Among other extracurricular activities, he participated in glee club his sister recalls that he 'had a lovely singing voice'. Wallace attended Amherst College, his father's alma mater, where he majored in English and philosophy and graduated summa cum laude in 1985.

Although his parents were atheists, Wallace twice attempted to join the Catholic Church, but 'flunk the period of inquiry'. He wrote about this period in the essay 'Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley', originally published in Harper's Magazine as 'Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes'. Īs an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. From fourth grade, Wallace lived with his family in Urbana, where he attended Yankee Ridge Elementary School, Brookens Junior High School and Urbana High School. His mother was an English professor at Parkland College, a community college in Champaign, which recognized her work with a 'Professor of the Year' award in 1996. His father was a philosophy professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he was raised along with his younger sister, Amy Wallace-Havens. After struggling with depression for many years, he died by suicide in 2008, at age 46.ĭavid Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, to Sally Jean Wallace ( née Foster) and James Donald Wallace. He taught English at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. Wallace grew up in Illinois and attended Amherst College. The Los Angeles Times 's David Ulin called Wallace 'one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last twenty years'. His posthumous novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012.

Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time magazine cited as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. David Foster Wallace (Febru– September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing.

Death Tour by David J. Michael