DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (b.1962) was an author of novels, essays and short stories. He first gained recognition for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest. On Friday September 12th, 2008, at 9:30 pm, Wallace’s wife found him dead. He hanged himself at 46. One of the most devastating aspects of his death is that he gave so much to his contemporaries: Whether through his public observations, his fictions or more journalistic writing, he had taken the responsibility of being a critical eye onto his society (like Sontag and many other public intellectuals). And yet somehow he didn't get enough back. Not enough to make him want to stay.
In one of his essays Wallace describes the attraction we have for the unusual: "Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex with chopsticks while listening to reggae and watching a Soviet-satellite newscast of the Berlin Wall's fall--i.e., when damn near everything presents itself as familiar -- it's not a surprise that some of today's most ambitious Realist fiction is going about trying to make the familiar strange."
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