Every Love Story is a Ghost Story - DT Max

There must have been a temptation on the author's part to start this story in the middle (the making of Infinite Jest, the part we all want to read) or at the end (the suicide in 2008) but he starts the way most biographies do, at the beginning and this conventional style dominates the book, a rather standard troubled genius pulls it together to make great art and then fizzles out and it all ends tragically. (See: Kurt Cobain)

The revelations here are those that DFW kept hidden - his battles with serious mental illness and addiction, his fragile state and repeated breakdowns. In interviews he gave (most notably in 'Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself') DFW was able to create his own media persona, one stronger and better put together than what he really was. (Also notable are the admissions that he applied his fiction skills to his non-fiction work, making up his own facts and people in order to better suit the story)

The author mixes in some literary criticism, connecting points of DFW's life to his work (another surprise is how much his relationship with his mother played a role in creating Infinite Jest) and the fact that DFW and DeLillo shared a regular correspondence is a truth better than fiction.

The Pale King Early Review

Earlier this year I toyed with the idea of re-reading Infinite Jest. Instead, I've already pre-ordered a copy of DFW's new novel,The Pale King.  Lev Grossman at Time has an early review:

"Pietsch spent two years assembling and editing the contents of that duffel bag. The results will be published, appropriately enough, on April 15. If The Pale King isn't a finished work, it is, at the very least, a remarkable document, by no means a stunt or an attempt to cash in on Wallace's posthumous fame. Despite its shattered state and its unpromising subject matter, or possibly because of them, The Pale King represents Wallace's finest work as a novelist."

Time Magazine

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - David Lipsky

As one who reads liner notes (or at least did when they existed) and listens to DVD commentary tracks, I looked forward to this book for any insight it might have had on Infinite Jest, a behind the scenes look on how anyone could have written that book - the mechanics involved, the thought process, the dedication. There was a little of that in this book, but it was mostly about DFW at a particular point in his life - the newly crowned King of American Fiction, this particular moment in his life made all the much sadder by the perspective of 15 years and a suicide later.
 DFW never wrote anything as major as Infinite Jest again (though, really, no one has) and there seems to be some recognition on his part that he never will in this story, as he spends a few days with Lipsky, a novelist turned Rolling Stone contributor. In the end, this book just makes me want to read Infinite Jest again.