David Foster Wallace’s final novel The Pale King was a Pulitzer-finalist assembled from manuscripts after his suicide in 2008. Both Flesh And Not may feel anticlimactic in comparison, as an eclectic compilation of pre-published essays borrowed from disparate collections. Wallace’s name seems enough of a money-spinner to remove the onus of originality. However, I will now tell you why the book is brilliant. Readers of his fiction will have experienced his brief, profound character-immersions. He is adept at that kind of self-leaping that both reassures the reader and hurts their pride by indicating that there is at least one individual who is as complex as you - David Foster Wallace - and so probably everyone else is too. But essays spell an end to these point of view excursions.

You are now firmly behind the eyes of the man himself; the subject matter is dictated by his own interests and talents. There is no attempt to hide this fact: the young tennis champion turned maths-and-philosophy student turned writer turns in essays called ‘Federer Both Flesh and Not’ and ‘Rhetoric And the Math Melodrama’. His particular penchant for vocabulary-expansion is highlighted in the hilarious but pedantic Twenty-Four Word Notes. What makes these highly subjective and specialist accounts appropriate for a wide readership?

Firstly, Wallace’s voice. His delivery is polychromatic and casually precise, like a series of highly intelligent Internet pop-up windows. It is also engaging and conversational. This may seem paradoxical, what with its peppering of obscure, multisyllabic words, but do not be put off. The wanky editorial decision to print samples of his self-compiled vocab lists between each essay undermines the point that these words are never used without self-awareness. They pinpoint precise shades of meaning and add cadence to his brimming sentences. Specialised references are used as analogies in such a celebratory, self-effacing (and ultimately very intelligent) way that it is hard not to be swept along. More vernacular is his tone and simulation of perception-tempo. Impressions seem transmitted as they come. How else could he sustain that casual fluidity, those feats of comic stamina?

But – as you might hope from the author of a huge satire of America’s reliance on passive stimulation – Wallace does more than entertain. His particular gift is perceiving. The account of a 1995 US Open match between Sampras and Philippoussis feels like nothing more than a real-time eye-scan of the things around him.  His social conscience is not revealed via dogmatism or condescension; rather he splays the facts out in front of us. And so we are left to reflect and respond as we will. With regard to the infinite facts of life at the disposal of an essayist, Wallace sifts ‘in ways that yield and illuminate truth instead of just adding more noise to the overall roar.’ So, if you fear feeling duped with your £20 hardback edition of essays, just know that the content scorns its format.