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The next year, a senior named Alex Borinsky asked: Have you ever not written something for fear the subject might read it?

Wallace sent Alex a response nearly as long as the last one. Yes, he said. He had backed out of book reviews because he didn't want to skewer the books. He had omitted per…

I'd say that this is a dangerous kind of piece to do, because it sets up Narrator Persona challenges, more specifically the Asshole Problem. I'm sure you guys have seen it--it's death if the biggest sense the reader gets from a critical essay is that the narrator's a very critical person, or from a…

The third is wordplay. Wallace doesn't bend grammar, but he bends English. He loves Germanic compounds like "shingle-sized" (describing pizza slices), "Rice-Krispie-squarish" (describing Krakkles), and "pubic-hair-shaped" (describing Curly Fries). If no existing adjective can do exactly what he wan…

This essay on the loss of grace in tennis speaks then to the passing of a writer's first ecstatic access to creation. Wallace mourns the loss and maps a paradox that would become the seed idea of later work. The paradox is that although we need to live in peaks, these hypostatic highs of sex, succe…

[...] Here are some various things I tried: EST, riding a ten-speed to Nova Scotia and back, hypnosis, cocaine, sacro-cervical chiropractic, joining a charismatic church, jogging, pro bono work for the Ad Council, meditation classes, the Masons, analysis, the Landmark Forum, the Course in Miracles,…