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Read Wallace's fiction, especially his novels, for serious (but laugh-out-loud funny) literature. The non-fiction is somewhat hit-and-miss, with the glaring br

Read Wallace's fiction, especially his novels, for serious (but laugh-out-loud funny) literature. The non-fiction is somewhat hit-and-miss, with the glaring brilliant exception of his nearly-always-overlooked book on mathematics ("Everything and More"), which should be required reading.

StefanKarpinski 9y ago
Everything and More is a delight... right up until the last chapter where he manages (iirc) to misstate the continuum hypothesis and generally garble a lot of modern set theory. To be fair that’s where the theory of infinity really crosses over from what a competent amateur can understand to something that requires fairly deep mathematical knowledge.
sanderjd 9y ago
Absolutely loved "Everything and More". It went waaay over my head at a lot of points and I studied a lot of (applied) math in college. I believe it shows more respect for its reader than any other book I've read. I do think it works better for people who have read DFW's fiction - some people I've recommended it to put it down pretty quickly due to finding its style of prose pretentious.
laxatives 9y ago
String Theory is one of my favorite essays of all time. Discusses the incredible gap between journeymen, low-ranked tennis pro's and the elite players in both ability and quality of life, as well as the gap between journeymen and highly competive amateurs. Definitely recommend Infinite Jest like probably anyone else in this thread, but would recommend reading his non-fiction first. Jumping into Infinite Jest, I thought Wallace was some wierdo crank for a long time before I "got" his style and what he was going for. Even then, it took a long time before I enjoyed it and he very quickly became one of my favorite authors. I think Infinite Jest and GEB are two of the only epic books that accomplishes so much, but in two entirely different contexts. They both build intense, well founded and well structured frameworks that lead up to epic resolutions, despite being respectively fiction and non-fiction.

StefanKarpinski 9y ago

Everything and More is a delight... right up until the last chapter where he manages (iirc) to misstate the continuum hypothesis and generally garble a lot of modern set theory. To be fair that’s where the theory of infinity really crosses over from what a competent amateur can understand to something that requires fairly deep mathematical knowledge.

sanderjd 9y ago

Absolutely loved "Everything and More". It went waaay over my head at a lot of points and I studied a lot of (applied) math in college. I believe it shows more respect for its reader than any other book I've read. I do think it works better for people who have read DFW's fiction - some people I've recommended it to put it down pretty quickly due to finding its style of prose pretentious.

laxatives 9y ago

String Theory is one of my favorite essays of all time. Discusses the incredible gap between journeymen, low-ranked tennis pro's and the elite players in both ability and quality of life, as well as the gap between journeymen and highly competive amateurs. Definitely recommend Infinite Jest like probably anyone else in this thread, but would recommend reading his non-fiction first. Jumping into Infinite Jest, I thought Wallace was some wierdo crank for a long time before I "got" his style and what he was going for. Even then, it took a long time before I enjoyed it and he very quickly became one of my favorite authors. I think Infinite Jest and GEB are two of the only epic books that accomplishes so much, but in two entirely different contexts. They both build intense, well founded and well structured frameworks that lead up to epic resolutions, despite being respectively fiction and non-fiction.