Sunday Feature: Endnotes - David Foster Wallace

Geoff Ward considers the legacy of David Foster Wallace, regarded by many as having been the most gifted and linguistically exuberant American novelist and story writer of his generation. The writer, who hanged himself in 2006, at the age of 46, had written books including the 1,000-page Infinite Jest, a novel of grand ambition and stylistic experiment that came complete with 388 endnotes. Geoff assesses Wallace's legacy, themes and preoccupations, talking to the precursor the writer admired most, Don DeLillo, and to friends, collaborators and contemporaries such as Mark Costello and Rick Moody. He travels to the the place where the writer grew up, and considers the impact of location on his imagination. He also talks to Wallace's publisher and editor about the difficult task of assembling the final fragments of his unfinished novel The Pale King. Plus rare archive reflections by a young Wallace