摘要：For a writer so neurotically aware of the lures of mass-entertainment, the past few years have seen David Foster Wallace seep into popular culture at a startling rate. Indie group The Decembrists based a music video on a scene from Infinite Jest, the author's 1079 page doorstopper; Jason Segel will play Wallace in the film The End of the Tour, adapted from an interview he did for Rolling Stone in 1996; and in the ultimate pop-culture accolade, Wallace briefly appears in a Simpsons episode itself loosely based on one of his essays. A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies can be seen as an attempt to redress this pop dilution - to wrest Wallace, in editors Marshall Boswell and Stephen J. Burn's words, from 'journalists, intrepid fans, bloggers' (xi) and 'submit his work to more rigorous study' (xi). Boswell and Burn are more than qualified to oversee such a task, as their respective Understanding David Foster Wallace, and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide (a second edition of which was published in 2012) are in many ways foundational texts in Wallace studies. Exploring Wallace's entire career in fiction, A Companion's academic rigour is a welcome contribution to the study of this most influential of contemporary U.S. writers.
