David Foster Wallace was a noted American author and university instructor. Wallace was a cheerful and funny child and good student. He also played tennis, participating in several tournaments across the state. But at some point in his middle school, he started developing an anxiety disorder and started taking drugs. By the time Wallace entered college, he had become a full-blown addict and began to suffer from depression, missing two full semesters because of it, but excelling academically between the attacks. His first novel was published while he was still a student of creative writing in Arizona. But while working on his doctoral thesis at Harvard, he had a breakdown, having to spend some time at a halfway house. He wrote an encyclopedic novel, ‘Infinite Jest’, after being released from there. The 1996 novel is one of the most celebrated English-language books of our times. Concurrently, he also started teaching and by the time he committed suicide at the age of 46, he had several books to his credit.
