“Please don’t tell anybody, but Mark Nechtr desires, some distant hard-earned day, to write something that stabs you in the heart. That pierces you, makes you think you’re going to die. Maybe it’s called metalife. Or metafiction. Or realism, Or gfhrytytu. He doesn’t know. He wonders who the hell really cares. Maybe it’s not called anything.”

—David Foster Wallace, ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.