David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was born in 1962 in Ithaca, New York, and grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the son of a philosophy professor and an English teacher. A nationally ranked junior tennis player and a student of exceptional brilliance, he earned degrees from Amherst College and the University of Arizona. His undergraduate philosophy thesis and his first novel, The Broom of the System, were completed simultaneously. He struggled with depression and addiction throughout his adult life, experiences that profoundly shaped his fiction. This author hub collects 1 work in the Canon Compass ranking, led by Infinite Jest.