced law in Arizona since 2005.

As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and double-majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize,[1] and he graduated summa cum laude in 1985. He next pursued an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona, which he earned in 1987.

Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System, garnered significant national attention and critical praise. Wallace moved to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard. He later abandoned them.

In 1992, at the behest of colleague and supporter Steven Moore, Wallace applied for and won a position in the English Department at Illinois State University. He had begun work on his second novel, Infinite Jest, in 1991, and submitted a draft to his editor in December 1993. After the publication of excerpts throughout 1995, the book was published in 1996.

Wallace received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" in 1997. In 1997, Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by editors of The Paris Review for one of the stories in Brief Interviews — "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6" — which had appeared in the magazine. In 2002, he moved to Claremont, California, to become the first Roy E. Disney Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College. He taught one or two undergraduate courses per semester, and focused on his writing.

On September 12, 2008, Wallace's wife called the Claremont, California, police at 9:30 p.m., saying that she had returned home to find that her husband had hanged himself.

David Foster Wallace Famous Quote

What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is "all it does" - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.
More famous quotes by David Foster Wallace


David Foster Wallace News


First-time director Krasinski speaks about 'Brief Interviews'
Tufts Daily
Question: So the film is based on the book by David Foster Wallace. What was the inspiration behind adapting the novel into a screenplay? ...
'Brief Interviews' lacks direction...


Three visions of all-consuming hell
San Francisco Chronicle
... nasty flu outbreak on board that turns the entire vessel into a floating vomitorium -- I'm wont to recall the late David Foster Wallace's pitch-perfect, ...



'Californication': David Duchovny, literarily speaking
Los Angeles Times
Some David Foster Wallace because he killed himself ? I didn't know that, that he'd killed himself a while ago and I hadn't heard [about it immediately] and ...



Telegraph.co.uk

Roger Federer to arrive for ATP World Tour Finals with new entourage: his twins
Telegraph.co.uk
The American novelist David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide last year, would have enjoyed the 2009 tennis ...

and more »


'Open' by Andre Agassi
Los Angeles Times
The absurd scenes here describing Bollettieri's academy, which Agassi calls a "glorified prison camp," read like something from David Foster Wallace's novel ...

and more »


Boston Globe

The Newton native ? in town to promote his film "Brief Interviews With Hideous ...
Boston Globe
(Sundance Institute via Associated Press By Wesley Morris In reading David Foster Wallace's ?Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,'' it may neve...


'Changing My Mind,' by Zadie Smith
San Francisco Chronicle
... to divide the book into sections: "Reading," "Being," "Seeing," "Feeling" and "Remembering," which is devoted to her late friend David Foster Wallace. ...

and more »


A.V. Club Austin

Interview: John Krasinski's Hideous Men
Austinist
Almost completely unadaptable for the silver screen, David Foster Wallace's work has been something that most screenwriters wouldn't dare touch, ...
"Thrillingly alive. The best of the...


Brave, Brainy, Changeable ? Zadie Smith Revealed
NPR
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage. ...

and more »


Boston Globe

Mobbed by fans -- in a good way
Boston Globe
Fans packed Brookline Booksmith to see John Krasinski, who read excerpts from David Foster Wallace's ?Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. ...

and more »



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