David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it feels like to live." Readers curled up in the nooks and clearings of his style: his comedy, his brilliance, his humaneness.His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination. Wallace was an A student through high school, he played football, he played tennis, he wrote a philosophy thesis and a novel before he graduated from Amherst, he went to writing school, published the novel, made a city of squalling, bruising, kneecapping editors and writers fall moony-eyed in love with him. He published a thousand-page novel, received the only award you get in the nation for being a genius, wrote essays providing the best feel anywhere of what it means to be alive in the contemporary world, accepted a special chair at California's Pomona College to teach writing, married, published another book and, last month [Sept. 2008], hanged himself at age 46.-excerpt from The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky in Rolling Stone Magazine October 30, 2008.Among Wallace's honors were a Whiting Writers Award (1987), a Lannan Literary Award (1996), a Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction (1997), a National Magazine Award (2001), three O. Henry Awards (1988, 1999, 2002), and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.More:http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
David Foster Wallace
One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.
Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.
Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.
Oblivion: Stories
David Foster Wallace
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness—a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
Mister squishy --
The soul is not a smithy --
Incarnations of burned children --
Another pioneer --
Good old neon --
Philosophy and the mirror of nature --
Oblivion --
The suffering channel
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
David Foster Wallace
In his startling and singular new short story collection, David Foster Wallace nudges at the boundaries of fiction with inimitable wit and seductive intelligence. Venturing inside minds and landscapes that are at once recognisable and utterly strange, these stories reaffirm Wallace's reputation as one of his generation's pre-eminent talents, expanding our ides and pleasures fiction can afford.
Among the stories are 'The Depressed Person', a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state; 'Adult World', which reveals a woman's agonised consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men', a dark, hilarious series of portraits of men whose fear of women renders them grotesque. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many different guises. Thought-provoking and playful, this collection confirms David Foster Wallace as one of the most imaginative young writers around. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the ironic, the surprising and the illuminating from every situation. This collection will delight his growing number of fans, and provide a perfect introduction for new readers.
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
David Foster Wallace
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.
Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
A gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
David Foster Wallace
In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner — David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.
String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis
David Foster Wallace
An instant classic of American sportswriting—the tennis essays of David Foster Wallace, “the best mind of his generation” (A. O. Scott) and “the best tennis-writer of all time” ( New York Times )
Gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector's edition, here are David Foster Wallace's legendary writings on tennis, five tour-de-force pieces written with a competitor's insight and a fan's obsessive enthusiasm. Wallace brings his dazzling literary magic to the game he loved as he celebrates the other-worldly genius of Roger Federer; offers a wickedly witty disection of Tracy Austin's memoir; considers the artistry of Michael Joyce, a supremely disciplined athlete on the threshold of fame; resists the crush of commerce at the U.S. Open; and recalls his own career as a "near-great" junior player.
Whiting Award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.
Both Flesh and Not: Essays
David Foster Wallace
Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "one of America's most daring and talented writers." (Los Angeles Times Book Review).Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time.Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more.Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace's essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions.
Girl with Curious Hair
David Foster Wallace
Remarkable, hilarious and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent " (Jenifer Levin, New York Times Book Review).
Girl with Curious Hair is replete with David Foster Wallace's remarkable and unsettling reimaginations of reality. From the eerily "real," almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, where terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN: 0393313964/9780393313963
The Broom of the System
David Foster Wallace
Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
David Foster Wallace
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER.
How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.
Der Planet Trillaphon im Verhältnis zur Üblen Sache
David Foster Wallace
Wer das Wesen der Krankheit Depression verstehen will, muss diesen Text lesen Eine frühe Erzählung von David Foster Wallace, erstmals 1984 in The Amherst Review, einer literarischen Studentenzeitschrift, erschienen. Mit erschreckender Offenheit und Formulierungen, die später in seinen Romanen und Erzählungen Eingang finden werden, erzählt der damals 22-jährige David Foster Wallace über einen Studenten, der an Depressionen erkrankt ist. Die starken Medikamente haben ihn auf einen anderen Planeten geschossen, doch scheint ein Leben dort immer noch das kleinere Übel – einen Weg zurück auf die Erde wird es niemals geben. David Foster Wallace kämpfte zeitlebens mit Depressionen und suchte nach Bildern, um zu beschreiben, was ihn quält. Eine schmerzhafte Erzählung, die die Krankheit in ihrer ganzen monströsen Ausweglosigkeit beschreibt und für Nichterkrankte verstehbar macht.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
David Foster Wallace
In this exuberantly praised book, David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
A collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner.
The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel
David Foster Wallace
The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time."The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon
Beskrajna lakrdija
David Foster Wallace
Beskrajna lakrdija upoznaće vas sa stanovnicima Kuće Enet, bostonske kuće za rehabilitaciju zavisnika, sa polaznicima Enfildske teniske akademije, koji ispituju tenis kao metafizičku disciplinu, s porodicom Inkandenza, jednom od najdirljivijih uvrnutih porodica u savremenoj književnosti, kao i sa radikalnim kvebečkim separatistima i konceptom sponzorisanog vremena. Dok sa junacima ove epopeje budete tragali za kopijom filma koji je toliko zabavan da gledaoce smešta u stanje katatoničnog blaženstva, tragaćete ujedno i za odgovorima na suštinska pitanja prirode zabave: zašto zabava upravlja našim životima, kako naša želja za zabavom utiče na potrebu da se povežemo s drugim ljudima, šta zadovoljstva koja biramo otkrivaju o nama.
Ovo enciklopedijsko pripovedačko pregnuće, koje se opire linearnosti i hronologiji, ovaj gargantuelovski amalgam filozofske potrage i farsične komedije, koji lucidno i vešto zaobilazi gotovo svako pravilo proznog narativa, upoznaje nas s jedinstvenim i raskošnim istraživanjem strasti, koje nas u konačnici i čine ljudima. Volasova melanholično-duhovita studija postmodernog stanja ne zahteva čitaoca koji će strogo poštovati pravila narativne igre, već mudrog lakrdijaša Jorika koji zna da razrešenje za brojne digresije i 388 završnih napomena (od koji neke imaju i sopstvene fusnote), ne može biti jedno i jedino, da roman koji duboko istražuje melanholiju traži širi spektar čitanja.
Una cosa divertente che non farò mai più
David Foster Wallace
Un capolavoro di comicità e virtuosismo stilistico con cui i lettori italiani hanno conosciuto il genio letterario di David Foster Wallace. Commissionatogli inizialmente come articolo per la prestigiosa rivista Harper's, questo reportage narrativo da una crociera extralusso ai Caraibi - iniziato sulla stessa nave che lo ospitava e cresciuto a dismisura dopo innumerevoli revisioni - è ormai diventato un classico dell'umorismo postmoderno e al tempo stesso una satira spietata sull'opulenza e il divertimento di massa della società americana contemporanea.
La escoba del sistema
David Foster Wallace
La misteriosa desaparición de su bisabuela y de veinticinco personas más, entre “residentes” y empleados, de la residencia de ancianos Shaker Heights ha dejado a Lenore Beadsman emocionalmente encallada en el extremo del Gran Ohio Desértico, el G.O.D. Aunque ese es simplemente uno de los muchos problemas de la desventurada operadora telefónica, seriamente agravados por su relación sentimental con su jefe, Rick Vigorous, Vlad el Empalador, su cacatúa y estrella televisiva, y otras catástrofes menores que amenazan con elevar su búsqueda del amor y la autodeterminación hasta cotas de una anormalidad estrambótica.
Implacablemente original, intensamente divertida y profundamente misteriosa, La escoba del sistema es la brillante precursora de la celebrada segunda novela de David Foster Wallace, La broma infinita.
Considera l'aragosta
David Foster Wallace
È stato uno tra gli scrittori più originali degli Stati Uniti, la penna più folle e coraggiosa degli ultimi decenni. Non solo autore di grandi opere narrative, ma anche - come in questo libro - osservatore finissimo, dotato di uno sguardo totale, capace di attraversare un continente e restituirne ogni dettaglio, voce, piega di dolore e significato. Raccontare l'11 settembre o l'ascesa della tennista Tracy Austin, analizzare l'ironia di Kafka o riflettere sul tragico destino delle aragoste, recarsi agli Oscar del cinema porno o unirsi alla carovana mediatica di un avversario di Bush nelle primarie repubblicane: in questi scritti che vanno dal reportage all'indagine colta, dal pezzo di costume al diario intimo, Wallace ascolta la voce profonda dell'America e la traduce in letteratura. L'ennesimo capolavoro di un geniale pittore dell'ipermoderno e della cultura pop.
Das hier ist Wasser / This is water
David Foster Wallace
Eine Anstiftung zum Denken
David Foster Wallace wurde 2005 darum gebeten, vor Absolventen des Kenyon College eine Abschlussrede zu halten. Diese berühmt gewordene Rede gilt in den USA mittlerweile als Klassiker und Pflichtlektüre für alle Abschlussklassen – eine kleine Anleitung für das Leben, die man jedem Hochschulabsolventen und jedem Jugendlichen mit auf den Weg geben möchte.
Was bedeutet es eigentlich, erwachsen zu sein, und wie können Menschen ihre Standardeinstellung, dass sich alles im Leben erst mal um sie selbst dreht, durchbrechen, um ein sinnvolleres und stressfreieres Dasein zu führen? David Foster Wallace zeigt in dieser kurzen Rede mit einfachen Worten, was es heißt, Denken zu lernen und erwachsen zu sein.
Eine frappierende Weisheit, eine entwaffnende Moral und ein Aufruf zu mehr Empathie – es wird keinen Leser geben, der sich dem Zauber von Wallace’ Darlegung entziehen kann.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: An Essay
David Foster Wallace
A single essay - not to be confused with the collection of essays under a similar name.
Something to Do with Paying Attention (McNally Editions)
David Foster Wallace
When David Foster Wallace died in 2008, he left behind a vast unfinished novel—some 1,100 pages of loose chapters, sketches, notes, and fragments—published in 2011 as The Pale King.
But the unfinished King did contain a finished novella that Wallace had already considered publishing as a stand-alone volume. It is the story of a young man, a self-described “wastoid,” adrift in the suburban Midwest of the 1970s, whose life is changed forever by an encounter with advanced tax law. It is, as Sarah McNally writes in her preface, “not just a complete story, but the best complete example we have of Wallace’s late style, where calm and poise replace the pyrotechnics of Infinite Jest and other early works.”
Entrevistas breves con hombres repulsivos
David Foster Wallace
Ironiczny, wnikliwy i zabawny portret Amerykanów przełomu XX i XXI wieku. Pierwsza w Polsce książka legendarnego amerykańskiego pisarza.Krótkie wywiady z paskudnymi ludźmi to zbiór nietypowych historii przesyconych ironicznym humorem, groteskowymi postaciami. Bohaterami są Amerykanie przełomu XX i XXI wieku – egocentryczni, emocjonalnie płytcy i zagubieni, zapatrzeni w media, rozbudzeni seksualnie, ale niezdolni do zbudowania trwałej i zdrowej relacji. Wallace, który sam cierpiał przez 20 lat na depresję, ośmiesza też w swych opowiadaniach współczesną kulturę terapeutyczną, tendencję do ciągłego psychologizowania i doszukiwania się traum z dzieciństwa. Pisarz zaskakuje nie tylko treścią, ale też postmodernistyczną formą – ekscentrycznym sposobem opisu, jednostronnymi dialogami i użyciem przypisów jako środka literackiego. Każda historia wciąga w dziwaczny świat skrzywień – na pierwszy rzut oka absurdalnych i surrealistycznych, a przecież powszechnie występujących.
La broma infinita
David Foster Wallace
Un lugar: Enfield, Massachusetts. A cien millas de la Gran Concavidad, un yermo radiactivo lleno de bebés mutantes del tamaño de aviones, criaturas sin cráneo y hordas de hámsters salvajes.
Una época: el año de la Ropa Interior para Adultos Depend, en el Tiempo Subsidiado, en una América regida por el totalitarismo ecológico de la ONAN, gobernada a su vez por la oscura Oficina de Servicios No Especificados, en guerra perpetua contra el ultraviolento antiONANismo de Quebec.
Una institución: la Academia Enfield de Tenis, ultraelitista y donde impera una disciplina destinada a abolir todo placer.
Una familia: los Incandenza. James Incandenza, óptico militar convertido en cineasta de après-garde, y su mujer, la promiscua Avril, que alimenta oscuras conexiones con la guerrilla de Quebec. Y sus tres hijos: Orin, genial pateador de fútbol americano y seductor transnacional; Mario, enano y deforme, cineasta como su padre y poseedor de una sensibilidad prodigiosa, y Hal, promesa del tenis juvenil y atormentado por un secreto terrible.
Y una película: El samizdat. El Entretenimiento. La broma infinita. Con el poder de enloquecer a todo el que la vea y destruir así la civilización. El arma perfecta por la que todos se enzarzarán en la Guerra Final por el control de América.
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