Both Flesh and Not

Essays and criticism

Print length: 336 pagesBack Bay Books, 2013

Description

Both Flesh and Not collects fifteen essays by David Foster Wallace, presented together in book form. The volume ranges across literary criticism, language, popular culture, and professional tennis, including Wallace’s celebrated consideration of Roger Federer. Across these pieces, close observation expands into reflection on artistic achievement, spectatorship, and the work of paying attention. Wallace’s characteristic combination of analysis, humor, and self-questioning gives the collection its restless intellectual energy. Read individually or as a group, the essays show a nonfiction writer testing how criticism can describe difficult experiences without simplifying them.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Essayistic · Experimental · Witty

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Humorous · Irreverent · Reflective

Structure

Anthology

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 5 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 3 / 5

Themes

Art and creativityKnowledge and truthWork

About David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and professor, best known for Infinite Jest. His work moves between dense, formally experimental fiction and nonfiction that can sound conversational even as it develops intricate arguments. Long, branching sentences, specialized or invented language, shifting voices, and disruptive footnotes are central to his method; he described the notes as a way to interrupt linear narrative while preserving readability and reflecting the texture of experience. Across fiction and essays, Wallace examined entertainment, appetite, self-consciousness, and the habits of irony in a media-saturated culture, returning to the difficulty of sincere communication and the fear of being alone. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster turn cruises, fairs, politics, usage disputes, and public spectacles into comic, morally alert scrutiny. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men uses omissions, fragments, and compromised speakers to probe sexual power and self-deception. What distinguishes Wallace is the pressure he puts on form itself, making digression and excess serve sustained attention to other minds.