FRESH AIR
Acclaimed novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace, 46, was found dead in his home Sept. 12; reports attribute his death to suicide. His 1996 novel Infinite Jest was a critical and popular success, while in recent years he has written short-stories and nonfiction. And he wrote a celebrated Rolling Stone profile of John McCain in 2000; it was revised and this year as McCain’s Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express With John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope. Wallace was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1997. Fresh Air remembers him with an excerpt from an interview that initially aired on March 5 of that year.