Introduction/Overview [excerpt] As scholar Cory Hudson notes, a paradigmatic shift has occurred in the way that critics read David Foster Wallace's fiction in the wake of the author's 2008 suicide. This shift has seen readings of Wallace's fiction turn away from the texts themselves and begin instead in para-textual materials such as interviews and personal writings. This causes scholars to often conflate their interpretations of the texts with details from Wallace's personal life (especially his own troubles with...