David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace begik selvmord i 2008 i en alder af blot 46 år. Inden da havde han med romanen ’Infinite Jest’ etableret sig som det vigtigste skønlitterære navn i sin generation. Sideløbende med sine romaner og noveller skrev Wallace gennem hele karrieren essays og journalistiske reportager. Disse tekster er helt anderledes tilgængelige end hans litterære eksperimenter, og de er blevet læst bredt og har haft en kolossal indflydelse på forfattergenerationen, der tæller blandt andre Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers og Zadie Smith. Det mest kendte essay, ’Noget muligvis sjovt, jeg sikkert aldrig vil gøre igen’, er en rasende underholdende skildring af Wallaces oplevelser under et luksuskrydstogt i Caribien. Her tegnes et på én gang morsomt og forstemmende portræt af en amerikansk forlystelsesindustri, hvor man ikke bare har mulighed for, men nærmest er tvunget til at have det sjovt. Med i bogen er også en berømt tekst om tennisgeniet Roger Federer, en reportage fra John McCains kampagne for at blive republikanernes præsidentkandidat i 2000, Wallaces indædte opgør med den litterære postmodernisme samt titelessayet, som er en slags kondenseret udtryk for den måske vigtigste essens, man kan uddrage af Wallaces forfatterskab: en opfordring til, at vi sætter os ud over vores solipsistiske og søvngængeragtige standardindstilling, hvor vi er centrum i vores egen lille verden, og i stedet forholder os nysgerrigt, åbent og empatisk til vores omverden og medmennesker.

Våren 2012 återlanserade Natur & Kultur David Foster Wallaces författarskap för en svensk publik, med debutromanen Systemets sopkvast från 1987 och den postumt utgivna Blek kung. I samband med utgivningen arrangerades ett stort seminarium på Internationell författarscen i Stockholm, där de medverkande – Jan Gradvall, Eva Johansson, Jens Liljestrand, Martina Lowden, Malte Persson och översättaren Alva Dahl – fick i uppdrag att välja var sin text de tyckte var särskilt viktig att översätta. Dessa texter utgör grunden för det urval av DFW:s noveller och essäer som nu utkommer i samlingen Texter. Texterna representerar olika skeden och strömningar i författarskapet. Där finns snillet, ensamheten, lekfullheten, självreflektionen, humorn, specialiseringen, metafysiken och inveckladheten. Där finns de välansade gräsmattorna, de pinsamma ovanorna och de högröda mansansiktena. Den detaljhysteriskt genomborrande sakprosan och den ohyggligt uppfinningsrika fiktionsprosan. Liksom urvalet grodde ur ett samtal talar texterna med varandra, med oss, ambivalent och glasklart. David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) föddes i Ithaka, New York och växte upp i Illinois. Han studerade engelska och filosofi vid Amherst College och innehade en professur i kreativt skrivande vid Pomona College i Claremont, Kalifornien. Utöver ett flertal romaner och essäsamlingar skrev han noveller för tidskrifter som The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker och Science. Lika beroendeframkallande som Knausgård, men desto mer utmanande. David Foster Wallace, som dog ung 2008, tar inga genvägar i vare sig språk, tanke - eller fotnotsapparat. I »Texter« har översättaren Alva Dahl samlat kortprosa, reportage och essäer av DFW. Om bluffteorier, om skönheten i ett Federer-slag, om kyssar som smakar sprit. FokusAlva Dahl till exempel, vem är hon? Nätet säger: 27-årig doktorand som gästforskat i Berkeley och Berlin, varit med och startat lilla novellförlaget Novellix, översatt författare som Zadie Smith och Wallace, skriver avhandling om "interpunktionens potentialer och funktioner i skönlitterär prosa". Hennes förord till "Texter" är lysande. Jag tror att hon är ett geni... Vänta nu. Tankarna börjar skena. Huvudet fylls av röster och motröster. David Foster Wallaces texter har den verkan, associationerna förgrenar sig blixtsnabbt. De frambringar drömmen om att i ett och samma tankesvep kunna inta alla tänkbara positioner. Anna Hallberg, Dagens NyheterDen samlingsvolym som nu utges har en högstanivå som överträffar allt du önskar att litteratur ska uppnå ... Wallace är i rättvisans namn bra på att vända på perspektiven, att ställa de allra mest förbjudna frågorna, att röra sig mot de allra mest kontroversiella ämnena. Då blir också djärvheten och fräckheten förutsättningen för en dråplig intelligens som får dig att känna dig upplivad och smart. Björn Kohlström, Jönköpings-PostenMed sina många infallsvinklar är Texter en utmärkt introduktion till författaren som kallas DFW och ses som en företrädare för den hysteriska realismen. Hans prosa är ingenting för minimalister: den är ofta oregerlig, överlastad, bågnande och omständlig, kombinerande slängighet med snårighet, coolhet med nördighet, drypande ironi med desperation. I förordet föreslår översättaren Alva Dahl, som hjältemodigt tagit sig an den i grunden omöjliga uppgiften att göra DFW svensk, att vi ska betrakta den stundtals irriterande knökiga stilen som ”ett svar på vår tids informationshysteri, ett sätt att tränga igenom slentrianmässigt brusande förenklingar”. DFW förenar det självupplevdas inlevelse med kylig ironisk distans, hur han dissekerar det inre livet och gräver fram en avgrundsbalanserande svart humor. På samma gång lyckas han förmedla människans litenhet och storhet: ”Som om du har det här enorma rummet inom dig fullt av vad som verkar som allt i hela universum i varje sekund och ändå måste de få delar som tar sig ut liksom pressas genom ett sådant där pyttelitet nyckelhål som man ser under handtaget på gamla dörrar. Som om vi alla försöker se på varandra genom pyttesmå nyckelhål. Men det finns ett handtag, dörren kan öppnas.” Ja, just det − det är vad litteraturen gör. Ann Lingebrandt, Helsingborgs dagblad

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. Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more. Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace's essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions.

Both Flesh and Not combines David Foster Wallace's best-loved essays with work never before published in the UK. Beloved for his brilliantly discerning eye, his verbal elasticity and his uniquely generous imagination, David Foster Wallace was heralded by critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Collected in Both Flesh and Not are fifteen essays published for the first time in book form, including writing never published before in the UK. From 'Federer Both Flesh and Not', considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; to 'The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2,' which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; to 'Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young', an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers, David Foster Wallace's writing swoops from erudite literary discussion to open-hearted engagement with the most familiar of our twentieth-century cultural references. A celebration of Wallace's great loves - for language, for precision, for meaning - and a feast of enjoyment for his fans, Both Flesh and Not is a fitting tribute to this writer who was never concerned with anything less important than what it means to be alive. Praise for Both Flesh and Not: 'Whether dwelling on the real-world implications of metaphysics [or the] pop constructions of pure maths . . . Both Flesh and Not brims with jewels of insight and expression' Independent'At their best these essays remind us of Wallace's arsenal of talents: his restless, heat-seeking reportorial eye; his ability to convey the physical or emotional truth of things with a couple of flicks of the wrist; his capacity to make leaps, from the mundane to the metaphysical, with breathtaking velocity and ardor' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times'Excellent in its entirety and just as quietly, unflinchingly soul-stirring' The Atlantic'There are times, reading his work, when you get halfway through a sentence and gasp involuntarily, and for a second you feel lucky that there was, at least for a time, someone who could make sense like no other of what it is to be a human in our era of "Total Noise"' Telegraph'One of the best writers of our time . . . If you've never read David Foster Wallace before, his masterful study of Roger Federer, included in this anthology, is an ideal place to start' US Marie Claire'A fine collection . . . you could more or less open it at random and find something to demonstrate the man's prodigious' Guardian 'The best passages are those that celebrate words and the author's relationship with them . . . It is a treasure trove for those who love the complexities of language' US TimeoutDavid Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair, and his non-fiction includes several essay collections and the full-length work Everything and More.

Signifying Rappers is a fun and quirky discovery for any fan of David Foster Wallace or Hip-hop. Signifying Rappers is an 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.'Costello and Wallace's pioneering study is a dazzling performance: informative, provocative, funny, brilliantly written . . . great wit, insight and in-your-face energy' Review of Contemporary Fiction'Both a cogent explication of rap and a cutting, revealing parody of overinflated, pseudointellectual rap criticism' Seattle WeeklyDavid Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair. His non-fiction includes several essay collections, including Both Flesh and Not, which was published in 2012, and the the full-length work Everything and More. Mark Costello is the author of two novels, including the National Book Award Finalist Big If. He lives in New York City.

Finally back in print--David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom. "Signifying Rappers" issued a fan's challenge to the giants of rock writing, Greil Marcus, Robert Palmer, and Lester Bangs: Could the new street beats of 1989 set us free, as rock had always promised? Back in print at last, "Signifying Rappers" is a rare record of a city and a summer by two great thinkers, writers, and friends. With a new foreword by Mark Costello on his experience writing with David Foster Wallace, this rerelease cannot be missed.

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. Never has Wallace's seemingly endless curiosity been more evident than in this compilation of work spanning nearly 20 years of writing. Here, Wallace turns his critical eye with equal enthusiasm toward Roger Federer and Jorge Luis Borges; Terminator 2 and The Best of the Prose Poem; the nature of being a fiction writer and the quandary of defining the essay; the best underappreciated novels and the English language's most irksome misused words; and much more. Both Flesh and Not restores Wallace's essays as originally written, and it includes a selection from his personal vocabulary list, an assembly of unusual words and definitions.

The Pale King is David Foster Wallace's final novel - a testament to his enduring brillianceThe Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, Illinois, 1985. Here the minutaie of a million daily lives are totted up, audited and accounted for. 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. And this is David Foster Wallace's towering, brilliant, hilarious and deeply moving final novel.'Breathtakingly brilliant, funny, maddening and elegiac' New York Times'A bravura performance worthy of Woolf or Joyce. Wallace's finest work as a novelist' Time'Light-years beyond Infinite Jest. Wallace's reputation will only grow, and like one of the broken columns beloved of Romantic painters, The Pale King will stand, complete in its incompleteness, as his most substantial fictional achievement' Hari Kunzru, Financial Times'A paradise of language and intelligence' The Times'Archly brilliant' Metro'Teems with erudition and ideas, with passages of stylistic audacity, with great cheerful thrown-out gags, goofy puns and moments of truly arresting clarity. Innovative, penetrating, forcefully intelligent fiction like Wallace's arrives once in a generation, if that' Daily Telegraph'In a different dimension to the tepid vapidities that pass as novels these days. Sentence for sentence, almost word for word, Wallace could out-write any of his peers' Scotland on SundayDavid Foster Wallace wrote the novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, and the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair. His non-fiction includes Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Everything and More, This is Water and Both Flesh and Not. He died in 2008.

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. 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. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

Lenore Beadsman har en tilltrasslad tillvaro med en försvunnen Wittgensteinstuderande farfarsmor, en dominant far som gör experiment med barnmat, en pratsam papegoja som blir frälst, en alltmer påträngande psykoterapeut och dessutom sitter hon i en telefonväxel som har blivit vansinnig samtidigt som hon försöker hålla liv i en svårhanterlig kärlekshistoria. Allt skildrat i halsbrytande vändningar och ett rasande tempo. Systemets sopkvast är David Foster Wallaces debutroman från 1987 och hyllades då som en av 80-talets stora generationsromaner. Boken utgavs på svenska 1989 och beskrevs som en skarpsinnig kartläggning av vår tids ångest. Denna nya utgåva har försetts med en introduktion till David Foster Wallaces författarskap av Malte Persson. Översättning: Ulf Gyllenhak

Blek kung utspelas på skattemyndigheten i Peoria, Illinois, dit David Wallace anländer som nyrekryterad trainee. Romanen skildrar i en detaljrik, krängande och oupphörligt fascinerande form personerna som arbetar där, deras bakgrund, liv och vardag i ett arbete som är så präglat av tristess att de nyanställda får överlevnadsträning. I Blek kung målar David Foster Wallace upp en samtidsbild som både är starkt kritisk och fruktansvärt rolig samtidigt som den präglas av en djup humanism. David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) föddes i Ithaka, New York och växte upp i Illinois. Han studerade engelska och filosofi vid Amherst College och innehade en professur i kreativt skrivande vid Pomona College i Claremont, Kalifornien. Utöver ett flertal romaner och essäsamlingar skrev han noveller för tidskrifter som The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker och Science. Blek kung är en stor roman. Det är en skildring av vår egen svidande samtid. Den lyckas vara allvarlig och rolig på samma gång. Den behandlar med obarmhärtig precision de förändringar och demokratiska försämringar vars bittra frukter vi nu tvingas skörda. Sundsvalls tidning

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. 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. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

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. Large Print

Until his death in 2008, David Foster Wallace was one of the most prodigiously talented and original young writers in America, and Girl with Curious Hair displays the full range of his gifts. From the eerily real, almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson, over-televised game show hosts, and late-night comedians, to the title story, where terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.