David Foster Wallace's Class Reading List

1. Renata Adler - Speedboat
2. James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
3. Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
4. Richard Brautigan - Trout Fishing in America
5. Joan Didion - Play It As It Lays
6. Paula Fox - Desperate Characters
7. Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
8. Walker Percy - The Moviegoer
9. Christina Steed - The Man Who Loved Children

I think it was Flavorwire that initially posted David Foster Wallace's class reading list, along with several other authors' syllabi. That I've read seven of the nine fills me with joy, though this is a ten-year-old list, and many of these books have slowly wormed their way into literary consciousness in the past decade.

You can read it and the rest of his lesson plan in the posthumous anthology The David Foster Wallace Reader.