David Foster Wallace

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.

Both Flesh And Not

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.

Both Flesh and Not

Christopher McCaffery

Simon Elliott Stegall

Wallace was an amazing writer and an inspiring disciple of the English language, but he talked about tennis a LITTLE too much.

Michael Camilleri

I'm generally loathe to want to award scores in the mushy middle but in this particular case it's really the only way to distill my feelings into a numerical figure. I consider myself a fan of Wallace but simply being a fan doesn't make me blind to the way the essays in this collection appear to have been selected by throwing them into a tumble dryer and seeing which ones come out first. There's no thread holding them together other than the author and many of them are so tied to a particular moment or event that it's difficult to relate what's written to the concerns of today. Things perk up about halfway through and there are some pieces that are truly worth your time. But it's such a shame many are likely to have given up before they even get to that point.

Brock

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

Amy Maddess

Stephen Schenkenberg

Emiliano Quintana

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

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