David Foster Wallace MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is David Foster Wallace? David Foster Wallace is an ENTP personality type in MBTI, 5w4 - sx/so - 549 in Enneagram, RLUEI in Big 5, ILE in Socionics.
In his many interviews Wallace comes off as sensitive, caring, and self-conscious about being self-conscious. These seem like stereotypical traits of an introvert, especially an INF type. The first part of my argument will be a counter-stereotype that breaks the perception of Wallace as an effete artist. "David’s cries of 'Why?' and 'That doesn’t make sense!' were familiar at Yankee Ridge Elementary, where he went from 1969 to 1974, and though teachers saw how smart he was, many found him a handful. One day at Crystal Lake Day Camp, where he and Amy went many summers, he grew tired of the counselors and their rules and simply walked several miles back to his house.” (Every Love Story is A Ghost Story pg. 5) “His classmates remember him as cheerful, popular, funny,” (ibid. pg 7) “David could be malicious… he would taunt [his sister] mercilessly, telling her she was ugly or fat, or would make exaggerated gestures of shrinking from her as she walked down the hall or wry faces when she would take a second helping.” (ibid. pg 7) “Socially, Wallace was becoming more of a clown, someone good at imitations, at times a teaser who would lash out with his wit, then retreat into the pack.” (ibid. pg 7) “Wallace’s parodies sometimes offended. A piece he wrote about cossetted students at antebellum Amherst arriving with their slaves drew a protest from the Black Students Union.” (ibid. pg 27 n 5) So the facts show that Wallace wasn’t very agreeable; He was a teaser and a taunt; His parodies became provocations; He was gregarious and witty; and he demanded rational explanations from authority. All of which, paints the picture of a smirking satirist (typically the role of an ENTP) and not the puling wallflower that he’s portrayed to be. (Now I’ll move on to the functional approach to determining his type below)
Biography
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and university instructor in the disciplines of English and creative writing. His novel Infinite Jest (1996) was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His last novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012.
Related Personalities
J. K. Rowling
Osamu Dazai
Franz Kafka
George R. R. Martin
Sylvia Plath
Clarice Lispector
J. R. R. Tolkien
Stephen King
