Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace Audiobook

Quotes

• “All readers, even those who know nothing of Wallace, will be moved by the portrayal of one man’s honest struggle with mental illness…[The book’s] poignancy is in its emphasis on Wallace’s years of hard-earned survival and his efforts, though unrealized, toward artistic transformation.”

  — Wall Street Journal

• “In his revealing new biography, D. T. Max gives us a sympathetic portrayal of Wallace’s life and work, tracing the connections between the two, while mapping the wellsprings of his philosophical vision…What Mr. Max’s book does do—and does powerfully—is provide an emotionally detailed portrait of the artist as a young man.”

  — New York Times

• “A well-crafted, insightful chronicle of this singular writer’s life and literary work…Max’s biography succeeds on multiple levels: through his astute interpretations of Wallace’s literary output and liberal quotes from the writer himself, this book very much embodies the spirit and life of Wallace…For this reader, the biography provides a measure of solace—that if this great writer can’t be among us, at least he can be remembered in all of his genius and complexity.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

• “I’m having trouble remembering when I was last so consumed by any piece of writing, fiction or non…Max’s focus is, not surprisingly, more or less resolutely on Wallace’s life as it related to his art. This decision to strip the story down to its narrative essentials pays off in terms of compulsive readability…In providing a more complete sense of Wallace than we ever had while he lived, it makes his death feel more real, somehow more irrefutable. And, for anyone who felt a profound emotional connection to Wallace and his work, there’s a strenuously cathartic dimension to this: the experience of knowing him more fully, and of thereby feeling more completely the force and finality of his absence.”

  — Slate.com

• “Max’s long-awaited bio, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, helps us understand the man behind the words, and the mind behind the suicide…[Max] makes Wallace begin to cohere and become more approachable, more real…Necessary reading if you care about DFW or the cultural moment that shaped him and then felt his impact.”

  — GQ.com

• “Documenting the life of a writer as revered and tormented as the late David Foster Wallace is a fraught task at best. D. T. Max has done an admirable job with Every Love Story is a Ghost Story…What emerges is a vivid portrait of an artist whose verbal brilliance was continually hampered, and ultimately silenced, by debilitating mental illness.”

  — Boston Globe

• “While Max appears to greatly admire Wallace as a writer and feel compassion for him as a man, he is never starry-eyed, or pulls his punches. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is as illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace’s life and work as we can hope to find.”

  — Vanityfair.com