Both Flesh and Not: Essays

Each essay in this volume of previously uncollected nonfiction is a gem in its own DFW way. The topics are diverse yet representative of Wallace's primary interests, ranging from an entry titled "The (as it were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2" to "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young," a piece written in the eighties about American youth culture, television, and an emergent generation of pop-obsessed American novelists. Like so much of Wallace's work, "Conspicuously Young" picks apart an ephemeral cultural moment with great discernment, yet still manages to stand up well decades after publication. There are, of course, deeply informed—yet still deeply pleasurable—nods to theoretical math, Wittgenstein as literature, and tennis as well as Wallace's concerns regarding the perils of consumer culture. The overall effect of this collection is to remind us again just how expansive and talented a writer Wallace was, an author capable of producing profound essays around seemingly mundane details scattered amid the American cultural fabric.