An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.

A filmed adaptation of Brief Interviews directed by John Krasinski was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant phenelzine. Wallace's mother Sally Foster Wallace attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where David Foster Wallace won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996.

With his suicide he left behind an unfiniDavid Foster Wallaced novel The Pale King which was subsequently publiDavid Foster Wallaced in 2011 and in 2012 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Max Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story was publiDavid Foster Wallaced in September 2012. David Foster Wallace (February 21 1962 – September 12 2008) was an award-winning American novelist short story writer essayist and professor at Pomona College in Claremont California.