This collection of essays, edited by prominent David Foster Wallace scholars Marshall Boswell and Stephen J. Burn, is the first to deal with the entire corpus of Wallace's published fiction. The editors – pioneers in the burgeoning field of Wallace studies who authored early monographs on his work – correctly declare that “much of the ground-clearing critical work on Wallace's fiction has … been completed” and are thus able to introduce this volume “not to replace these studies, but rather to consolidate where Wallace studies stands after all the novels have been published” (x). Accordingly, the essays display a far wider range of theoretical influences than earlier studies of Wallace, and show a willingness to engage with hitherto unexplored themes and anxieties within his oeuvre.

The collection is structured by a “systematic and focused approach to Wallace's fiction,” alternating chronologically ordered “single-text studies” of his fiction with essays that examine Wallace's work as a whole (xi). The inclusion of the work of contributors from an international spectrum of institutions, vocations, and fields of study sometimes results in a sacrifice of scholarly quality, but nonetheless has the benefit of introducing diverse and occasionally groundbreaking readings of Wallace's work.

In particular, the essays focussing on Wallace's shorter fiction prove to be extremely useful additions to the Wallace studies canon. Kasia Boddy's essay on Girl with Curious Hair, for example, should be applauded for its attempt to demythologize Wallace's essay “E Unibus Pluram,” so often uncritically (and thus unusefully) employed as Wallace's “manifesto.” Moreover, Boddy highlights the importance of Stanley Cavell to her reading of Wallace's stories, instantiating an engagement with an influence who is often acknowledged, yet seldom discussed. Similarly, Mary K. Holland's valuable discussion of the too-often-marginalized Brief Interviews with Hideous Men places vital emphasis on Wallace's formal techniques, and provides the controversial yet compelling suggestion that Wallace “revises realism” in the story “Octet,” with its structure highlighting an overt “fictitiousness” that “throw[s] into relief an authorial voice that feels intensely real in comparison” (122). Her essay, however, is symptomatic of the inclination amongst critics and scholars to equate Wallace with a “return to sincerity” (107), without fully explaining what this might mean.

Boswell's analysis of Oblivion is notable for his claim that it “remains unique in Wallace's oeuvre in its unrelenting pessimism” (168). This is dubious at best – Infinite Jest and The Pale King, for example, are hardly optimistic texts – but Boswell does convincingly argue that Oblivion “casts doubt on Wallace's … belief that language can bridge the gulf between us” (166). Unfortunately, he makes the glaring omission of “Incarnations of Burned Children” in his discussion of the book, a story – perhaps Wallace's most affecting – that dramatizes the impossibility of ever fully understanding others’ pain, and that would have complemented his argument perfectly.

In the wider-scope pieces, Clare Hayes-Brady offers a forcefully argued but not entirely convincing essay that defends Wallace's gender politics due to his overt exposition of female alterity. Although not an apologist for Wallace, she does seem loath to criticize him, a stance that is further evidence of a hagiographic tendency amongst Wallace scholars, as epitomized by his canonization as “Saint Dave” by some readers. David H. Evans and Andrew Hoberek, on the other hand, provide subtle, balanced discussions of the influence of, respectively, William James on Wallace, and Wallace on his literary descendants.

Of the essays that focus on Wallace's novels, Brain McHale's stands out by reading The Pale King alongside Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, highlighting how they make use of “the chronotype of the special unit” (199) in their depictions of IRS agents and the inhabitants of the White Visitation. Stephen Burn's essay on Infinite Jest, however, disappoints. His use of Paul D. MacLean's “Triune Brain Theory” as a model with which to analyze the Incandenza brothers is perceptive and assured, and yet his essay is failed by some banal insights (“a new work of fiction is not a discrete object, but a point on a web or network that's vitally connected to ancestor works” (63)) and stark omissions (failing to note the similarities between Don DeLillo's metaphor for a “book-in-progress” and both Mario Incandenza and the “goo-prone” infant in Infinite Jest (62); a discussion of schizophrenia without even a footnote mentioning Jameson, Deleuze and Guatarri (70–71)).

The minor flaws and discrepancies of some of the essays, however, only establish further avenues for scholarly discussion about Wallace, and reflect how this collection as a whole introduces a great deal of scope for advancing the field of Wallace studies. It is therefore to be commended.