David Foster Wallace
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Review of Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
Polishing off the remainder of DFW’s works has been a treat this year. I began by listening to the author-read audiobook, then picked up the paperback where the audio left off. What an astounding journalist he was. “Consider the Lobster” is an in-depth look at a lobster festival. “Big Red…
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Review of Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace
Not sure if I’d recommend this one. It’s DFW, and yes, it’s witty, acerbic, articulate, et. al. but the items under discussion did not engage me in the way that Lobster, and Supposedly Fun Thing did in their turn. I’d therefore call this his least successful collection. They padded the…
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Review of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
Recommended for hardcore DFW fans. This collection is a deeply personal, scattered exhibit of loneliness, a harrowing, sad, and convincing portrayal of damaged psyches. Wit, brilliance, and exuberance are all evident in Wallace’s oeuvre, but here, must be discerned through strata of mimesis. Listening to the audiobook reading by the…
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Review of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
No matter how unfinished this may be, it is nonetheless a book DFW spent years on. How much vaster, greater, or more polished it might have become had he seen it to completion is inestimable. But as it stands, it is impressive in a number of ways. At bottom a…
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Review of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest – the kind of book that, when it is mentioned, creates a hushed silence of mingled awe and fear in the room. A brick of a tome of a journey of a boy and his harried growth in spurts of tennis-fueled tragedy. An obsessive, compulsively readable, unreadable contradiction.…
L. S. Popovich 