Sublime

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

Emma and Wallace had become friends by virtue of the fact that neither of them was a white man in their program.

There was already a well-known nature writer named David Rains Wallace, so Fred Hill, Nadell’s boss, who had once worked for Sierra Club Books, suggested he use his full name.

a lean yellowish man whose fixed smile nevertheless has the impermanent quality of something stamped into uncooperative material,

marrow-level

Pir Valayat,

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

Wallace’s cruise ship piece was about the price of failing to choose well.