What is there to say about David Foster Wallace (full name is obligatory) that has not been said before? He is brilliant. Stories, you know, whatever, they don't matter to me, I just love how he thinks and how he manages to transpose that onto the page. Hell, as clearly shown in this book and as Lipsky rightly points it out, Wallace had a natural gift for shitting out prose straight out of his rima oris. Honestly, if I ever meet someone like Wallace, someone with such a keen capacity to discuss anything off the cuff in such a knowledgable and witty manner, I am locking them up in my basement to never allow for a chance to lose them. You are missed, David, you really really really are. I wish I locked you in my basement. If I did, you would still be here to enlighten me now and again. I badly needed to hear some of the stuff in here. The whole "using thousands of pages of continental philosophy and lit theory to prove that you a right just to regret it later" was dropped on my head old-school piano style. Maybe, sometimes, we are too clever for our own good, or maybe it's plain arrogance. I can't yet decide. But as I was emerging out of the rubble, recovering my composure, ridding my blazer off of the remains of the piano, I was blinded by a statement so obvious, so god damn obvious, yet so fucking true, that I immediately became enlightened. All the jest aside, who reads realism to experience the real? I hear it all the time, how great and timeless classics are. Great escape they might be, but they hardly feel real and timeless to me. Wallace put it well: "Life now is completely different than the way it was then. Does your life approach anything like a linear narrative?" This humble discretion made me rave for a day, and even after I thought through all the implications of this postmodern wisdom, I could not shake off the feeling that I will never be okay with it. I will never be okay with how true it is. And the worst part... I have no clue whether I am melancholy and lament the loss of the narrative or euphoric that I do not have to live life by some premade schematic and see it as linear progress with predictable story beats of the slow trip from a cradle to a crematorium. Thank you, David Foster Wallace, you fucked me up real good.