David Foster Wallace is a writer for The New Yorker and other magazines. This is a collection of some of his articles. Many are expanded from their original form.

Reading Wallace is kind of like being in on someone' stream-of-consciousness. Footnotes, flow chart, inserted editorial comments - it *can* be very confusing but it is also very entertaining. I liked and could relate to some essays more than others, but everyone will probably feel that way.

I really enjoyed the book. I really felt like I was getting in to Wallace's mind. He actually is a *character* in this book. Definitely recommend for a good read and a break from the usual.

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Great book of essays. I completely enjoyed it.

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Was hopeful for a real thoughtful essay on auto-castration, but that was not to be.

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While some will say Wallace is an excellent writer, I was unimpressed with his need for so many footnotes and insertions. Some of this footnotes seemed like they should have been their own essays being as long as they were. Why can't he use a pronoun every once in a while instead of "Your Correspondence" which is quickly abbreviated as "yr crr". That is not the only abbreviation he makes up. I felt like I should have been taking notes to keep track of what I was reading before the page long footnote and what all those abbreviations mean. Many of his essays are filled with facts, reading almost as though the flash cards he wrote them down on were just thrown into the piece.

The last part that really bothers me is how pretentious he sounds. He even does it when he is writing about the Annual Adult Video News Awards, never mind how bad it gets when he is writing about how he helped edit an English usage dictionary. It's almost like he wants you to feel stupid.

I'm sorry for really getting on his case and maybe I should give him another try, but for now, I'm all set.

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