Sublime

Wallace wasn’t clear on what he wanted, unless it was to be left alone—except when he didn’t.

What I prized was seriousness. I wanted to apply it to some small world, hidden in this larger one.

The P.P.O.’s counselor, who appeared to be in, at most, his mid- or late 30s, and wore spectacles, had a large forehead which was domed in such a way as to suggest deep thoughtfulness, an appearance which was, it increasingly emerged, misleading.

breathless prose.

An implication will be that Sternberg, as an emblem—or synecdochical appendage—of his generation, will countenance, in his future, The Future.

THE

He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.

Wallace told an interviewer years later that Barthelme was the first time he heard the “click” in literature.