Signifying Rappers

ACCLAIM FOR DAVID FOSTER WALLACE:

"The Best Mind of His Generation"--A.O. Scott, The New York Times

ACCLAIM FOR SIGNIFYING RAPPERS

"Self-conscious about their outsider status and given to lamenting how hard it is to get people on the rap scene to talk to dorky white people...Mark Costello and David Foster Wallace have nonetheless delivered...the only theoretically interesting book on rap."-- The Village Voice

"The Best Mind of His Generation" "A.O. Scott, The New York Times""

"A prose magician, Mr. Wallace was capable of writing...about subjects from tennis to politics to lobsters, from the horrors of drug withdrawal to the small terrors of life aboard a luxury cruise ship, with humor and fervor and verve. At his best he could write funny, write sad, write sardonic and write serious. He could map the infinite and infinitesimal, the mythic and mundane. He could conjure up an absurd future...while conveying the inroads the absurd has already made in a country where old television shows are a national touchstone and asinine advertisements wallpaper our lives." "Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times""

"One of the most influential writers of his generation." "Timothy Williams, The New York Times""

"Costello and Wallace's pioneering study is a dazzling performance: informative, provocative, funny and brilliantly written, an intellectually wired style combining subtle and original thought with great wit, insight, and in-your-face energy." "Review of Contemporary Fiction""

"Two educated white guys do the right thing by scoping out 'The Meaning of Rap' without pretending to know everything about it...Signifying Rappers is both a cogent explication of rap and a cutting, revealing parody of overinflated pseudointellectual rap criticism." "Seattle Weekly""

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE (1962-2008) is the New York Times bestselling author of Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System, and Girl With Curious Hair. His essays and stories have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Playboy, Paris Review, Conjunctions, Premiere, Tennis, The Missouri Review, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Wallace has received numerous awards, including the Whiting Award, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the QPB Joe Savago New Voices Award, and the O. Henry Award.

MARK COSTELLO, who worked as a federal prosecutor, is the author of the National Book Award Finalist Big If. He lives in New York.