THANK YOU to the University of British Columbia for grant and leave support and to my colleagues in the English Department, especially Ira Nadel. Thanks to the library staff at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas–Austin; to the editorial staff at Columbia University Press, especially Philip Leventhal, and the anonymous reviewers of my manuscript; to my research assistants, Angus Reid, Madeline Gorman, and especially Jeff Noh and Jae Sharpe, who were both indispensable to the book’s completion; to the students in my seminars, who spurred many insights herein; to Eric Bennett, Brian Bremen, Ralph Clare, Siân Echard, Matt Gartner, Jeff Hoffman, Chris Leise, Linda Meng, Geordie Miller, Travis Miles, Jason Puskar, Matt Rubery, Adam Seluzicki, Charles Seluzicki, and Jeff Waite, who each helped with conversation and support at crucial moments; to Steve Moore, who gave me and my archival research a Texas home; and to the staff and management of Vancouver’s City Square Shopping Centre Food Court, where many of these pages were written.
Above all, I thank my mom and dad, my sisters, and my entire family for loving me and educating me. And thanks beyond thanks to Christina Seluzicki, for showing me what value and gifts can be.
An earlier version of portions of
chapters 2 and
5 appeared as “Collision, Illinois: David Foster Wallace and the Value of Insurance,”
Modern Fiction Studies 62, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 130–150. Copyright © 2016 The Johns Hopkins University Press. An earlier version of parts of the introduction and
chapter 6 appeared as “‘Blank as the Faces on Coins’: Currency and Embodied Value(s) in David Foster Wallace’s
The Pale King,”
Critique 57, no. 1 (2016): 52–66. This article, published on December 30, 2015, is available online:
http://www.tandfCol/online.com/doi/full/10.1080/00111619.2015.1019397. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All quotations from the Wallace Papers at the Harry Ransom Center are published with the permission of the David Foster Wallace Literary Trust.