Facts about David Foster Wallace
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Between 1996 and 2004, David Foster Wallace contributed over 30 essays and reviews to major publications including The New York Times Book Review, Harper's Magazine, and Rolling Stone while maintaining his teaching position.
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Seventeen years before his death, David Foster Wallace earned a PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1987 before pursuing a full-time writing career.
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Severe addiction to cigarettes and various medications plagued David Foster Wallace throughout his adult life, with nicotine dependence contributing significantly to his health decline before his 2008 suicide at age 46.
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Over 250 pages of Infinite Jest's endnotes contain footnotes themselves, creating a recursive textual structure that Wallace used to weave narrative and philosophical commentary throughout the novel.
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His 1987 short story collection Girl with Curious Hair won the L.L.Winship PEN/Faulkner Award, establishing Wallace's reputation before his thirty-first birthday.
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Wallace's 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College, later published as This Is Water, has become one of the most widely read and shared essays in contemporary American literature.
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From 2002 until his death in 2008, David Foster Wallace struggled with severe medication-resistant depression after discontinuing antidepressants that had previously stabilized his mental health for over a decade.
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Struggling with severe clinical depression, David Foster Wallace voluntarily admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital in 1989 at age 27 for a ten-day stay.
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At age 21, David Foster Wallace won the Whiting Writers Award in 1988, one of the most prestigious honors for emerging American writers.
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David Foster Wallace taught creative writing at Illinois State University from 1993 to 1996 while completing Infinite Jest in a converted broom closet office.
- 02
In 1993, David Foster Wallace published his debut novel The Broom of the System at age 26, which was rejected by multiple publishers before finding a home.
- 01
The 1996 novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace contains over 100 pages of endnotes and weighs approximately 4 pounds in hardcover.