Both Flesh and Not: Essays is a collection of fifteen essays by American author David Foster Wallace published posthumously in 2012. It is Wallace's third essay collection.[1][2][3]
List of essays
Printed between each essay are lists of obscure words and their definitions that Wallace kept.
"Federer Both Flesh and Not" (written in 2006) is considered one of Wallace's best essays. He describes professional tennis at its pinnacle through an examination of the talent of Roger Federer. The essay was first published in The New York Timesas "Federer as Religious Experience" in 2006.
"Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young" (1988), first appeared in Review of Contemporary Fiction (1988). As the book's publisher notes in the back matter, "Some of the ideas and language in this essay appear in 'E Unibus Pluram,' [from] A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."
"Mr. Cogito" is a positive review of a book of poetry by Zbigniew Herbert. It is a short piece that appeared in Spin in 1994.
"Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open" (1996) is a first-person journalistic essay on the 1995 U.S. Open. It was written for Tennis magazine.
"Back in New Fire" (1996), on sex in the age of AIDS. It was first published as "Impediments to Passion" in Might magazine, 1996.
"The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2" (1998) bemoans the effect of large visual effects budgets on the movie industry. First published as "F/X Porn" in Waterstone’s Magazine, 1998.
"The Nature of the Fun" (1998), a reflection on writing fiction, was published in Fiction Writer, 1998.
"The Best of the Prose Poem" is a review of The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal published in Rain Taxi (2001).
"Twenty-Four Word Notes" (2004) is reprinted from the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus.
"Borges on the Couch" (2004) is a mostly negative review of Edwin Williamson's Borges: A Life for the New York Times Book Review, arguing that Williamson incorrectly emphasizes the effect of Jorge Luis Borges' personal life and character on his stories.
