Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace

being pleased is an indispensable part of giving pleasure, just as being helped is an indispensable part of being helpful.

“And yet, the ‘creative’ half of the title suggests an impulse rather than Enlightenment perspicuity motivates the writer and shapes the writing.”

Grammar, he saw, was agreement, community, consensus.

If,

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Infinite Jest counterposes sincerity and faith against moral lassitude.

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words—Derrida’s famous dictum that “there is nothing outside the text.”

hated the acclaimed Magnolia, which he found pretentious and hollow, “100% gradschoolish in a bad way.”