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Great books for the sports fan in your life

Both Flesh And Not

Both Flesh and Not combines David Foster Wallace's best-loved essays with work never before published in the UK. 
 
Beloved for his brilliantly discerning eye, his verbal elasticity and his uniquely generous imagination, David Foster Wallace was heralded by critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Collected in Both Flesh and Not are fifteen essays published for the first time in book form, including writing never published before in the UK. 
 
From 'Federer Both Flesh and Not', considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; to 'The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2,' which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; to 'Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young', an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers, David Foster Wallace's writing swoops from erudite literary discussion to open-hearted engagement with the most familiar of our twentieth-century cultural references. 
A celebration of Wallace's great loves - for language, for precision, for meaning - and a feast of enjoyment for his fans, Both Flesh and Not is a fitting tribute to this writer who was never concerned with anything less important than what it means to be alive. 
 
Praise for Both Flesh and Not: 
 
'Whether dwelling on the real-world implications of metaphysics [or the] pop constructions of pure maths . . . Both Flesh and Not brims with jewels of insight and expression' Independent 
 
'At their best these essays remind us of Wallace's arsenal of talents: his restless, heat-seeking reportorial eye; his ability to convey the physical or emotional truth of things with a couple of flicks of the wrist; his capacity to make leaps, from the mundane to the metaphysical, with breathtaking velocity and ardor' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 
 
'Excellent in its entirety and just as quietly, unflinchingly soul-stirring' The Atlantic 
 
'There are times, reading his work, when you get halfway through a sentence and gasp involuntarily, and for a second you feel lucky that there was, at least for a time, someone who could make sense like no other of what it is to be a human in our era of "Total Noise"' Telegraph 
 
'One of the best writers of our time . . . If you've never read David Foster Wallace before, his masterful study of Roger Federer, included in this anthology, is an ideal place to start' US Marie Claire 
 
'A fine collection . . . you could more or less open it at random and find something to demonstrate the man's prodigious' Guardian 
 
'The best passages are those that celebrate words and the author's relationship with them . . . It is a treasure trove for those who love the complexities of language' US Timeout 
 
David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair, and his non-fiction includes several essay collections and the full-length work Everything and More.

David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair, and his non-fiction includes several essay collections and the full-length work Everything and More.

Beloved for his brilliantly discerning eye, his verbal elasticity and his uniquely generous imagination, David Foster Wallace was heralded by critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Collected here are fifteen essays published for the first time in book form, including writing never published before in the UK. 
 
From 'Federer Both Flesh and Not', considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; to 'The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2,' which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; to 'Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young', an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers, the writing collected here swoops from erudite literary discussion to open-hearted engagement with the most familiar of our twentieth-century cultural references. 
 
A celebration of Wallace's great loves - for language, for precision, for meaning - and a feast of enjoyment for his fans, Both Flesh and Not is a fitting tribute to this writer who was never concerned with anything less important than what it means to be alive.

Signifying Rappers

Signifying Rappers is a fun and quirky discovery for any fan of David Foster Wallace or Hip-hop. 
 
Signifying Rappers is an old-school classic from David Foster Wallace and his friend and room-mate Mark Costello, first published in 1990, long out of print, and previously unavailable outside the USA. 
 
A paean to the golden age of Hip-Hop and the first book to consider seriously its position as a vital force in American culture, Signifying Rappers is a must-read for fans of both Wallace and hip-hop. Set against the legendary 1980s scene, it maps the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom, with an energy and exuberance which is as fresh today as when it was written. 
 
'Costello and Wallace's pioneering study is a dazzling performance: informative, provocative, funny, brilliantly written . . . great wit, insight and in-your-face energy' Review of Contemporary Fiction 
 
'Both a cogent explication of rap and a cutting, revealing parody of overinflated, pseudointellectual rap criticism' Seattle Weekly 
 
David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair. His non-fiction includes several essay collections, including Both Flesh and Not, which was published in 2012, and the the full-length work Everything and More. 
 
Mark Costello is the author of two novels, including the National Book Award Finalist Big If. He lives in New York City.

David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair. His non-fiction includes several essay collections, including Both Flesh and Not, which was published in 2012, and the the full-length work Everything and More. 
 
Mark Costello is the author of two novels, including the National Book Award Finalist Big If. He lives in New York City.

Signifying Rappers is an old-school classic from David Foster Wallace and his friend and room-mate Mark Costello, first published in 1990, long out of print, and previously unavailable outside the USA. 
 
A paean to the golden age of Hip-Hop and the first book to consider seriously its position as a vital force in American culture, Signifying Rappers is a must-read for fans of both Wallace and hip-hop. Set against the legendary 1980s scene, it maps the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom, with an energy and exuberance which is as fresh today as when it was written.

The Pale King

The Pale King is David Foster Wallace's final novel - a testament to his enduring brilliance 
 
The Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, Illinois, 1985. Here the minutaie of a million daily lives are totted up, audited and accounted for. Here the workers fight a never-ending war against the urgency of their own boredom. Here then, squeezed between the trivial and the quotidian, lies all human life. And this is David Foster Wallace's towering, brilliant, hilarious and deeply moving final novel. 
 
'Breathtakingly brilliant, funny, maddening and elegiac' New York Times 
 
'A bravura performance worthy of Woolf or Joyce. Wallace's finest work as a novelist' Time 
 
'Light-years beyond Infinite Jest. Wallace's reputation will only grow, and like one of the broken columns beloved of Romantic painters, The Pale King will stand, complete in its incompleteness, as his most substantial fictional achievement' Hari Kunzru, Financial Times 
 
'A paradise of language and intelligence' The Times 
 
'Archly brilliant' Metro 
 
'Teems with erudition and ideas, with passages of stylistic audacity, with great cheerful thrown-out gags, goofy puns and moments of truly arresting clarity. Innovative, penetrating, forcefully intelligent fiction like Wallace's arrives once in a generation, if that' Daily Telegraph 
 
'In a different dimension to the tepid vapidities that pass as novels these days. Sentence for sentence, almost word for word, Wallace could out-write any of his peers' Scotland on Sunday 
 
David Foster Wallace wrote the novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, and the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair. His non-fiction includes Consider the Lobster, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Everything and More, This is Water and Both Flesh and Not. He died in 2008.

One of the strangest, saddest, most haunting things I've ever read

Breathtakingly brilliant, funny, maddening and elegiac

Innovative, penetrating, forcefully intelligent fiction like Wallace's arrives once in a generation, if that

In a different dimension to the tepid vapidities that pass as novels these days. Sentence for sentence, almost word for word, Wallace could out-write any of his peers

Rich and substantial and alive . . . Wallace's finest work as a novelist

A transfixing and hyper-literate descent into relentless, inescapable despair . . . achingly funny, nothing short of sublime

The Pale King contains what's sure to be some of the finest fiction of the year . . . he was the closest thing we had to a recording angel

Sometimes as a critic the most important part of your job is to say: here, this is it, we've found it, someone's doing it. That someone was Wallace. He was the real thing

The Pale King gave me a pleasure and excitement that I can describe only as biological. That is to say, the book produced in me that very rare, warm, head-to-toe tingling that comes with admission to a paradise of language and intelligence

Everyone who cares about literature should buy it

The Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, Illinois, 1985. Here the minutiae of a million daily lives are totted up, audited and accounted for. Here the workers fight a never-ending war against the urgency of their own boredom. Here then, squeezed between the trivial and the quotidian, lies all human life. And this is David Foster Wallace's towering, brilliant, hilarious and deeply moving final novel. 
 
'Light-years beyond Infinite Jest. Wallace's reputation will only grow, and like one of the broken columns beloved of Romantic painters, The Pale King will stand, complete in its incompleteness, as his most substantial fictional achievement' Hari Kunzru, Financial Times 
 
'Archly brilliant' Metro

David Foster Wallace

One of the most dazzling luminaries of contemporary American fiction

A prose magician, Mr Wallace was capable of writing . . . about subjects from tennis to politics to lobsters, from the horrors of drug withdrawal to the small terrors of life aboard a luxury cruise ship, with humour and fervour and verve

A heady reminder of why we got hooked in the first place

David Foster Wallace was one of the most celebrated and visionary writers of the late 20th and early 21st century. He wrote prolifically across fiction and non-fiction, from genre-defining reportage to genre-breaking postmodern novels. And his influence is clearly visible in those who came after him - Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders... 
 
The Reader collects the very best of his fiction and nonfiction, as well as previously unpublished work, setting them alongside specially commissioned critical contributions from twelve prominent authors and thinkers.

David Foster Wallace

Books by David Foster Wallace

Articles featuring David Foster Wallace

Great books for the sports fan in your life

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