David Foster Wallace Ordine dei libri (cronologico)

»Ich wusste nicht, ob daraus der beste oder der schlimmste Text über mich werden würde.« Roger Federer. 2006 reiste David Foster Wallace im Auftrag der New York Times nach Wimbledon, um über das dortige Tennisturnier zu schreiben. Wallace, selbst in seiner Jugend ein erfolgreicher Tennisspieler, traf Roger Federer – für ihn eine fast göttliche Begegnung. David Foster Wallace’ Reportagen sind Herzstücke seines großen Werks. 2006 traf Wallace Roger Federer und führte ein Interview mit dem damals noch nicht ganz so berühmten Schweizer, dessen »übermenschliche Karriere« langsam Fahrt aufnahm. Herausgekommen ist ein Text, der Federers Talent beschreibt, der aber auch wie immer bei Wallace die scheinbaren Nebensächlichkeiten des Turniers in den Blick nimmt. Dieser Text ist berühmt geworden – nicht zuletzt, weil die Tennisspielerin und Autorin Andrea Petković ihn wie die anderen Tennistexte von Wallace mit Nachdruck immer wieder empfiehlt.

»Eine Kompetenzgranate mit Dauerzündung, die unterhalten, aber nicht unterfordern will« Ulrich Blumenbach. Zum zehnten Todestag des wichtigsten amerikanischen Autors seiner Generation erscheinen alle Essays in einem Band. Gerade die Essays und Reportagen sind für viele Kritiker und Leser Wallace’ Königsdisziplin, und in dieser nach Themen geordneten Anthologie sind seine Beobachtungsschärfe und sprachliche Brillanz neu zu entdecken. Neben Romanen und Erzählungen hat David Foster Wallace immer auch Essays geschrieben, mal im Auftrag von Zeitschriften und Zeitungen, mal für Sammlungen. Zu den bekanntesten gehört sicherlich »Schrecklich amüsant – aber in Zukunft ohne mich«, sein berühmter Text über die Reise auf einem Kreuzfahrtschiff, und »Das hier ist Wasser«. Dieses monumentale Buch versammelt alle Sachtexte des großen amerikanischen Autors. Ulrich Blumenbach, der längst zur deutschen Stimme Wallace’ geworden ist, hat die Essays in diesem finalen Band nach Themengebieten geordnet: Von Tennis über Ästhetik, Sprache & Literatur, Politik, Film & Fernsehen, die Unterhaltungsindustrie und Leben & Liebe reicht die Bandbreite. So ist Wallace in all seiner Brillanz in diesen höchst unterhaltsamen und klugen Texten aufs Neue zu entdecken und zu bewundern.

Einblicke in ein ziemlich schillerndes Milieu – David Foster Wallace goes Pornoindustrie Jedes Jahr findet im Caesars Palace in Las Vegas die Verleihung der Adult Video News Awards statt, der Oscars der Pornoindustrie. Im Auftrag der Zeitschrift Premiere besucht David Foster Wallace 1998 die Preisverleihung sowie die zugehörige Pornomesse und lässt sich dort von Branchenjournalisten mit so schönen Namen wie Dick Filth die subtilen Hierarchien, erbittertsten Branchenfehden und wildesten Gerüchte dieser ziemlich flamboyanten Parallelkultur näherbringen. Er schreibt über geklaute Trophäen, größenwahnsinnige Regisseure, naturschöne Darstellerinnen, wahre Klischees und das Pornobusiness als gänzlich ironiefreie Zone. Brillant beobachtet und sehr, sehr lustig – David Foster Wallace at his best!

This collection features five of Wallace's finest essays on tennis, a sport he embraced anew after his Microsoft days. You don't need to play or watch tennis to appreciate this work, as Wallace's writing is as masterful as Federer’s racket skills. Critics praise the essays for their insightful exploration of the sport, capturing both the dedication behind mastering tennis and the extraordinary experiences of world-class players. The collection is described as a tennis classic, deserving a place alongside notable works on the sport. With an engaging introduction by John Jeremiah Sullivan, this volume showcases Wallace's talent and love for tennis, making it a delightful read. His essays blend courtside observations with deep reflections, questioning the genius of top players and what viewers often overlook. Wallace's profound understanding of tennis, combined with his unique analytical perspective, cements his reputation as one of the greatest tennis writers. He portrays tennis not merely as a game but as a complex, almost warlike endeavor. This collection invites readers into Wallace's mind, revealing his unique insights and personal experiences with the sport, including his early competitive journey in the Midwest.

Wer das Wesen der Krankheit Depression verstehen will, muss diesen Text lesen Eine frühe Erzählung von David Foster Wallace, erstmals 1984 in The Amherst Review, einer literarischen Studentenzeitschrift, erschienen. Mit erschreckender Offenheit und Formulierungen, die später in seinen Romanen und Erzählungen Eingang finden werden, erzählt der damals 22-jährige David Foster Wallace über einen Studenten, der an Depressionen erkrankt ist. Die starken Medikamente haben ihn auf einen anderen Planeten geschossen, doch scheint ein Leben dort immer noch das kleinere Übel – einen Weg zurück auf die Erde wird es niemals geben. David Foster Wallace kämpfte zeitlebens mit Depressionen und suchte nach Bildern, um zu beschreiben, was ihn quält. Eine schmerzhafte Erzählung, die die Krankheit in ihrer ganzen monströsen Ausweglosigkeit beschreibt und für Nichterkrankte verstehbar macht.

"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."--Publisher's description.

Digging in the crates we uncovered this old-school classic from David Foster Wallace and his friend and room-mate Mark Costello, first published in 1990, long out of print, and previously unavailable outside the USA. A paean to the golden age of Hip-Hop and the first book to consider seriously its position as a vital force in American culture, Signifying Rappers is a must-read for fans of both Wallace and hip-hop. Set against the legendary 1980s scene, it maps the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom, with an energy and exuberance which is as fresh today as when it was written.

In intimate and eloquent interviews, including the last he gave before his suicide, the writer hailed by A.O. Scott of The New York Times as the best mind of his generation considers the state of modern America, entertainment and discipline, adulthood, literature, and his own inimitable writing style. In addition to Wallace's last interview, the volume features a conversation with Dave Eggers, a revealing Q&A; with the magazine of his alma mater Amherst, his famous Salon interview with Laura Miller following the publication of Infinite Jest, and more. These conversations showcase and illuminate the traits for which Wallace remains so beloved: his incomparable humility and enormous erudition, his wit, sensitivity, and humanity. As he eloquently describes his writing process and motivations, displays his curiosity by time and again turning the tables on his interviewers, and delivers thoughtful, idiosyncratic views on literature, politics, entertainment and discipline, and the state of modern America, a fuller picture of this remarkable mind is revealed.

Können wir die Zukunft durch unser Handeln beeinflussen? Oder ist sie von Gott, vom Schicksal oder von Naturgesetzen vorherbestimmt? Diese Frage beschäftigt Philosophen seit der Antike. 1985 nahm sich ein Student vor, sie ein für allemal zu lösen – David Foster Wallace. Er jongliert souverän mit modallogischen Formeln und Diagrammen und führt exzentrische Beispiele ins Feld, die direkt seinen Erzählungen entsprungen sein könnten: Terroristen, Stabhochspringer, Tennisspieler ohne Schläger. Neben dem posthum erschienenen Aufsatz enthält der Band eine biografische Skizze über Foster Wallace’ Studentenzeit und eine kurze Einführung in die Modallogik.

L'amore ai tempi dell'Aids. Terminator e gli effetti speciali come sfida alla creatività. Perché scrivere è tanto divertente e difficile. Gli effetti sugli ideali americani dell'Undici settembre, ma anche di Guantánamo, e tanti altri nodi e ossessioni, raccontati come nessuno ha mai saputo fare prima. Caustici, talvolta crudeli nel prendere di mira qualcosa o qualcuno e vivisezionarlo con la lama affilatissima dell'ironia; sempre accesi da intuizioni che illuminano la scena all'improvviso, gli interventi di DFW qui pubblicati sono un'occasione per i lettori, per noi, di confrontarsi con l'autore piú folle e coraggioso della sua generazione.

The Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, Illinois, 1985. Here the workers fight a never-ending war against the urgency of their own boredom. Here then, squeezed between the trivial and the quotidian, lies all human life.

The "dazzling, exhilarating" (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from one of this century's most groundbreaking writers Published when David Foster Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the 90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.§§Then Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour for Infinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport. They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight. They endure a terrible reader's escort in Minneapolis. Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance. Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an orgy of spectation). They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace's dogs. Amid these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and confounds him in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him, and came to feel about him that grateful, awake feeling the same way he felt about Infinite Jest. Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church.

I sei racconti di Questa è l'acqua , scritti tra il 1984 e il 2005, offrono uno sguardo di insieme sulla straordinaria avventura artistica di Wallace, e una summa delle sue tematiche e dei diversi stili con cui le ha affrontate ed esaltate. La depressione, vivisezionata nelle sue spietate dinamiche nel doloroso e commovente Il pianeta Trillafon in relazione alla Cosa Brutta ; la ricerca di una nuova maturità ed equilibrio nel discorso tenuto davanti agli studenti del Kenyon College, che dà il titolo alla raccolta; il sentimento amoroso in tutte le sue possibili declinazioni, tra goffaggine, tenerezza, crudeltà, nelle due novelle Solomon Silverfish e Ordine e fluttuazione a Northampton ; l'adolescenza come stagione della vita in cui ricerca d'identità e perversione finiscono per coesistere, in Altra matematica ; le nuove complessità del mondo globale e il crollo di ogni logica binaria, nel piccolo gioiello Crollo del '69 . A un anno dalla tragica scomparsa, con questo nuovo libro di racconti torniamo ad ascoltare la voce unica e incomparabile di David Foster Wallace.

Der Chronist unserer rasenden Depression. Nach dem Tod von David Foster Wallace schrieb Richard Powers, er sei «der Beste unserer Generation» gewesen. In diesem letzten Erzählungsband nimmt Wallace mit Schärfe und Witz die Deformationen des Menschen im Medienzeitalter aufs Korn. Und das mit großer Meisterschaft, egal, ob er von den üblen Folgen einer Schönheitsoperation erzählt oder vom Versuch eines Paares, in einem Schlaflabor zu ermitteln, wer durch sein Schnarchen wann wen vom Schlafen abhält.

The twenty-two essays in this powerful collection -- perhaps the most diverse in the entire series -- come from a wide variety of periodicals, ranging from n + 1 and PMS to the New Republic and The New Yorker, and showcase a remarkable range of forms. Read on for narrative -- in first and third person -- opinion, memoir, argument, the essay-review, confession, reportage, even a dispatch from Iraq. The philosopher Peter Singer makes a case for philanthropy; the poet Molly Peacock constructs a mosaic tribute to a little-known but remarkable eighteenth-century woman artist; the novelist Marilynne Robinson explores what has happened to holiness in contemporary Christianity; the essayist Richard Rodriguez wonders if California has anything left to say to America; and the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson attempts to find common ground with the evangelical community.In his introduction, David Foster Wallace makes the spirited case that “many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a sick sense of humour? What is John Updike's deal anyway? And who won the Adult Video News' Female Performer of the Year Award the same year Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in his new book of hilarious non-fiction. For this collection, David Foster Wallace immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns in recent history. Later he strolls from booth to booth at a lobster festival in Maine and risks life and limb to get to the bottom of the lobster question. Then he wheedles his way into an L.A. radio studio, armed with tubs of chicken, to get the behind-the-scenes view of a conservative talkshow featuring a host with an unnatural penchant for clothing that only looks good on the radio. In what is sure to be a much-talked-about exploration of distinctly modern subjects, one of the sharpest minds of our time delves into some of life's most delicious topics.

Presents a collection of eight short fiction stories by American author David Foster Wallace.

Set against the backdrop of the Black Death in 1348, ten young Florentines escape to the countryside, where they engage in storytelling as a means of coping with their circumstances. The narrative unfolds through one hundred novelle that tackle diverse themes, including domestic struggles and the political dynamics between Christians and Arabs. David Wallace provides insights into the text's connection to Boccaccio's proto-capitalist Florence, while also addressing gender issues and the influence of the Decameron on later literature, notably Chaucer and the novel.

The period from the 5th to the 7th century AD was characterised by far-reaching structural changes that affected the entire west of the Roman Empire. This process used to be regarded by scholars aspart of the dissolution of Roman order, but in current discussions it is nowexamined more critically. The contributions to this volume of conference papers combine approaches from history and literature studies in order to review the changing forms and fields of the establishment of collective identities, and to analyse them in their mutual relationships.

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. The series of stories from which this exuberantly acclaimed book takes its title is a sequence of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. These portraits of men at their most self-justifying, loquacious, and benighted explore poignantly and hilariously the agonies of sexual connections.

In this anthology, 26 writers illuminate the motivations at the heart of their creative lives in original essays that are as surprising and varied as their fiction. The contributors include Pat Conroy, Norman Mailor, Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace.

Un romanzo fluviale, comico e insieme profondo: un atto di fede nella forza delle storie, e nella loro capacità di prendere per il collo e raccontare il mondo. Le avventure di Lenore, che si mette alla ricerca della bisnonna, antica studiosa di Wittgenstein, fuggita dalla sua casa di riposo insieme a venticinque tra coetanei e infermieri; del fratello LaVache, piccolo genio con una passione smodata per la marijuana; del pappagallo di famiglia, Vlad l'Impalatore, che recita sermoni cristiani su una Tv via cavo; di Norman Bombardini, re dell'ingegneria genetica, che si ingozza di cibo e sogna di ingurgitare il mondo intero; di Rick Vigorous, il capo e l'amante di Lenore, negazione vivente del suo stesso cognome. Una galleria di personaggi uno piú esilarante e paradossale dell'altro, sullo sfondo di un'America impazzita, grottesca, piú vera del vero.

A un giovane scrittore viene commissionato il reportage di una settimana in crociera extralusso nei Caraibi. Lo scrittore è David Foster Wallace e la permanenza sulla "meganave" si trasforma in un'esilarante cronaca, ma anche in un acido ritratto dell'americano in vacanza, delle sue abitudini ottuse, della sua eleganza pacchiana e - naturalmente - della sua ricerca di un forzato e artificiale relax. La critica pungente, e insieme scanzonata, di questi "cittadini americani adulti e ricchi" è accompagnata da una sferzante ironia e da uno stile pirotecnico e piacevolmente dispersivo che confermano il talento di un autore, come è stato detto, "capace di scrivere veramente di qualsiasi cosa".

In un futuro non troppo remoto e che somiglia in modo preoccupante al nostro presente, la merce, l'intrattenimento e la pubblicità hanno ormai occupato anche gli interstizi della vita quotidiana. Le droghe sono diffuse ovunque, come una panacea alla noia e alla disperazione. Finché sulla scena irrompe un misterioso film, Infinite Jest, così appassionante e ipnotico da cancellare in un istante ogni desiderio se non quello di guardarne le immagini all'infinito, fino alla morte. Nella caccia che si scatena attorno a questa che è la droga perfetta finiscono coinvolti i residenti di una casa di recupero per tossicodipendenti e gli studenti di un'Accademia del Tennis; e ancora imbroglioni, travestiti, artisti falliti, giocatori di football professionistico, medici, bibliofili, studiosi di cinema, cospiratori.

Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace, first published in 1990. Though they are not related, many of the stories share the theme of society's fascination with celebrity, some using real celebrities, including Alex Trebek, David Letterman and Lyndon Johnson, as fictional characters. Several stories also mock or criticise what Wallace saw as negative trends in the literary scene, including the cynical, amoral realism of 1980s "Brat Pack" writers such as Bret Easton Ellis, as well as postmodern literary criticism and metafiction. A novella, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way", draws heavily on John Barth's metafictional short story "Lost in the Funhouse".