Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books Written by David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace wrote fiction and nonfiction obsessed with the same underlying question: what does it actually feel like to be a conscious person inside your own head, surrounded by entertainment and irony designed to help you avoid finding out. His 1996 novel Infinite Jest remains one of the most debated American novels of the twentieth century. He died by suicide in 2008, leaving an unfinished novel, The Pale King, published posthumously. This page covers his major fiction and essay collections, in order.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 major works · Literary Fiction · Essays · Updated August 2026 · ~9 min read
Quick answer
David Foster Wallace’s major books include the novels The Broom of the System (1987), Infinite Jest (1996), and the posthumous, unfinished The Pale King (2011), plus essay collections including A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997) and Consider the Lobster (2005). He died in 2008. Start with A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again if Infinite Jest feels too large a commitment.
Key facts
- Born: February 21, 1962, Ithaca, New York · Died: September 12, 2008 (suicide)
- Most famous work: Infinite Jest (1996), 1,079 pages, 388 endnotes
- Genres: Novels, short story collections, personal essays
- Posthumous novel: The Pale King (2011), unfinished at his death, a Pulitzer Prize finalist
- Teaching career: Professor of English, Pomona College, from 2002 until his death
Why trust this list: Every book below is one I’ve read in full. Curated by Lisanne Swart.
In this guide
- His debut novel, written as an undergraduate thesis
- His first story collection
- The novel that defines him
- The essay collection to start with instead
- Stories about men behaving badly, told with real ambivalence
- A history of infinity, for general readers
- His last story collection published in his lifetime
- His most acclaimed essay collection
- What came after he died
- Frequently asked questions
The Broom of the System
Wallace’s debut novel, written largely as his undergraduate creative writing thesis at Amherst, follows Lenore Beadsman, whose grandmother has disappeared from a nursing home, in a satirical, philosophically dense Ohio populated by a talking cockatiel and a company obsessed with baby food.
Looser and more overtly comic than his later work, but the preoccupations that would define his career — language, solipsism, the difficulty of real connection — are already fully present.
Girl with Curious Hair
Wallace’s first story collection ranges widely in style and subject, including “Lyndon,” narrated by an aide to Lyndon B. Johnson, and “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” a long, self-consciously postmodern response to John Barth.
Uneven but genuinely experimental — useful for seeing him testing the formal tricks (nested narration, extreme self-awareness) he’d later deploy with more control.
Infinite Jest
Set in a near-future North America where years are corporate-sponsored, the novel follows a tennis academy and an addiction halfway house in the same Boston suburb, orbiting a film so pleasurable it renders viewers catatonic. 1,079 pages, 388 endnotes, six years to write.
One of the most formally ambitious and most argued-over American novels of the twentieth century. Its central claim — that entertainment engineered purely for pleasure is a kind of death — has only become more relevant since 1996.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
A collection of personal essays including the title piece, an account of a Caribbean luxury cruise that becomes a meditation on manufactured pleasure and despair, alongside pieces on the Illinois State Fair and David Lynch.
The best entry point into Wallace if Infinite Jest feels like too large a commitment — the same voice, humor, and self-aware digression, in essays you can finish in one sitting.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
A story collection built partly around a recurring format — unseen interviewers questioning men about their relationships to women — that exposes casual cruelty and self-justification without fully letting the reader stay comfortably outside it.
His most formally daring story collection, and his most direct engagement with masculinity, manipulation, and the stories men tell themselves about their own decency.
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
A history of the mathematical concept of infinity, from Zeno’s paradoxes to Georg Cantor’s set theory, written for general readers with Wallace’s characteristic digression and enthusiasm rather than as a textbook.
An outlier in his bibliography — a genuine math book — but it shows the same obsessive precision and love of technical difficulty that runs underneath the fiction.
Oblivion
His last story collection published in his lifetime, notably darker and more formally difficult than his earlier fiction, including “Good Old Neon,” widely considered one of his finest short stories, narrated by a man explaining his own suicide.
Denser and less immediately funny than his earlier collections, written as depression was closing back in on him — “Good Old Neon” in particular reads very differently in light of what came four years later.
Consider the Lobster
A second major essay collection, including the title piece on the ethics of boiling lobsters alive at a Maine food festival, and a lengthy, closely reported piece on talk radio and John Ziegler.
Generally considered his strongest essay collection — the title essay in particular is a model of taking a seemingly small subject and using it to ask a genuinely difficult moral question.
What came after he died
Wallace died by suicide on September 12, 2008. This Is Water (2009), his 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech on attention and empathy, was published as a short standalone book and became widely circulated. The Pale King (2011), his unfinished novel about IRS agents and the nature of boredom, was assembled by his editor Michael Pietsch from manuscript material and became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Both Flesh and Not (2012) and String Theory (2016) later collected additional uncollected essays, including his tennis writing.
Frequently asked questions
More from the shelf
Reading list
Best Books of 1996
Where Infinite Jest fits in its own moment.
Reading list
Authors Like Nicholas Kristof
More writing that looks directly at hard things.
Reading list
The Best Fiction Books of All Time
Where Wallace sits among the greats.
Author Index
Every Author Guide, A–Z
Browse all author guides on the shelf.
From the bookshelf
Find your next book — hand-picked, not algorithmically sorted.
If dense, self-aware fiction about attention and connection is your thing, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author pages, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations