Product Description
The author of Infinite Jest and his co-writer discuss rap and popular culture, power, money, racial politics, and language in the first book to seriously consider rap and its position as a vital force in American culture. "Brilliantly written . . . (with) great wit, insight, and in-your-face energy."--Review of Contemporary Fiction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Oldie but a Goldie
Yes this book is outdated, and yes this book is wordy, but thats what makes it so great. This is an exploration of two nerdy white guys resting on the cusp of what we now know was an cultural explosion, and one which they seem to have known, though at the time it had nothing to do with themthat it soon would have eveything to do with them and us too. Furthermore some of the forecasting that they do is so right on its scary..
These guys are taliking agbout NWA like its current because it was current! Take this book as an opportunity to view one of those rare historical accounts that happens before the storm and seems to have something good to say about why it started raining in the first place..

a bit outdated...but then again IS old...
i am actually doing a report on rap and selected this book expecting someinsight...i was surprised. it seems like some of this was even just puthere to take up space; i was dissapointed, expecting something better fromcostello. a point of view not needed in most situations. of course, tenyears ago it might have been close to adequate--now it seems totallyinadequate to use in my report.

Outdated but occasionally still insightful
David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello are too cute by half in this book, and it is horribly out of date. (Just to give an idea, A Tribe Called Quest, who were considered an elder statesman group when they broke up twoyears ago, had not yet released an album when this book was published.) Butmost of the analysis of rap's place within popular culture remains somehowapplicable to the current scene if you are willing to do a bunch ofcritical work along the same lines and ignore the dumber flights of fancy.Still a fun book to read and a fun book to debate. Not to be missed if youremember when LL Cool J was good and you have read anything by a master ofpostmodern philosophy.

an interesting look at what shapes our culture
costello and wallace examine rap culture and rappers as they influence our society.although at times it seems like they are being narrow minded, this book examines what shapes society and how society can react to thesethings.the book goes well beyond merely rap music and examines howsociety is influenced and how it influences.anyone who reads this andsees it as simply a look at rap music is missing the entire point of thebook. ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Books by David Foster Wallace, Novels by David Foster Wallace, Short Story Collections by David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, a Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster, the Pale King, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, the Broom of the System, Girl With Curious Hair, Oblivion: Stories, Little Expressionless Animals, Everything and More. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: "Little Expressionless Animals" is a 1988 short story by David Foster Wallace. It was first published in The Paris Review, and reprinted in his short story collection Girl with Curious Hair. The Village Voice described it as "riveting". Julie Smith is a contestant on Jeopardy! in the 1980s. After her fourth win, the show's producers decide that she is popular enough that they will not limit her to five appearances (as was the practice at the time). As a result, Julie wins every Jeopardy! game for three years, and uses her winnings to pay for the care of her autistic brother. ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=25191256 ... Read more

Product Description
From Tristram Shandy to Fredric Jameson, Consider David Foster Wallace blazes a trail into the new territory of David Foster Wallace studies. Greg Carlisle, author of the landmark Wallace study Elegant Complexity, provides an introduction that sets the scene and speculates on the future of Wallace studies. Editor David Hering provides a provocative look at the triangular symbols in Infinite Jest. Adam Kelly explores the intriguing question of why Wallace is considered to be at the forefront of a new sincerity in American fiction. Thomas Tracey discusses trauma in Oblivion. Gregory Phipps examines Infinite Jest's John "No Relation" Wayne and the concept of the ideal athlete. Daniel Turnbull compares Wallace's Kenyon College commencement address to the ethics of Iris Murdoch. These 17 essays stem from the first ever academic conference devoted the work of David Foster Wallace. Held in Liverpool, England, in 2009, the conference sparked a worldwide discussion of the place of Wallace's work in academia and popular culture. Essential for all Wallace scholars, fans of Wallace's fiction and nonfiction will also find the collection full of insights that span Wallace's career. Yes, there are footnotes. ... Read more

Product Description
In February 2000, Rolling Stone magazine sent David Foster Wallace, "NOT A POLITICAL JOURNALIST," on the road for a week with Senator John McCain's campaign to win the Republican nomination for the presidency. They wanted to know why McCain appealed so much to so many Americans, and particularly why he appealed to the "Young Voters" of America who generally show nothing but apathy. iPublish is bringing out the "Director's Cut" (three times longer than the RS article) of this incisive, funny, thoughtful piece about life on "Bullshit One" (the nickname for the press bus that followed McCain's Straight Talk Express. Election 2000 is (finally) over, and this eBook; with its information about what we know, don't know, and don't want to know about the way our political campaigns work; is more relevant than ever. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

E-books are not popular, but they hide in your computer.
It's fun to read DFW on my computer because when I come across one of the excessively big words that his Disneyworld-sized vocabulary has littered on the page, I can click on the word and find out what it means.
DFW is a super smart writer. This is Wallace on Politics, and never are his ideas trite, or pat, or simply pithy for effect. He is a philosopher on the junket, and it's a pleasure to read, even if McCain is kind of a nobody now, and the world is consumed by seemingly greater events. It's maybe wise not to forget why and how Bush got this far, and why, just maybe, he kind of bites as a president, lackey that he is for corporate interest, and with no real education in foreign relations, or world history. So, in this essay, DFW discusses the merits of McCain and why he is an interesting candidate no matter which side of the middle ground you stumble towards in these dimly lit, fearful post 9/11 days.
E-books are no longer the wave of the future, someone told me, and so I have completely stopped reading books and now I only read E-books, just in case they are wrong. E-books are like regular books, you can flip the pages, and bookmark pages, and the pages are white, and the font is like a book's font, and there is nothing different about an E-book from a regular book, except the fact that this E-book is bluntly cheap, and it rests inside my computer.

It's not hard to read it on the screen. It's no harder than reading this review. In fact, it's easier. The print is bigger.

Not everything with an E attached to it has proved to be of high quality. This is why we they announced a recession again this year. Despite the disapproval of the government, the market analysts, and 100% of all antiquarian booksellers with electronic things, this is still a good E-book. DFW is a great writer, talented to a striking degree. His books are basically incredible, all of them, even this electronically disseminated one.

He teaches at Disneyland, is what I last heard, which may be why I likened his genius to the size of one of those parks.

Nevertheless.

David Foster Wallace Keeps it Real
It's hard *not* to find something written by or about David Foster Wallace these days, and this e-book is an interesting addition to the journalistic pieces like the ones he's written for Harper's.For one thing, Wallace's mordant wit is as sharp and evenly placed here as ever.Better yet: the e-book contains material that was cut (Wallace explains why in the e-book) from the original publication in Rolling Stone.The e-book also helps you navigate through Wallace's footnotes easily and quickly.

Weaker effort by DFW; not as long as it sould be
Lacks the highwire acrobatics-of-abstraction of some other essays such as his most recent in Harper's, 'Tense Present' (his original title?), or 'E Unibus Pluram'. That latter essay, especially, feels like a ride on Space Mountain: unexpected twists and turns, and even though we end up someplace familiar (the oppresive irony of pop culture), we feel giddy and disoriented when we disembark; it contains dense (in the good sense) arguments without making an overly 'difficult read', a term I've come to define as prose which takes such effort to understand that it unfairly bars us from developing any response (a deceptive practice of the insecure or maybe sometimes an innocent fault of people who are in truth not really Writing). Unlike many cultural/literary critics, Wallace engages our critical skills without disarming them. I'm also always impressed by the exhastive treatment of subject he gives while maintaing constant verisimilitude (no length padding for Teacher) and the way he keeps terms broad without descending into vague mysticism. As exhastive as it feels while reading them--like being adrift at sea with no land in sight and the current likely to change direction any time--his essays are also a joy for the inspiration they inspire in the reader: when I finish, I always feel I have something to add myself as if it were an uncommon experience of participatory democracy.

Saddly, for this latest effort, one would be doing most of the work in said part. dem. Much of the qualities mentioned above is missing in this essay, an extended version of a Rolling Stone article about a week on the McCain2000 campaign trail. Wallace spends a lot of time on reportage which--though usually amusing and by itself informative--spends a lot of time going nowhere.

Where it fails the most is in the last chapter. For the first time, I've sensed a certain criticism of DFW for myself, that he's treading on covered ground. In the past he has never made the mistake of ignoring the obvious issues of the modern American condition for fear of being unoriginal, nor has he made that mistake now. Unfortunately, even though the way he has taken this time is as sound as any, I feel like we've been cheated out of his usual tour off the beaten path. ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Infinite Jest, the Pale King, the Broom of the System. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Infinite Jest is a 1996 novel written by David Foster Wallace. The lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America. The novel touches on the topics of tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism. In 2005, Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. The novel derives its name in part from a line in Hamlet, in which Hamlet refers to the skull of Yorick, the court jester: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!" In addition to being the title given to the fictional film central to the story, reviewers have also considered the title a "sly wink at the book's massive girth." Wallace's working title for Infinite Jest was A Failed Entertainment. In the novel's future world, North America is one unified state comprising the United States, Canada, and Mexico, known as the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). Corporations purchase naming rights to each calendar year, eliminating traditional numerical designations; for example "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" and "The Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland". Much of what used to be the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada has become a hazardous waste dump known as the "Great Concavity" to the Americans and as the "Great Convexity" to Canadians. The novel's primary loc...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=870334 ... Read more

Product Description
Extinción es un libro de relatos del aclamado autor de Broma infinita. Tras la aparente simplicidad de los temas de estos cuentos, afloran con inusitada profundidad los grandes desasosiegos del hombre contemporáneo, desgranados desde el recuerdo, los miedos, la infancia o la inadaptación social. Un verdadero desafío para el lector y a la vez un placer refrendado por el gran talento y la prosa magnética de este escritor neoyorquino. «Uno de los mayores talentos de su generación, un escritor virtuoso que aparentemente es capaz de hacerlo todo.» The New York Times ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: David Foster Wallace, Rozz Williams, Jonathan Brandis, Kazuyoshi Miura, Ray Combs, Mack Ray Edwards, Jon Dough, James Bullough Lansing, Trent Lehman, Nikolay Soltys, Michael Gilden, Alex Jordan. Excerpt:Birthdate : September 20, 1967 Alex Jordan (September 20, 1967 - July 2, 1995) was a pornographic actress . She committed suicide by hanging on July 2, 1995. Awards References (URLs online) Websites (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels , essays , and short stories , and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California . He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest , which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923 2006). Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." Biography Personal Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois . In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He was "a rare combination of sporting and academic prowess. His was an omnivorous brain, able to ingest complex mathematics, logic and philosophy. Wallace was so uncomfortable among strangers that his shyness was its own defensive barrier." He attended his father's alma mater , Amherst College , ... ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of David Foster Wallace, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2878 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author