Los Angeles - The world of literature Monday was mourning American novelist David Foster Wallace, who was found dead in his California home Friday after apparently committing suicide.

Wallace, 46, was an English professor at Pomona College in southern California and was most famous for his sprawling and sardonic novel Infinite Jest published in 1996.

He first gained prominence for his offbeat humour with 1987 debut The Broom of the System and also published several collections of essays and short stories, including Girl With Curious Hair, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Oblivion: Stories.

New York-born Wallace was also the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant in 1987. "He was a huge talent, our strongest rhetorical writer," his friend and fellow novelist Jonathan Franzen told the New York Times. "He was also as sweet a person as I've ever known and as tormented a person as I've ever known."

The paper quoted his father as saying that Wallace had been taking medication for depression for 20 years until June 2007, when he stopped because of their side effects.

The depression returned and he was being heavily medicated. "He'd been in the hospital a couple of times over the summer and had undergone electro-convulsive therapy," James Wallace said. "Everything had been tried, and he just couldn't stand it anymore."

Wallace's demise hit his friends and fans with shock. US National Book Award-winning novelist Richard Powers said Wallace's death was "beyond describing", adding that he was "the best of our generation".

"I am so sad - stunned. It reminds us all of how fragile we are and how close at hand the darkness is," said AM Homes, author of The End of Alice.