On September 12, 2008, we lost a great American writer, David Foster Wallace. A professor at Pomona College who once taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and attended Cornell University, Wallace wrote short stories and novels, the most famous of which being Infinite Jest.

TIME reports:

Whereas ordinary authors resorted to the standard tricks of the trade--write what you know, look deep into your soul, whatever--Wallace seemed to have no earthly constraints. He knew everything and could look into anybody's soul he wanted to. Any writer in America would have killed for his talent…

Infinite Jest was the quintessence of 1990s literary maximalism, and it became instant required reading. Enough with those '80s party-boy writers! Here was a novelist with the industrial-strength intellectual chops to theorize even our resolutely anti-intellectual age. Wallace became a reluctant literary pinup, with his stubbly outsize chin and his shoulder-length hair. He was America's No. 1 literary seed, at the top of a hierarchy that was, one suspects, largely meaningless to him.

David Foster Wallace will be dearly missed, but his work will continue to be loved by readers.