Preview

david foster wallace biography

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1748 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
david foster wallace biography
David Foster Wallace

In this essay I am going to do my best to give the reader the most informative explanation (within my constraints) of one of the most brilliant authors of the age, David Foster Wallace. He was the author of many great and insightful (at times, dark) works. Some of the more popular/well-known pieces being _The Broom of the System, Girl with Curious Hair, Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion_, and finally his incomplete novel, _The Pale King_. In all honesty, to even scratch the surface of an individual with this amount of depth would require a work similar in size and time to his "tree-killer" of a novel, _Infinite Jest_. That being said, I hold the belief that every free-thinking individual should at least know-this man's name in hopes that it may show them the way to his works on what it means to be "a fucking human being".

David Foster Wallace was born on 21 February 1962 and finally met his end 12 September 2008 at the age of 46. Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, to his parents, James Wallace and Sally Foster. His father, a previous graduate student in philosophy at Cornell, was from a family of professionals. His mother, on the other hand, was an English major at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, with a more rural background with family residing in Maine and New Brunswick. She was also the first in her family to acquire a Bachelor's Degree. At the age of 4, David moved with his family to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois for a better job opportunity. His home life was very structured (dinner at 5:45 p.m. and lights out at precisely 8:30 p.m.) and was very conducive for intellectual growth. It was a happy home. As he gets older, Wallace starts to realize many things. First, he had a love for tennis. With his logical and calculating mind, he could easily see the geometrical angles the ball could make as it bounced off the racket, leading him to become one of the top

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Wallace Amos Jr, was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida. Wally Amos worked at William Morris Agency in New York City , he became the agency’s first African American talent agent. Amos always sent his clients a box of his gourmet homemade chocolate cookies. He represented superstars such as Diana Ross & The Supremes,Marvin Gaye, Dionne Warwick, Patti Labelle, Abbey Lincoln, and Simon & Garfunkel amongst many other celebrities. In 1975, Amos associate mentioned to Amos that he should open a store to sell his gourmet chocolate chip cookies and in March of that year he opened his very first store in California. He had the help with a $25,000 loan from two trusted friends and celebrities Helen Reddy and Marvin Gaye. The new company…

    • 194 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Christopher was born on May 21, 1972 and raised in Brooklyn, New York. His mom, Voletta Wallace, worked at a preschool while his dad, Selwyn Latore, worked as a welder and politician. His dad left the family when Christopher was only two years old leaving Voletta to raise Christopher alone in Brooklyn. Voletta worked two jobs to supply the income for her son to attend a private school. Christopher was a great student but ended up hanging out with the wrong people. This eventually…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Questions 2, Pg 33 #2: What do we learn about the author as we read this essay? How does his use of language reveal not only humor, but also the author's persona? How would you describe it?…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Wallace started his speech with a short story about an older fish asking a couple of younger fish about the water. The younger fish swam a little and could not figure out what the older fish meant. Wallace then clarified by saying, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about” (199). This explanation leads to the main idea, which is the fact that a change in thinking that only your time is important or that people need to get out of your way, can save citizens from being so unhappy with everyone around them and their daily routine at their eight to five job. “Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to automatically be sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe” (201).…

    • 625 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    CS Lewis Biography

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Born on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland, C.S. “Jack” Lewis was the second child to Albert Lewis and Florence Augusta Hamilton- both who are said to have had “first rate minds” (C.S. Lewis: A Profile of His Life) and who passed their love for books and reading down to their children, along with their extensive library. Because of this, Lewis adapted an incredible writing skill, as well. However, after his tenth birthday in 1908, Lewis’ world was turned upside down by the death of his mother. This is especially important because, as Dorsett says in his biography, “The death of Mrs. Lewis convinced young Jack that the God he encountered in church and in the Bible his mother gave him was, if not cruel, at least a vague abstraction.” (C.S. Lewis: A Profile of His Life). About four years later, he pronounced himself an atheist. Two years following that he met W.T. Kirkpatrick, the man who taught and influenced Lewis to fall in love with classic literature from all around the world as well as criticize, analyze, and understand in it its original language. It is said of Kirkpatrick that he taught Lewis how to “think, speak, and write logically.” (C.S. Lewis: A Profile of His Life).…

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Invisible Man

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Throughout life there are moments where an individual must conform to society and the people around them in order to be accepted, however it is the individual actions and how the individual chooses to conform that creates their unique identity and place within that society. Ralph Ellison published the novel that follows a sense of outward conformity and obedience to an established order while at the same time invoking an inward questioning of the roles an individual plays within such an order. The main character is forced to conform to the cliché laws and expectations of the laws and expectations of the society that he lives in, in order to survive and function within them, while he privately goes against these societies in order to define themselves as individuals and uncover the truth about those societies that they live in. The outward conformity and inward questioning constantly clash, causing the character to doubt and confuse with what he knows is the truth and what he wants to believe is the truth.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    gattaca

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Within this world, an invalid, Vincent Freeman challenges the assumptions of the society and through his actions and attributes, proves that you need more than human spirit to achieve success…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the film, music heightens the emotions the viewer feels as s/he discovers the truth about the community with Lincoln and Jordan. The fear, the shock, and the horror are all tangible emotions felt with each new atrocity. Though some stunts are a bit far-fetched, the active storyline keeps the viewer engaged and wondering what fresh horrors the next twist will hold. This work has a clear connection to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Both works exhibit the artificial production of humans, predisposed to the life for which they are designed, as well as the use of hypnopaedia to condition the residents of the communities in the way the will benefit their superiors. Additionally, the authorities in both works fear unorthodox thinking because, as shown in Michael Bay’s The Island, one unorthodox individual’s thoughts have the power to crumble the societies that they…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    George C. Wallace

    • 1510 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The 1960's were characterized as an era full of turmoil. During this era, one of the most controversial topics was the fight over civil rights. One of the key political figures against civil rights movement and pro-segregation was George Wallace. Wallace represented the racist southern view. Many Americans were segregationist, but Wallace was adamant about the topic. Many established political figures were assassinated, during the 1960's. Martin Luther King, JFK, and RFK were all positive visionaries caused controversy throughout that decade. George Wallace was against the modern government, pro-middle class, and against civil rights. Wallace and many other visionaries were cut down to early in life. Wallace was not killed by the assassin's bullet but his political career was changed. The attempt on Wallace's life left him a broken man in a wheelchair. People remembered the George Wallace who smoked his cigar and denounced the State Department as communist. Wallace was a feared politician who lived in a state full of beatings and problems. Racism was the norm and Wallace took full advantage of this ploy to gain political attention.…

    • 1510 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Howard Gardner Biography

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Howard Gardner was born on July 11, 1943 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were refugees from the period of the Nazis, in Germany. As a child he loved music, he later became a great pianist. As a young man he enrolled at Harvard University. Gardner started to study other careers but ended getting inspired by the works of Jean Piaget to study developmental psychology. He is married to Ellen Winner, a developmental psychologist who teaches at Boston College, and they have four children together…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Chuck Palahniuk (on transgressive fiction)1 “The most successful books now serve us as sedatives, confirming the values and worldviews their readers already hold. They’re the books we read as sleeping pills at bedtime. When was the last book banned? Oh, how I miss the great book bonfires of my Christian youth! That’s when books had some power! When they had to be burned like witches.”…

    • 1551 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Alexander Pope’s philosophical poem, An Essay on Man, Pope interjects his ideas on man’s role and purpose in this universe by expounding upon what is known as the Great Chain of Being, an ancient theological concept formulated by Plato and Aristotle. The Great Chain of Being, as it translates to Latin is, scala nuturae, meaning ladder or stairway of nature. The premise of this concept maintains the belief that everything that exists in this universe is connected in a hierarchical ordered “chain” according to God’s divine plan. In An Essay on Man, Pope reiterates this notion, as well as, expresses his want to “vindicate the ways of God to man” (1.16), in hopes of educating his fellow man of their position and responsibilities in this hierarchy.…

    • 702 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    3. Mookerjee, Robin. Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric Tradition. New York City: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.…

    • 2239 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    George Wallace was born on August 25, 1919, in Clio, Alabama. His father, George Corley Wallace Sr., was a farmer. His mother, Mozelle Smith Wallace, had been abandoned by…

    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Arnold is correct in says that literature is a criticism of life because personally I think that it is simply a portrayal of life’s situations. Also I think that Literature is often a mirror for what is going on in society and a vehicle to change that which we don’t like. Many books today use their pages to put forth social commentary. They reflect the issues of the time, including race, class, morals, etc. All these issues that make up and affect our life are explored, examined, reaffirmed, broken down, rejected, accepted, and revised through global narrative discussions in literature.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics