Wallace's later, more prolix argument about pop culture's successful co-opting of postmodern self-reflexivity and irony

Wallace's own struggle with John Barth's indelible influence on his own fiction, all in accordance with Harold Bloom's theory of artistic anxiety and influence, which the novella both employs and parodies.

Wallace frankly invites his readers to conflate Nechtr's conflicted feelings about Professor Ambrose with his own misgivings about Barthian metafiction writ large

which is based on Freytag's Pyramid

I remember us "huddled" in the gloaming going to gloom.

LBJ's not-very-secretly-gay amanuensis