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[...] Brief Interviews pitched itself as a counterweight to the narcotic qualities of contemporary life, and then went a step further. It questioned the Jamesian notion that fine awareness leads a prior to responsibility. It suggested that too much awareness--particularly self-awareness-has allow…

It strikes me when I reread this beautiful story how poor we are at tracing literary antecedents, how often we assume too much and miss obvious echoes. Lazily we gather writers by nations, decades and fashions; we imagine Wallace the only son of DeLillo and Pynchon. In fact, Wallace had catholic ta…

in mad cadenzas of simian gibberish that break suddenly into glorious soliloquies, then plunge again into nonsense

the two sides of that chiasmus would be in constant tension

[..] that unusual triune skill set--encyclopedic knowledge, mathematical prowess, complex dialectical thought [...]