David Foster Wallace’s fiction is not a user’s guide or a set of instructions for how to live. It invites thinking, feeling, and seeing the world more clearly.

Every so often I like to check back in with my past reading self as a way to gauge who I was then versus who I am now. We all change as we grow older, right? For example, when I was four years old,… ...

David Foster Wallace, 46, a writer known for his literary pyrotechnics, postmodern playfulness and impatience with traditional narrative forms, was found dead Sept. 12 in his Claremont, Calif ...