While his fiction could be undeniably challenging, I always found it well-worth the effort. I genuinely felt in the presence of greatness during my first read (and trial by fire introduction to Wallace) of Infinite Jest. It was sort of like running a literary triathlon for which, at times, I wasn't sure I had trained hard enough or well enough. It was often like watching daredevil linguistic acrobatics – amazed and thinking, "I can't believe he just did that!". And I was hooked. I became a DFW junkie and I think I've read just about everything he's published before or since. And I guess that's now all of it. Bummer...
Anyway, just know that it's a great loss to literature.
If you're at all interested in reading some of his work, I can't imagine a better place to start given the imminent election than with his book McCain's Promise, the expanded version of his essay covering McCain's 2000 bid for the presidency for Rolling Stone.
The WSJ had just talked with DFW at the end of May about the McCain essay.
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