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[...] challenged the tradition of thinking of the mind as a mirror of reality, extending the argument to challenge the idea that language should in some way represent the world exactly as it is, if such could be discovered. He found fault with the idea that Philosophy could seek this sort of repres…

I ordered McCaffery's Vollmann anthology because of the compliments Wallace gave Vollmann in the McCaffery interview I revisited in writing this introduction. I spent 14 months trying to understand Cahoone's 600-page anthology of modern and postmodern thought because Wallace made me want to know mo…

[...] I believe that "Westward"'s fictional project should instead be read as, if not as accomplishing, then at least pointing toward a relationship to irony that is anti-eschatological, that acknowledges irony's fundamental "temporality that is not organic," and that it "allows for no end, for no …

He means that the "backyard-barbecue and three-martini" mother lode of American realism mined by an earlier generation of writers--writers from Updike country--simpy fails to connect with him, either as writer or reader.

Rather, Wallace is a descendant of that subversive, anarchic branch of Amer…

[...] Brought up an atheist, he has twice failed to pass through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, the first step toward becoming a Catholic. The last time, he made the mistake of referring to "the cult of personality surrounding Jesus." That didn't go over big with the priest, who corre…