Ehh. . . I know what you mean. I kept waiting for that moment that distinguishes a DFW piece from anything else out there and just kind of half got it. I kind of reminded me of No more mr nice guy, only not as fun

I thought the uprooted tree visual worked nicely... This felt very delicate. A fraction of a moment in time, all bow-tied up by Wallace via his misleadingly simple layout...

Did anyone else feel like this was a part of a longer thing?

This is the first DFW story I've felt both emotionally and intellectually engaged in (as opposed to just the later) in a long time.

The names are interesting. Lane A. Dean, Jr. = lad, with a junior thrown in to emphasize the immaturity. Sheri Fisher, Fisher scrambled is Sheri F.

Never to mention pregnant, pregnancy, abortion, or child was impressive too, as was the unfolding of the conflict, internal and external.

Maybe not being fresh is now a form of being fresh for DFW? What else would explain this expanded iteration of Hemingway's over-anthologized 'Hills Like White Elephants' story (the twist being that what was nearly good about the Hemingway was that almost everything removeable had been vacuumed---sorry---out of it...and here DFW just glops it all back in again)? Or maybe the submission/acceptance guidelines at the NYer have shifted catastrophically even further towards the banal, clichéd and folksy overnight. Or maybe DFW has been kidnapped by Radical Muslim Structuralists and this is a coded cry for help. Or maybe he met a stupendous girl named Nadine at a n+1 party (Lane A. Dean---say it fast a few times) and this was his way of talking himself out of the infatuation. Or, I dunno. Head injury?

This one surely spoke to and inspired my Christian spirit. As a nurse aid working in a hospital, it sure is refreshing to see my god's pro-life nature every now and then.