In Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, a sympathetic and engrossing biography of David Foster Wallace, literary journalist D.T. Max deftly outlines the early years of the writer’s life, from his birth in Ithaca, New York, growing up in Champaign, Illinois, where he became a promising junior tennis player, to his education (with a double major in English and philosophy) at Amherst College. The novel he wrote for his senior thesis, The Broom of the System, was published when Wallace was 25 years old, launching a career that went on to see creation of a range of exceptional works of fiction and nonfiction.

For the first time in 35 years and the 11^th time in history, this year’s Pulitzer Prize deliberately overlooked all three fiction nominees.  Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams were speculated to be stranger choices than usual. This motley trio admittedly inspired a  few raised eyebrows, but none were prepared for the news that would precipitate from the Pulitzer Board’s final conference -- that ,in fact, none had been worthy of the prestigious literary prize.