Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, switchboard operator for the Frequent and Vigorous Publishing Company, tries to cope with her great-grandmother's escape from a nursing home, her insanely jealous but not-too-passionate beau, and a cocatiel that spouts psycho-babble, Auden, and Bible quotations

* 'Ambitious, accomplished, deeply humorous, brilliant and witty and moving. A literary sensation' INDEPENDENT * With a new foreword by Dave Eggers

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here--with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work--essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King, and legendary stories like "The Depressed Person." Wallace's explorations of morality, self-consciousness, addiction, sports, love, and the many other subjects that occupied him are represented here in both fiction and nonfiction. Collected for the first time are Wallace's first published story, "The View from Planet Trillaphon as Seen In Relation to the Bad Thing" and a selection of his work as a writing instructor, including reading lists, grammar guides, and general guidelines for his students. A dozen writers and critics, including Hari Kunzru, Anne Fadiman, and Nam Le, add afterwords to favorite pieces, expanding our appreciation of the unique pleasures of Wallace's writing. The result is an astonishing volume that shows the breadth and range of "one of America's most daring and talented writers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) whose work was full of humor, insight, and beauty.

Product Description: A selection of David Foster Wallace's life's work, introducing readers to his remarkable humor, kindness, sweeping intellect, and versatility as a writer.The David Foster Wallace Reader is a compilation from one of the most original writers of our age, featuring selections of his brilliant fiction and nonfiction...read more

Product Description: Brilliant, dazzling, never-before-collected nonfiction writings by "one of America's most daring and talented writers." (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Both Flesh and Not gathers fifteen of Wallace's seminal essays, all published in book form for the first time...read more

Product Description: David Foster Wallace era para muchos el novelista más importante de su generación. The Broom of the System (1986) significó su debut, y tres años más tarde publicó La niña del pelo raro (Literatura Mondadori, 2000), relatos con los que captó la atención de la crítica...read more

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.

A collection of keen observations, witty analyses, and essays on a wide range of subjects exposes the fault lines in today's society

Product Description: The best-selling author of Infinite Jest on the two-thousand-year-old quest to understand infinity. One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays...read more

Edited by the author of Consider the Lobster and Infinite Jest, a new collection of the finest nonfiction essays published over the past year incorporates the work of distinguished masters of the essay genre, including Jo Ann Beard, Mark Danner, Malcolm Gladwell, Louis Menand, and Molly Peacock, among others. Simultaneous.

Product Description: This issue publishes short stories by Catalan's most exciting contemporary writers, providing readers a unique opportunity to view both the life and art of Catalonian culture.