David Foster Wallace. (2009). A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments. Little, Brown and Company.

David Foster Wallace. 2009. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments. Little, Brown and Company.

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments. Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

David Foster Wallace. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments. Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

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   • bioText: David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.
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2009-11-23T00:00:00-05:00

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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

fullDescription

These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest — on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more — established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. 
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.

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     Starred review from February 2, 1997
     Like the tennis champs who fascinate him, novelist Wallace (Infinite Jest; The Broom of the System) makes what he does look effortless and yet inspired. His instinct for the colloquial puts his masters Pynchon and DeLillo to shame, and the humane sobriety that he brings to his subjects-fictional or factual-should serve as a model to anyone writing cultural comment, whether it takes the form of stories or of essays like these. Readers of Wallace's fiction will take special interest in this collection: critics have already mined "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" (Wallace's memoir of his tennis-playing days) for the biographical sources of Infinite Jest. The witty, insightful essays on David Lynch and TV are a reminder of how thoroughly Wallace has internalized the writing-and thinking-habits of Stanley Cavell, the plain-language philosopher at Harvard, Wallace's alma mater. The reportage (on the Illinois State Fair, the Canadian Open and a Caribbean Cruise) is perhaps best described as post-gonzo: funny, slight and self-conscious without Norman Mailer's or Hunter Thompson's braggadocio. Only in the more academic essays, on Dostoyevski and the scholar H.L. Hix, does Wallace's gee-whiz modesty get in the way of his arguments. Still, even these have their moments: at the end of the Dostoyevski essay, Wallace blurts out that he wants "passionately serious ideological contemporary fiction also ingenious and radiantly transcendent fiction." From most writers, that would be hot air; from one as honest, subtle and ambitious as Wallace, it has the sound of a promise.

2. • premium: True
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   • content:

     October 15, 1996
     The painfully hip Wallace toured state fairs, relaxed on a cruise ship, and now tells us what it's like.

3. • premium: True
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   • content:

     February 15, 1997
     Celebrated Illinoisan writer Wallace's meganovel, "Infinite Jest" (1996), was megasuccessful, and these intelligent, funny essays are outstanding. In "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley," Wallace presents himself as a young Midwest tennis star with an unathletic, intuitive, yet winning style of play. But Wallace writes about far more than the sum of his self, widening his field of vision to embrace wind, earth, and mathematics, creating a virtual cyclone with his highly idiosyncratic perceptions, perfectly correct cadence, and casually hip lexicon. He applies this arsenal of literary power tools to even greater effect in one of the most original, comprehensive analyses yet of television and the pervasive "culture of watching," discussing such fine points as the tyranny of television's institutionalized, self-referential irony and its tremendous influence on American fiction. Wallace has also written in his edgy way about David Lynch, a state fair, and, in the masterful title piece, his addling experiences on a seven-night Caribbean cruise during which he endured hours of despair interrupted by moments of stunned amazement. ((Reviewed February 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)

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     January 1, 1997
     This collection of eight diverse articles, following on the heels of Foster's immense, popular novel, Infinite Jest (LJ 1/96), opens with "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley," an autobiographical sketch that skillfully interweaves mathematics and tennis with the vicissitudes of Midwestern meteorology. A brilliant analysis of television's role in popular culture, a look at the Illinois State Fair, a review of filmmaker David Lynch, and a report on Wallace's week-long adventure on a luxury cruise are among the pieces that follow. Wallace's style is highly personal--some might say eccentric--but his writing is always intelligent, witty, and engaging. Libraries serving discriminating readers will want this book in their collections..--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

popularity

1485

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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.

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