David Foster Wallace | Resources

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow. of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy“

RESOURCES:

David Foster Wallace Bibliography

By David Foster Wallace

Novels:

1. The Boom of the System (1987) Written as Masters Thesis
2. Infinite Jest (1996) Excerpts from Infinite Jest first appeared in Grand Street, 1992.
3. The Pale King (2011) Published posthumously—his unfinished novel.

Short Story Collections:

1. Girl With Curious Hair (1989) published in Europe as: Westward the Course of Empire Tales Its Way
2. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (19(99)
3. Oblivion: Stories (2004)

Non-Fiction / Essays

1. Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present (1990), coauthored with Mark Costello
2. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997)
3. Up, Simba (2000)
4. Everything and More (2003)
5. Consider the Lobster (2005)
6. McCain’s Promise (2008 paperback reprint of Up, Simba)
7. This is Water (2009) Transcript of Convocation Speech
8. Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will (2011)
9. Both Flesh and Not (2012)
10. String Theory: David Foster Wallace Essays on Tennis (2016) published posthumously

About David Foster Wallace—Biography/ Interviews

1. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky (2010) Mostly a transcript of an interview between David Lispky and David Foster Wallace back in 1996 near the end of the tour for Infinite Jest. Recent film The End of the Tour featuring Jason Segal as DFW is based on this transcript.
2. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max – Biography of DFW
3. Conversations with David Foster Wallace edited by Stephen J. Burn (2012) A compilation of several interviews with David Foster Wallace/ The transcripts
4. The Last Interview Series: David Foster Wallace (2012)
5. “Farther Away” Essay by Jonathan Franzen

Academic Works about Wallace’s Work

1. Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (2007) Greg Carlisle
2. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide by Stephen J. Burn (2012)
3. The David Foster Wallace Reader (2014) This 976 page book contains almost every other aspect of David Foster Wallace’s work, for instance it has the syllabus he designed as a professor for writing/reading courses at Pomona College, and additional excerpts not present in the texts above.

Online Resources/Forums/Archives

• Audible and Downpour have great Audiobooks for Infinite Jest, and all his other works are there as well. I found that the audiobook really kept me going the first time.
• Most of David Foster Wallace’s Archives are at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin Texas
• The Howling Fantods – largest DFW fan group promoting News, Resources, and updates about DFW since 1997.
• Several Facebook Groups: The Broom of the System being a dominant one
• Goodreads Groups
• Several interviews with DFW have been placed on YouTube
• Two Films have come out based on 1. His life: The End of the Tour (based on Lipsky’s perspective of Wallace in 1996) and 2. His Work: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
• Don’t forget your public library! Both academic libraries in universities and public libraries will have most of Wallace’s works. If you prefer the online forum, OverDrive is connected through your library card and you can access most of the works mentioned.
• In 2015 another group kept detailed records of their reading in a blog called Infinite Summer
• A great Video Book Review of Infinite Jest by “FortheloveofRyan“