Born on February 21, 1962 in Ithaca, New York, David Foster Wallace was the son of James Wallace, a graduate student of philosophy at Cornell, and Sally Foster, a grammarian who wrote a textbook entitled Practically Painless English. David's highly intellectual parents read literature to him and sister at a very young age.
After earning his graduate's degree, James Wallace moved his family to Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, where he became a professor at the University of Illinois. During this time, David excelled as a young junior tennis player. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, majoring in philosophy and English and graduating with high honors. His English thesis was a...
