The Week in Pieces

The blog of Granta’s online editor

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)

David Foster Wallace, the American novelist and essayist, died on Friday. He was a writer of ferocious intelligence and inventiveness. He was also, by all accounts, a person of great kindness and integrity.

Read obituaries from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the Guardian and BBC News.

In Salon, his parents and sister discuss his depression and the last week of his life.

McSweeney’s ‘thread of memories’, includes insights from Zadie Smith and Dave Eggers, updated daily.

Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits website has tributes by over forty writers, including James Wood (who wrote about Foster Wallace in his new book, How Fiction Works) and Neal Pollack.

At Slate, Joyce Carol Oates, Sven Birkets and other writers, critics and editors share their stories.

An appreciation by Michiko Kakutani, chief book critic for the New York Times.

Reflections on Foster Wallace by the New York Times’s A.O. Scott, Dwight Garner and Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New Yorker’s Deborah Treisman, New York’s Sam Anderson, the New York Observer’s Adam Begley and Matt Haber, the New York Sun’s Benjamin Lytal, Time Out New York’s Michael Miller, the Village Voice’s Benjamin Strong, the Wall Street Journal’s Richard B. Woodward, the Washington Post’s Monica Hesse, the Los Angeles Times’s David L. Ulin and Meghan Daum, the Boston Globe’s Steve Almond, the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Caro, Baltimore City Paper’s Tim Kreider, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Morford and Jon Carroll, the Houston Chronicle’s Fritz Lanham, Time’s Lev Grossman, Joel Stein and Josh Tyrangiel, Newsweek’s David Gates, the News & Observer’s J. Peder Zane, the National Post’s Colby Cosh, the Telegraph’s Tim Martin and Sam Leith, the Guardian’s Christopher Taylor and Robert Potts, the Independent’s Boyd Tonkin and Guy Adams, Prospect’s Julian Gough, Paste’s Sean Gandert, Slate’s Troy Patterson, Salon’s Laura Miller, Harper’s Wyatt Mason, the New Republic’s Isaac Chotiner, The Nation’s Christopher Hayes, The Age’s Peter Craven, Business Day’s Nilanjana S. Roy and Obit’s Alex Rose.

KCRW’s tribute show, ‘Considering David Foster Wallace’, with Michael Silverblatt and Anthony Miller.

His agent, Bonnie Nadell, remembers him here.

His editor at Doubleday, Gerry Howard, talks about him here.

Glenn Kenny, who edited him at Premiere, pays tribute to him here and here.

Joshua Ferris recalled interviewing him in 1994.

Elizabeth Wurzel remembers her last conversation with him here.

The New York Observer’s Leon Neyfakh wonders whether he left behind a ‘treasure trove of unpublished materials’.

Frank Bruni’s 1996 New York Times Magazine profile.

Laura Miller’s 1996 Salon interview.

Larry McCaffery’s 1993 Review of Contemporary Fiction interview.

A.O. Scott’s 2000 New York Review of Books essay.

Chad Harbach’s 2005 n+1 essay.

Robert McCrum, writing in the Observer in 2005, on the genius of Foster Wallace.

Foster Wallace on the Charlie Rose television show in 1996, and again in 1997.

Foster Wallace on KCRW’s Bookworm show in 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2006.

Foster Wallace reading from his journalism, at Harper’s 150th anniversary celebration, in New York City.

Foster Wallace reading at San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

A transcript of his 2006 reading at the Le Conversazioni festival in Italy.

A transcript of his speech, ‘Laughing with Kafka’, delivered at a 1998 Kafka symposium in New York City.

His 1991 Harper’s memoir of a Midwestern boyhood, ‘Tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes’.

His 2001 Harper’s essay on ‘Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage’.

His 1989 Harper’s short story, ‘Everything is Green’.

His 1998 Harper’s short story, ‘The Depressed Person’.

His 1998 Harper’s short story, ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men’.

His 1997 Open City short story, ‘Nothing Happened’.

His 2007 New Yorker short story, ‘Good People’.

His 1999 New Yorker short story, ‘Asset’.

His 1994 New Yorker short story, ‘Several Birds’.

His 2000 Esquire short story, ‘Incarnations of Burned Children’.

His 2005 Kenyon College commencement address.

His 2005 Atlantic article on American talk radio.

His 2007 Atlantic piece on the future of the American idea.

For Rolling Stone, he accompanied John McCain on his failed 2000 presidential campaign.

For Gourmet magazine in 2004, he considered the lobster.

For Harper’s in 1996 he enjoyed the nearly lethal comforts of a luxury cruise.

For the New York Observer in 1997, he explained why the novels of John Updike have no appeal for readers under forty.

For Harper’s in 1992 he resurrected Updike’s Rabbit.

A tennis champion and enthusiast, he paid close attention to the rise of Roger Federer.

His 1996 Esquire inquiry into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.

In late May of this year, he reflected on the differences between the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain for the Wall Street Journal.

A ‘fanatical David Lynch fan from way back’, he visited the set of Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway for this spirited and insightful Premiere essay.

For the New York Times in 2004, he reviewed a biography of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.

His featured author page on the New York Times website.

The Howling Fantoids, a website devoted to Foster Wallace, includes over 200 links to reviews, interviews and obituaries.

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