Impact David Foster Wallace challenged conven-
tions of fiction, mixing genres and modes to capture
the essence of modern America through philoso-
phy, science, humor, irony, and the absurd.
Further Reading
Boswell, Marshall.Understanding David Foster Wallace.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2003.
Wallace, David Foster.Brief Interviews with Hideous
Men. Boston: Little, Brown, 1999.
___.Infinite Jest. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.
Alan Haslam
See also Literature in Canada; Literature in the
United States; Tennis.
Wal-Mart
Identification Superstore chain
Founder Sam Walton (1918-1992)
Date Founded in 1962
Wal-Mart’s steady growth over the decades exploded in the
1990’s as it moved to become the world’s largest retail sales
business. Walton’s “ever yday low price” philosophy revolu-
tionized the world of retail through his
initially rurally-based chain of super-
stores that specialized in inexpensive
commodities, in the process reshaping
consumer behavior, transforming em-
ployment patterns, and producing Amer-
ica’s largest family fortune.
In the 1990’s, Wal-Mart faced major
challenges, which included dealing
with founder Sam Walton’s death
(in 1992, from bone cancer), finan-
cial problems, and the difficulties of
expanding into international mar-
kets. Through the course of the de-
cade, Wal-Mart with varying de-
grees of success brought the image
of America—along with products
from the developing world—to many
other nations: Mexico (1991), Ja-
pan (1992), China, Brazil, and Can-
ada (1994), Argentina (1995), In-
donesia (1996), Germany (1997),
and South Korea and the United
Kingdom (1999). It emerged by the end of the
1990’s as the world’s leading retailer.
As it ambitiously expanded its goods and services,
Wal-Mart became dominant and a model even for its
competitors. Its economic power enabled it to re-
shape local communities, but critics accused it of
“devouring” or even “destroying” America and saw
the globalization of its practices as a threat to the
world. Wal-Mart continued to keep its products com-
paratively cheap by aggressively controlling costs,
but its ways of keeping its overhead down led to criti-
cism of its labor and supply practices as exploitative,
deceptive, and coercive, and this became part of the
decade’s debate about the reasonableness of organi-
zational restructuring and overseas outsourcing.Impact Detractors view Walton’s company as hav-
ing led the trend of giant chain stores squeezing
small businesses out of markets, imposing standard-
ized consumer choices on the public, and making
the American labor market more insecure. Sup-
porters view Walton as a realist who understood the
fundamental nature of business as constantly chang-
ing competition and who grasped earlier than oth-
ers that consumers ultimately care most about con-
venience and low price: According to Michael904 Wal-Mart The Nineties in America
A protester in North Bennington, Vermont, holds a sign before the grand opening of the
first Wal-Mart store in the state on September 19, 1995. To many critics of the retail
chain, Wal-Mart is a threat to local businesses.(AP/Wide World Photos)