Lannan Foundation

David Foster Wallace, Writer - Marfa, Summer 2000

David Foster Wallace is the author of the novel Infinite Jest; three short story collections, The Broom of the System, The Girl with Curious Hair, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; and a collection of essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Mr. Wallace, who received a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 1996, teaches at Illinois State University in Bloomington. Mr. Wallace worked on his new fiction during his residency.

“The whole trans-Pecos is haunted. Some of this is the high desert, where nothing has a shadow and stormclouds seem just out of reach. Some of it is the quiet, which is so profound it becomes its own hum. It is country that wants nothing from you, where it becomes impossible to take yourself seriously. A fruitful state to be in, work-wise, usually.”