Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wallace, David Foster - Laura Miller (review date 16 March 1997)

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Laura Miller (review date 16 March 1997)

SOURCE: "The Road to Babbittville," in New York Times, March 16, 1997, p. 71.

[In the following review of Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Miller sees the writer fulfilling the promise and allaying the suspicions generated by his much-discussed novel Infinite Jest.]

Many readers young and old (but especially the young and media-saturated) regarded David Foster Wallace's mammoth novel, Infinite Jest, with suspicion. Jaded by too many middling writers heralded as the Next Big Thing, they wondered if, as its title intimated, this daunting tome wasn't just a big joke. Infinite Jest itself didn't quite clear things up. Messy, demanding and stubbornly unresolved, it was also frequently brilliant. Yet Mr. Wallace's penchant for pointed satire and flashy tricks often obscured the book's passion. Ultimately, Infinite Jest felt noncommittal, leaving some...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 November 1986)
   2. Madison Smartt Bell (review date 6 August 1989)
   3. Jenifer Levin (review date 5 November 1989)
   4. Douglas Siebold (review date 21 January 1990)
   5. Sven Birkerts (essay date 1992)
   6. Larry McCaffery (interview date Summer 1993)
   7. David Kipen (review date 11 February 1996)
   8. R. Z. Sheppard (review date 19 February 1996)
   9. Jay McInerney (review date 3 March 1996)
   10. Rick Perlstein (review date 4 March 1996)
   11. Steven Moore (review date Spring 1996)
   12. Tom LeClair (essay date Fall 1996)
   13. Richard Stern (review date 9 March 1997)
   14. Laura Miller (review date 16 March 1997)
   15. Alexander Star (review date 30 June 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright