Both Flesh and Not is an collection of essays and writing from the virtuosic genius David Foster Wallace 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 here 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 non-fiction 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, the writing collected here 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 David Foster Wallace: 'A visionary, a craftsman, a comedian . . . he's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us' Zadie Smith 'Wallace's essays brim with cerebral energy, acute observation and fizzing wit. Enviably good' Sunday Times 'Wallace's exuberance and intellectual impishness are a delight . . . a superb comedian of culture' Guardian, James Wood David 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.
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On the one hand, this book is a huge disappointment. Publishers are clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to David Foster Wallace. They know that certain people (like me) will buy pretty much anything with his name on it, so they're searching for anything that could possibly be slapped between two covers and called a ‘book'. So now we've got Both Flesh and Not which includes publicly-accessible pieces he wrote for newspapers and magazines, as well as weak 500-word nothing-pieces like “Just Asking”. These aren't his best works and, what's more, every essay in this collection represents a step closer to the moment when there is no more DFW left to publish in book form.
But on the other hand, even the worst DFW is better than almost all of the rest of the shit on my bookshelf. So there's that.