David Foster Wallace

American novelist and essayist whose Infinite Jest is a defining document of late 20th-century American culture, and whose essays on irony, television, and attention remain urgently relevant.

Infinite Jest: addiction, entertainment, and the failure of irony — a 1,100-page novel about what happens when a society maximizes pleasure. This Is Water: commencement address on attention and the default mode of adult life — avoid solipsism. E Unibus Pluram: television and the failure of ironic literature — a critique of postmodern irony as complicity. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; The Pale King.