I'd like to welcome David Foster Wallace back to the University
of Arizona, where he received his MFA in Fiction in 1987.
Wallace, who currently lives in Illinois,
has been the recipient of numerous awards,
including a MacArthur Fellowship.
He is the author of Broom of the System, Girl with Curious Hair,
Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,
and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again,
which is a compilation of essays and arguments.
His work has appeared in various publications,
including The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Paris Review.
With the publication of Infinite Jest in 1996,
Wallace found himself in the literary spotlight,
being called the next step in fiction
and one of the big talents of his generation.
Wallace's fictional characters are as varied as his lexicon.
They're game show participants and recovering addicts,
therapy patients and sadists.
And while critics praised Wallace's satirical commentary
on American pop culture, the writer
himself has said that he's always
chasing a fictional flick or rhythm
and that while television and pop culture provide
the backdrop to much of his work because it
is our contemporary landscape, a big part of fiction's purpose
is to give the reader imaginative access
to other selves.
That since an ineluctable part of being human
is the experience of suffering, through fiction,
we may find redemption and nourishment,
becoming less alone inside.