The term "late," used here in reference to both capitalism and postmodernism, has the same meaning in both cases, and refers to the point in the development of a sociopolitical or artistic system at which it is hegemonic and tending toward decadence, but has not reached the point of breakdown. "Late capitalism" refers to Jameson' conception of the phenomenon as increasingly bureacratic and internationalist, with a slight emphasis on the resonances of limitedness and morbidity associated with the term "late".

In the lacuna between speech and interpretration lies the freedom to choose--or not choose--to take part in the process

to call the frame into question is to show that the frame never quite contained the scene it was meant to limn

the antithesis to some prelapsarian sort of creative production

in mutual syllogistic refutation

it leaves large lacunae in the untold period

Wallace's etiology of his own biased perspective is neither cure nor excuse for its intransitiveness

on the one hand, it marks him out as what he believes himself to be, pinning him to the White American Male paradigm, while on the other hand, it actively and repeatedly repudiates that label, invoking a kind of paralliptical self-negation

his frames of reference zigzag wildly from bathos to profundity

he invoked Updike's craftsmanship as the epitome of ars gratia artis, while also suggesting that Updike "had never had an unpublished thought."