Infinite Jest is a novel by David Foster Wallace and stands as his most discussed work, drawing sustained attention as a centerpiece of his output in fiction.

Wallace was born on February 21, 1962, in Ithaca, and attended Urbana High School before going on to Amherst College, the University of Arizona, and Harvard University. He worked as a novelist, essayist, and university teacher, writing in English across forms that included long fiction, short stories, and essays. His association with the postmodernism movement ran through his career, and his body of work extended well beyond Infinite Jest to include the novel The Broom of the System, the short fiction collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Oblivion: Stories, the essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and the work Everything and More. The novel The Pale King also belongs to the list of his notable works.

The recognition Wallace received during his lifetime reflected the regard in which his writing was held across multiple genres and forms. He was awarded a Whiting Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Award — three distinct honors that together acknowledged the range and seriousness of his work as a novelist and essayist. He continued to work as a university teacher alongside his writing throughout this period, engaging with both the practice and the institutional life of literature.

Wallace died on September 12, 2008, in Claremont, at the age of forty-six. The Pale King, included among his notable works, remains a concrete marker of the fiction he produced as an American novelist writing in English across a career that began in Ithaca and ended in Claremont.