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New Broom of the System Review |
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Saturday, 26 June 2010 |
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The gut of Wallace's writing, beyond the fevered intellectual bells and whistles, is romantic. He's fascinated by stuff, by the warp and woof of reality, and the seeming impossibility of language ever getting at the essence of it. That was the project: to find new ways to unpack the radiance and ache of life, and he continued this through a second novel, the massive (and even more splintered) "Infinite Jest," through a bunch of marvelous short stories and through the taut yet rambling essays, principally published in Harper's. Those essays showcased his reportorial gifts, and disgust with, and reverence for, and delight in baton-twirling, porn expos, the life and times of Dostoevsky, cruise ships and much more.
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