Edit position

Last set 2 weeks, 2 days ago. Manual moves override automatic placement until the next shelfie/spine match.

Both flesh and not : essays

by David Foster Wallace

This collection gathers fifteen previously uncollected essays by David Foster Wallace written over two decades. The works explore subjects such as professional tennis, literary criticism, popular culture, and the nuances of the English language.

Accession 9780316182386 ISBN 9780316182386 Publisher Little, Brown and Company

Book Images

Reference and live side by side Hover to see live images

Reference

Live

CONNECTIONS

No connections

State

on_shelf: True
position_updated_at: 2026-05-05 17:12
orientation: vertical

Details

Physical

binding_type: Hard Back
dimensions: none captured
spine_text: DAVID FOSTER WALLACE BOTH FLESH AND NOT 175 LITTLE, BROWN

LOCATION HISTORY

C 3 Current vertical

1 month, 1 week ago

D 1 vertical

4 months, 1 week ago

Book Location

Updated 2 weeks, 2 days ago

Book Images

Reference and live side by side Hover to see live images

Reference

Live

Vernon snapshot

Frozen copy of Vernon's record from the last sync. Fields tagged → flow back into the Pulse record.

Never synced from Vernon

Identity

name→ title

Both flesh and not : essays

vernon_id

—

accession_no→ accession_number

—

vernon_slug

—

Drives Pulse state

curr_loc_status→ on_shelf

—

location_name

—

location_reason

—

isbn_issn→ isbn (when valid)

—

Descriptive

production_date

—

object_type

—

object_status

—

brief_description

—

Subjects & people

authors→ author (initial fill only)

—

tags→ tags

—

subject_people

—

subject_objects

—

Topics and Themes

1. **Athletic Transcendence & the Limits of Language**
The Federer essay — the collection's centrepiece — uses the spectacle of elite tennis to probe what language can and cannot capture about physical grace, beauty, and genius. Wallace argues that television flattens the true experience of watching a great athlete, and that some dimensions of human performance resist description entirely.

The essay treats sport not as entertainment but as a philosophical event: a moment where the body exceeds what the mind can articulate.

Connect to books about: philosophy of sport, aesthetics of performance, phenomenology of the body, spectatorship and media.

---

2. **The Future of Fiction & the Role of the Writer**
Several essays grapple directly with what literature is for and where it is heading. Wallace worries that fiction risks becoming pure entertainment, losing its power as a serious art form, and argues that universities and readers bear responsibility for sustaining literary seriousness.

His concern is not nostalgic but moral: he believes fiction has an ethical obligation to the reader that mere entertainment abandons.

Connect to books about: literary criticism, postmodernism, the novel's cultural function, creative writing pedagogy.

---

3. **Postmodern Literature & Sincerity vs. Irony**
Wallace engages deeply with the postmodern canon — reviewing experimental writers like David Markson and Jorge Luis Borges — while simultaneously critiquing postmodernism's tendency toward solipsism and detachment. He advocates for sincerity and moral realism as the antidote to ironic exhaustion.

This tension — loving postmodern technique while distrusting its emotional coldness — runs through the entire collection.

Connect to books about: postmodern fiction, literary theory, irony and sincerity, metafiction, the avant-garde.

---

4. **Language, Linguistics & the Power of Words**
Wallace's personal vocabulary lists, printed between essays, are not mere decoration — they reflect a lifelong obsession with the precision, history, and strangeness of words. His essay on misused English and his deep attention to diction across all pieces make language itself a recurring subject.

He treats word choice as an ethical act: to use language carelessly is to think carelessly and, ultimately, to live carelessly.

Connect to books about: linguistics, lexicography, rhetoric, the philosophy of language, style guides, etymology.

---

5. **Mathematics, Logic & Narrative**
Wallace's formal training in symbolic logic and analytic philosophy shapes his engagement with mathematical fiction — works that dramatise theorems, proofs, and the lives of mathematicians. He tests whether narrative can convey genuine mathematical truth or only its emotional atmosphere.

This reveals a broader question he returns to often: what kinds of knowledge can storytelling actually produce?

Connect to books about: mathematics and culture, philosophy of mathematics, science writing, logic, math-themed fiction and biography.

---

6. **Pop Culture, Spectacle & Mass Media**
From a critique of Terminator 2's special-effects excess to reflections on the commercialisation of the U.S. Open, Wallace examines how mass media and consumer culture flatten experience, prioritise spectacle over substance, and reshape what audiences expect from art and sport.

He is not a simple critic of popular culture — he is fascinated by it — but he insists on holding it to higher standards.

Connect to books about: media criticism, cultural studies, the entertainment industry, spectacle and society, television theory.

---

7. **Embodiment, Sexuality & Human Vulnerability**
The essay on sex in the age of AIDS places desire, risk, and mortality in direct confrontation, exploring how a public health crisis reshapes the most intimate dimensions of human life. Wallace uses the AIDS epidemic to ask what it means to be a body subject to consequence.

This theme — flesh as both beautiful and dangerous, capable of transcendence and susceptible to ruin — echoes the collection's title across multiple essays.

Connect to books about: sexuality, public health, the body in culture, bioethics, illness narratives.

---

8. **The Essay Form as Art & the Nature of Criticism**
Wallace is self-conscious about the essay as a genre throughout the collection, and several pieces are explicitly about how to read, evaluate, and review other works. He treats literary criticism not as a neutral act but as a form of creative and moral engagement.

His reviews are arguments about what literature should be, making each critical piece simultaneously a work of criticism and a manifesto.

Connect to books about: essay writing, the history of criticism, book reviewing, nonfiction form, intellectual biography.

Both flesh and not : essays

Book Images

TAGS

CONNECTIONS

State

Details

LOCATION HISTORY

Book Location

Book Images

Vernon snapshot

Topics and Themes