If there's a subject worthy of commentary, chances are David Foster Wallace, best known for the gargantuan novel Infinite Jest, has something to say about it. This collection contains only seven essays, but by covering topics as seemingly unrelated as professional tennis, David Lynch and seven-day luxury cruises, it seems much more far-reaching. Wallace seems to be some sort of observation machine, taking in every aspect of a subject, processing it through an original mind, and spitting out a humorous essay that seems like the final possible statement about the matter. In "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," he succeeds in tying together his two subjects in an interesting way that smartly and lucidly avoids all the cliched, post-structuralist critical apparatuses normally associated with them. As good as this and similar pieces are, Wallace's travel selections—particularly the eponymous cruise-ship piece and "Getting Away From Already Being Pretty Much Away From It All," which documents his trip to the 1993 Illinois State Fair—stand out from the rest. It's within these essays that Wallace's wicked, withering and strangely poignant eye for detail is put to its best use. He's somehow capable of being as fresh as funny about literary theory as he is about the superiority of Mr. Pibb over Dr. Pepper, and the world is a better place for having him around.