|
|
Article: The best of David Foster Wallace
- Article from:
- New Statesman
- Article date:
- December 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright New Statesman Ltd. Dec 1, 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
1987: THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM
The metafictional gameplaying and sheer verbal inventiveness of Wallace's first novel established him as a successor to American postmodernists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. It is set in the near future in Cleveland, which now stands on the border of the Great Ohio Desert (or GOD), a vast tract of land filled with black sand.
1989: GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR
The centrepiece of this first collection of stories is "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way", a 150-page novella set in a creative writing workshop. Wallace said the story was "written in the margins" of Barth's Lost in the Funhouse- the professor running the workshop is the author of a famous ...