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[...] the narrator despises this girl's lifestyle and outlook, yet finds himself almost obsessively in need of her approval and love. As a consequence, he attempts to master her, to prove his own superiority, in much the same way as Wallace described the tendency he saw in his own and others' work …

Wallace finds another way of resisting apocalyptic postmodern anomie

Randall [...] has an elevated opinion of his own intellectual standing. [...] unnecessary Latin phrases, italicization, and the use of exaggerated inverted commas as a sort of conversational crutch, ostensibly indicating his disdain for contemporary argot, but actually revealing a narrator uncomfor…

notwithstanding his particular idiolect