This wide-ranging volume is a necessary resource for understanding an author now typically regarded as one of the most influential and important of his time. The essays in this Companion, written by top Wallace scholars, offer historical and cultural contexts for grasping Wallace’s significance, provide rigorous individual readings of each of his major works of fiction and nonfiction, and address the key themes and concerns of these works, including aesthetics, politics, religion and spirituality, race, and posthumanism. As such, few writers in recent memory have matched his work’s intense critical and popular impact. Wallace’s desire to blend formal innovation with the communicative function of literature resulted in works that appeal as much to a reader’s intellect as they do to emotion.
T h e c a m b r i d g e c o m p a n i o n t o d a v i d fo s t e r w a l l a ce Best known for his masterpiece Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace reshaped literature for a generation with his groundbreaking and original work. Wallace's geographic metafiction / Jurrit Daalder -ĭavid (Foster) Wallace and the (world) system / Joseph Tabbi. Wallace, spirituality, and religion / Matthew Mullins. 'Palely loitering': on not finishing (in) The pale king / Clare Hayes-Brady. The broom of the system and Girl with curious hair / Matthew Luter -īrief interviews with hideous men / Adam Kelly. Wallace's 'bad influence' / Lee Konstantinou. Wallace and American literature / Andrew Hoberek. Slacker redemption: Wallace and generation X / Marshall Boswell.