Media Tributes

New York Times: David Foster Wallace

In the past couple of days, I’ve wondered whether David Foster Wallace ever imagined writing his own obituary. It would not surprise me if he had. He was a sublime parodist. His writing could subsume the DNA of any language, any form it encountered, while remaining completely his own.
(Written by Verlyn Klinkenborg '74, a former Pomona College writer-in-residence and Moseley Fellow)

Time Magazine: Appreciation: David Foster Wallace 1962-2008

"A few weeks ago, I reread the beginning of Infinite Jest, and stupidly cursed right out loud its author, David Foster Wallace, out of jealousy, because I will never write ˜ or even think ˜ like he does in just the first few pages of what is the best novel written since I've been old enough to read. ..."

The Guardian: Foster Wallace is a huge loss

"David Foster Wallace's death, at the age of 46, is a grotesque shock. He was still young, and still brilliant; his gargantuan novel, Infinite Jest, and his remarkable short stories, displayed a startling originality in an age of increasingly predictable literary gestures. He was a comic writer who could also incorporate tragedy, satire, horror and philosophical enquiry. He set the bar so dizzyingly high with each new piece of writing that I cannot imagine where he might next have taken his art; and it hurts that I will never know. ..."

The New York Times: An Appraisal: Exuberant Riffs on a Land Run Amok
"David Foster Wallace used his prodigious gifts as a writer ˜ his manic, exuberant prose, his ferocious powers of observation, his ability to fuse avant-garde techniques with old-fashioned moral seriousness ˜ to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad "deep and meaningless" facets of contemporary life."

Time Magazine: The Journalism of David Foster Wallace
"In his 46 years, Wallace fit journalism in. He was a novelist first, but several of his magazine pieces were classics of the form. Here are a few examples of his considerable skill."

Time Out Chicago: In Appreciation: David Foster Wallace
"A couple years before my freshman year at Pomona College, David Foster Wallace moved to Claremont, California to teach creative writing to undergrads. Now, four months after I graduated, he’s gone. That I got to be his student during that brief period was an incredible gift."

McSweeney's: David Foster Wallace
Below, we've begun a thread of memories of David Foster Wallace that will, we hope, be some kind of salve during this wretched and bewildering week. Remembering him, and hearing of his warmth, his realness, his generosity and incredible decency, from those who knew him well and those who only met him once, might dull the pain a bit and, at the very least, remind us all why he meant so much to the world.

The Guardian: The world according to Wallace
In 1996, my college roommate Grant and I drove down to Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal. I was on assignment with the Daily Iowan, the student newspaper of the University of Iowa, to interview David Foster Wallace about his forthcoming book, Infinite Jest.

The Wall Street Journal: Wallace's Too-Bright Fire

The News Gazette: A Live Remembered: Writer Wallace 'central' to postmodernism

Baltimore Sun: The Genius of David Foster Wallace

The Los Angeles Times: David Foster Wallace: Idealistic skeptic

Newsweek: David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

The Chicago Tribune: David Foster Wallace: An appreciation

The Boston Globe: David Foster Wallace, RIP

The Washington Post: Far Beyond A Literary Footnote

Salon: In memory of David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008

The New York Sun: What David Foster Wallace Left Behind

The Nation: Appreciation: David Foster Wallace

Inside Higher Ed: D.F.W., R.I.P.